The walk home from school was so familiar that Mazwi could navigate it with his eyes closed. Each crack in the pavement and each faded mural on the shop walls stitched into the dull tapestry of his daily life. His backpack, heavy with textbooks that promised a future he couldn't quite picture, felt more like an anchor than a vessel.
He kicked a loose pebble, watching it skitter ahead. For seventeen years, Hope's Peak Orphanage had been his home—a place of shared routines and solitary dreams. He had friends, of a sort, but they were like satellites—occasionally crossing paths but always bound for their own destinations. His own future felt like a vast, blank map.
As he passed Mr. Abara's dusty curiosity shop, something caught his eye. The usual jumble of old radios and mismatched china was different. In the center of the window, on a faded velvet cushion, sat a board game.
It wasn't like any game he'd seen before. The box was a deep, midnight blue, inlaid with intricate, silvery patterns that seemed to shift in the light. The title, embossed in an elegant font, read: The Aetherpath.
A strange curiosity tugged at him, irrationally strong. He didn't have money for such things, but his feet carried him through the tinkling bell of the shop door…