Kael Renley was eleven when he first learned he was dying.
It started with bone pain and nosebleeds. Nothing too scary—until the tests came back.
He had leukemia. A rare type. Aggressive. The kind that didn't care how much you fought.
The hospital became his second home. The IVs, the chemo, the vomiting, the hair loss—it all became routine. His childhood shrank to beds and bloodwork, sterile walls and fleeting windows of hope.
But there were also remissions. Two of them.
In those times, when it was warm, he loved being outside in the shade of a tree, reading a book and breathing in the fresh air.
When it was cold, he played video games and read about how everything worked—from gravity to how the brain functions.
Twice, his world felt normal. Twice, he thought he'd won.
But the cancer always came back. More relentless. More prepared. As if it learned from his resistance.
His parents were forced to make impossible choices—take loans out against the home, work double shifts, even skip meals—just to buy another week of medication or pay for an off-label trial. They smiled when he was awake. They cried when they thought he was asleep.
But it was Aria, his sister, who never broke in front of him.
She was his anchor. She read him novels when he was too tired to open his eyes, made him laugh even after spinal taps, and covered the ugly parts of life with her fierce determination. She held his hand during the worst nights and whispered over and over that she would become a doctor. That she'd find a cure.
She meant it. She'd even been accepted on a scholarship to medical school. She hadn't started yet—because the school was far away from the hospital where he was trapped.
And maybe that's why it hurt more because the last time he went into the hospital, he didn't come out.
He died at 2:14 a.m., hand in hers.
His voice was barely audible:
"Please help others so no one has to go through this."
Then he slipped into darkness.