The lake shimmered under a hesitant dawn, its surface trembling like a heartbeat too small to be felt. Reflections of a sky that had long stopped dreaming mirrored in the water—soft blues and silvered grays bleeding into one another, as if the world itself had forgotten the art of hope.
In the quiet folds of Marlock Village, nestled in the hollow between two hills where the wild grass leaned with the wind, there lived a boy whose name, for now, meant nothing.
Not yet.
Mormond.
He was an orphan of the sort that the world doesn't even remember existed before it discarded them. Born into neglect, forged in loneliness, raised in a small hut that smelled of smoke and wet earth. But he was not entirely alone.
Not then.
Grandfather Aerik.
The man's hands shook as they tied fishing lines or brushed soot from his own gray hair, yet his heart was iron beneath the tremors. He had fought in wars whose names were already lost to history, loved once, and chosen peace despite a lifetime of loss.
They had no gold. No title. No lineage to protect them from the world's cruelty.
But they had each other.
They had laughter stolen from the leaping fish, herbs pulled from the hills, the warmth of a fire on the coldest nights. And sometimes, that was enough.
Mormond learned slowly, painfully. He learned to fish with sharpened sticks, track rabbits through the underbrush, and brew tonics that could soothe fever or mend a minor wound. Each lesson was a small defiance against the world's whispering, constant mantra: "You are nothing."
But at night, when the fire crackled and shadows danced on the hut walls, Aerik's hand rested softly on his head. And then the whisper was different: "You are everything you choose to be."
That was all the boy needed.
Until the morning the wind carried no scent.
Mormond woke to silence. Not the kind of quiet that blankets a sleeping house, but the void of absence. No cough. No shuffle of footsteps. No low humming of the songs his grandfather had sung while chopping wood or stirring stew.
Cold.
Still.
Aerik's eyes stared at the ceiling, unseeing. The wrinkles of age were sharp in the unforgiving light. His chest did not rise, did not fall. The boy pressed his palm against it anyway, as though some miracle might awaken him.
It did not.
That was the day Marlock swallowed Mormond's childhood whole.
Poverty has many faces in Marlock. Some wear rags. Some wear golden chains. But all are blind to the ones at the bottom. To the nobles who look down from their estates across the valley, slums are not homes—they are obstacles, beasts, debris to crush under gold-laced boots.
Mormond learned to work with the sun as a master does with his only instrument. He sold herbs in the village square, fished with crude tools in the lake, hunted small game with traps made from scraps, and bathed in the water daily, as though trying to rinse the cruelty from his skin.
Yet, even in decay, light can linger.
The old tavern keeper, a woman whose hands bore scars from knives long dulled, was one such flame. Sharp-tongued, yes, but with a heart that saw beyond rags and grime. She never called him slum rat. She never demanded repayment when she handed him a warm meal.
The other light—was Nini.
She appeared one summer afternoon like a petal drifting on the wind, fragile and pale, her voice a soft echo of life that Mormond had thought lost to the world. She was orphaned, like him, wandering the alleys and alleys' shadows of Marlock, almost nothing but bones and breath. When she collapsed near the lake, Mormond didn't think. He lifted her into his arms, carried her home, cleaned her small body with water that shimmered like liquid silver, and fed her.
She never left.
She called him "Brother."
She stitched his torn clothes with trembling fingers. She pinned wildflowers into their humble walls. The hut, once echoing with emptiness, now hummed with fragile warmth.
The world outside stayed cruel.
Inside their home—there was peace.
Until the Day of Ruin.
The sky seemed to lean back in horror as robed carrion and silver-tongued corruption arrived. Priests, cloaked in false piety, poured into Marlock with a swagger only men drunk on divine hypocrisy could manage. And with them—three nobles, resplendent in silks and arrogance, the air of entitlement wrapped around them like armor.
Nini, no older than nine, was at the outer gate, tending her small basket of herbs. Mormond had gone to the lake, thinking only of fish and sunlight.
"He was not there."....
"He was not there."....
"He was not there.".....
He was never there in time.
When he returned, the village square was a nightmare. The scent of iron and death choked the morning air. Screams had ceased, leaving only an eerie silence punctuated by the cruel laughter of men who thought themselves gods.
He saw her.
Her body contorted, broken in ways nature had never intended. Limbs bent like snapped reeds, right arm dangling uselessly, legs twisted grotesquely. Her eyes, half-open, reflected the world she had been robbed of.
Something in Mormond cracked—not a heart, long dead—but something far deeper.
A smile unfurled across his face, grotesque in its breadth. Laughter tore from his throat, high-pitched and shivering, mingled with tears.
He knelt. He pressed her shattered head against his chest. He whispered through sobs, almost tenderly:
"Shh… I'll fix it. I'll fix you…"
The nobles sneered.
"Look at this freak," one spat, his boots scuffing dirt and bone. "Holding trash like treasure."
Another laughed. "Creepy brat's gone mad. Someone put him down before he starts biting."
They didn't see.
The darkness at his feet, coiling, awakening.
The strings—threadbare yet indestructible, invisible yet undeniable—wrapped themselves around Nini's broken body.
Her eyelids twitched. Her crushed mouth moved.
And then:
"Let the curtain rise, dear sister."
The voice was a whisper soaked in hate, the kind of hate born from loss, betrayal, and the crushing cruelty of the world.
"Let's show them a show worth bleeding for…"
Nini moved.
Like a marionette freed from a cage of wood and thread, she rose. Pale, twitching, unnatural in her grace. The nobles stumbled back, eyes wide.
"What in—" one began.
But the boy did not wait.
Her arms lashed out, cracking bones, ripping through armor and sinew. Her legs—bent and broken—propelled her with a terrifying strength, smashing through spines, shattering bodies like brittle toys.
Mormond's laughter rang out above the screams. Not of madness, not of joy—but of purpose.
By the time the last noble fell, the boy was drenched in blood, his rags soaked, hair sticking in wet strands around his pale, determined face. And in that moment, a name etched itself into the world:
The Puppeteer Calamity.
A class never seen before. A legacy born of innocence and slaughter. A shadow that would grow longer with every passing day.
At night, Marlock whispered of them.
A boy with silver hair, dragging a puppet girl in rags behind him. They wandered through the slums as though nothing had happened, their eyes glinting in the moonlight. He smiled at the sky. Sometimes, he sang lullabies, soft and haunting, that spoke of loss and fury in equal measure.
And when nobles dared cross the old gates?
They never returned. Only the strings came back—dangling, twitching, silent witnesses to the reckoning of the innocent turned unholy.
The lake shimmered under the hesitant dawn, reflecting a sky that had stopped dreaming—but one day would remember.
🕸️TO BE CONTINUED🕸️