The sky screamed as the world fell apart.
Fire and metal tore through the clouds, scattering fragments that glowed like dying stars. When the roar finally faded, only smoke and silence remained—and a single child lying among the ruins.
Ron opened his eyes to a crimson haze. His ears rang, his vision swam. The air was thick with ash and the scent of burnt oil. He coughed weakly, the sound swallowed by the vast emptiness around him.
He didn't know where he was. He didn't know why the sky burned or why the ground trembled beneath him. His small hands reached out, touching the cold, twisted frame of the wrecked craft. The metal was still warm—breathing faint heat like a dying creature.
A spark of memory flickered in his mind: someone's voice calling his name… a woman's laugh… a hand brushing his hair. Then it vanished, leaving only pain and the echo of his heartbeat.
Ron was six years old.
He stumbled to his feet, barefoot on sharp stones. The landscape stretched endlessly—an ocean of red cliffs and shattered rock. Great pillars of stone rose like the ribs of a sleeping beast, their shadows painting the ground in dark veins. From far away came a hollow roar, deep and endless, as though the earth itself was alive.
Above him, the clouds glowed faintly with streaks of violet lightning. Strange winged shapes circled high above, their cries metallic and haunting.
He turned toward the distant smoke. Another wreck burned on a nearby ridge—larger, blacker, marked with the crest of the Hunter Squadron. Their pursuit craft had fallen too.
Drawn by curiosity and fear, Ron limped toward it. The closer he came, the stronger the smell—burnt flesh and melted steel.
Bodies lay scattered among the wreckage. Men in black armor, their weapons twisted beyond use. One of them still moved, crawling, leaving streaks of blood across the ground. His mask was shattered. The left side of his face was crushed under a sheet of fallen metal, only one eye visible, glassy and terrified.
Ron froze. The soldier's hand reached toward him, trembling. The boy took a step back.
"...help…" the man rasped, his voice bubbling with blood.
Then the wreck shifted. The metal plate sank further with a wet crack. The sound silenced everything.
Ron ran.
He didn't stop until his lungs burned and tears blurred his sight. The canyon around him twisted into shadow and fog. The sound of beasts howling far below swallowed the last of his cries.
At the base of the cliff, he found a narrow fissure in the rock—dark, tight, barely wide enough for his small body. He crawled inside, the stone scraping his skin. The air smelled of dust and old metal. He pressed himself against the wall, hugging his knees.
Outside, something moved. Claws scraped against the wreckage. A low, hungry snarl rolled through the canyon. The child held his breath.
A faint warmth pulsed in his chest—soft, invisible. The air thickened, as if the world itself forgot he existed. The creature's shadow passed by the entrance and faded. He didn't know it, but his blood had stirred. The instinct of the Dragon Technique had protected him.
Hours—or maybe days—passed without meaning.
He drank from the thin streams that trickled through the rock and licked dew from metal shards. When the sky outside glowed red, he marked a line on the stone wall with a broken screw. He stopped counting when there was no more space left to carve.
He dreamed sometimes—of a throne bathed in light, a man's voice saying, "Stand tall, my son." Then came fire, screaming metal, falling skies. He would wake shaking, clutching the broken pendant that hung around his neck. Its crest—a crown with wings—was cracked but familiar.
The boy forgot words, then names, then faces. All that remained was silence.
When hunger drove him outside, he searched the wreck for scraps—half-melted ration bars, rainwater pooled in metal cavities. The corpses of the Hunter squad remained where they'd fallen, now half-buried in dust. The sight of them kept him away from the open air.
Sometimes, he would hear distant explosions—echoes of Caynion's storms, where magnetic fields tore the clouds apart. Lightning crawled across the cliffs like living veins. The air itself hummed, alive with invisible energy.
And through it all, the boy survived. Not because he understood how, but because something deep inside him refused to stop breathing.
Then, one night, the wind carried a different sound.
Footsteps.
They were slow, cautious, crunching over gravel and wreckage. A beam of orange light cut through the mist—steady, human. Ron's breath caught.
"Anyone alive in here?" a voice called.
He crawled deeper into the fissure, heart pounding. The voice came closer.
"By the gods," the man muttered. "The wreck's still burning…"
The glow of the lantern spilled into the chamber. The man's silhouette appeared—a tall figure in tattered armor, a rifle slung across his back. His eyes scanned the darkness.
Then he saw movement.
A small figure, thin and filthy, crouched against the wall, clutching a broken pendant.
The man froze. "A child?"
He knelt slowly, setting down his weapon. "Easy, boy… I won't hurt you."
Ron stared back, eyes wide and hollow. The light of the lantern reflected in them like twin shards of glass.
"You're safe now," the man said softly. "I promise."
But Ron didn't understand the word safe. The only world he knew was metal, ash, and silence.
Still, when the stranger extended his hand, the boy hesitated… then reached for it.
The man's rough grip was warm.
As he lifted the child into his arms, the wind roared again through the canyon—long and mournful, like a dragon's breath across the stones.
And far behind them, the crushed bodies of the Hunter squad lay motionless beneath the wreckage—silent witnesses to the birth of a survivor.
Caynion swallowed the sound, and the ash settled once more.
(END OF CHAPTER 2)