Lugal ran.
Not toward the hovel. Never again.
Ash and soot scoured his lungs, sharp and relentless. Rage echoed behind him—booze-soaked, bitter, already fading into the cold air.
He didn't stop until the Sinks swallowed him whole.
The city's underbelly writhed around him: chimneys hacking out smoke, steel wheels grinding, stray dogs yowling at shadows only they could see. The stench of rust and sweat clung like a second skin, thick and unforgiving.
He collapsed in a guttering alley, ribs stabbing like knives, hunger gnawing with cruel, tiny teeth. His breath hitched. He was nine. Yet he felt ancient—worn by a world that had no mercy.
—
Three years passed.
The boy who fled no longer ran. He hunted.
Lugal had grown lean—built like a shadow with teeth. His eyes were emptier now. Not dead, just... focused. Always calculating. Always watching.
He slipped through the Sinks market like a whisper, weaving between stalls of rotting greens and meats crawling with flies. Then he saw it: a bruised apple, perched on the edge of a merchant's cart.
His hand moved before thought.
Cold fruit hit his palm.
Then iron fingers clamped around his wrist.
"Thief," the merchant snarled, breath thick with meat and stale ale. "You little rat."
A fist rose. Slow. Heavy. Familiar.
Lugal didn't flinch. He closed his eyes.
Here it comes.
Worthless.
But the blow never landed.
A blur darted in—a smaller boy, wild-eyed, barefoot, fast.
He slammed into the merchant's knee.
The man staggered.
"Run, idiot!" the boy snapped.
Then vanished into the crowd, apple and all.
Lugal stood frozen, skin buzzing, chest tight.
That wasn't mercy. That wasn't kindness. Those things didn't exist in the Sinks.
But something strange smoldered in him anyway.
Gratitude.
He never saw the boy again.
But he remembered.
Not the face. The gesture.
A flicker of light in a place where light didn't belong.
—
That night, hunger returned. Stronger than ever.
He curled in an alley behind a crate of rusted nails, breath shallow. His ribs ached. His pride gnawed harder than the hunger.
And then she found him.
A shape. A voice. A question.
"Hungry, boy?"
The woman was tall. Her cloak was clean—not from coin, but ritual. Her skin bronze-dark, eyes like obsidian knives. No pity. No questions about bruises.
She offered bread.
And a choice.
"What are you willing to do to climb out of the gutter?"
He took the bread. Swallowed the question. Followed.
—
The Sunken Forum.
They never showed faces. Only shadows, smoke, instructions. A whispering council wrapped in secrets.
Tasks at first:
Watch. Listen. Carry. Return unseen.
Then:
Names. Routes. Maps. Eavesdropping through pipes. Stealing from ledgers. Extracting truth from silence.
They didn't heal the broken boy.
They sharpened him.
He learned to vanish between footsteps. To read lies in a twitching brow. To become a rumor with teeth.
They didn't comfort him.
They gave him a knife.
And a promise:
You can rise.
You can matter.
You can make them choke on their words.
He clung to it like breath.
A vow made beneath the belt. A hunger given shape.
And that voice—his father's—still echoed, distant and withering:
You'll never be nothing.
He would prove it wrong.
He would become something terrible enough that even his past would cower.
—
The dream broke.
Lugal gasped awake. Sweat soaked him. The cell greeted him—cold, reeking, alive with despair.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The sound of time wearing even the strong down to bones.
He curled into himself again.
The past was a weight he carried.
The future had no face.
And yet...
The promise still burned.
You will rise.