In a different corner of different city, far from Clyde and the forest of broken seals, another story quietly began to unfold.
It started in the outskirts of an industrial city. A place where concrete swallowed the earth and rust stained the edges of everything. Here, in a crumbling apartment block where the wind always smelled like smoke and the sky rarely cleared lived a boy most people barely noticed.
His name was Ray. He was fourteen. Thin, hunched, and quiet.
He walked with his head down always alone and always somewhere in the background. His classmates whispered about him and called him weird, freak, broken.
Some of them didn't whisper. Some shoved him in the hallway, spat gum in his locker, or threw his notebooks into puddles. It never stopped even after he beg them to.
He never fought back because he was too weak to do anything.
Until the day he found the weapon few days ago.
