The boy had nothing left. No home. No friends. No reason to stay.
One night, under a sky bruised purple and black, he made his choice:
Run.
He slipped through the crooked streets like a whisper, barefoot on frozen stone. Past the ruins of the home he once knew. Past the fields where ghosts of laughter once lingered.
Into the woods. Into the dark.
The forest greeted him like an open mouth, swallowing him whole.
The journey was merciless.
The boy stumbled over jagged roots. Cold rain lashed his skin raw. Thorns tore bleeding lines across his arms and legs.
Once, he slipped on the wet rocks of a river and was dragged under, gasping, until he clawed his way back to the bank, coughing up mud and blood.
His stomach gnawed at itself. Three days without food.
His lips cracked from thirst. Two days without clean water.
Each step up the mountain was a war against his own body —his muscles screamed, his bones shivered, his skin split open.
The higher he climbed, the colder it became. Breath became knives in his lungs.
At times, he crawled on hands and knees, dragging his battered body upward by pure will.
Each time he thought he couldn't move anymore, he remembered—
His mother's broken smile. His father's crushed hands. Their love.
He would not die here. He refused.
Days blurred into nights. Nights blurred into pain.
Until at last, half-dead, he saw it through the mist:
A dojo — massive and ancient. Its wood, dark and cracked. Its banners, torn by forgotten wars. Its silence —deafening.
No light. No voices. No signs of life.
The boy staggered forward.
His vision flickered — fading, pulsing.
He reached the heavy steps of the dojo.
Collapsed to his knees.
And that's when he heard it.
A voice —sharp as broken glass, cold as the mountain wind.
"You think you came here to be saved?"
"You came here for excuses."
"You want strength? Then earn it — through blood, through agony, through every scream you bite down until your teeth break."
"Crawl if you have to. Bleed if you have to. Cry if you have to. But don't you dare show up at my doors hoping for mercy."
"There is no place for the weak here. Only monsters strong enough to tear their own fate apart."
The boy, barely conscious, lifted his head—
And saw him:
A figure standing at the dojo's shattered entrance. Tall, still as a blade.
He had hair white as fresh snow, wild and unkempt, falling into his sharp, emerald green eyes —eyes that held no pity, no warmth, only a cold, crushing judgment.
His clothes were strange, powerful —a dark martial uniform, fitted perfectly, with intricate silver lines running across the sleeves and chest like lightning frozen mid-strike. A half-cape rested across one shoulder, torn at the edge, giving him the look of a wandering warrior from a forgotten world.
He radiated something terrifying:
Not anger. Not kindness.
A brutal indifference.
The boy's strength finally broke. The world tilted.
The last thing he saw was the young man's piercing green gaze, staring down at him like judging a broken blade —and then, darkness swallowed him whole.