The first thing he knew was the color white.
It was a sterile, unforgiving white that coated the ceiling, the walls, and the starched sheets pulled taut across his small body. The second thing was the smell—a sharp, clean scent of antiseptic that pricked at his nose and made his eyes water. The third was a sound, a steady, rhythmic beeping that seemed to be counting the seconds of his new existence. One, two, three, four. A beat, a pause, a life measured in electronic pulses.
He blinked, his eyelashes feeling strangely heavy. He tried to sit up, but a dull ache spread through his head, a soft, persistent thrumming behind his eyes. He lifted a small hand to his temple, his fingers tracing the edge of a bandage he hadn't known was there. He knew what a bandage was. He knew what a hospital was. He knew the color white and the smell of clean.
But he did not know who he was.
The thought was not a panicked jolt, but a slow, creeping void. He looked at his own hands, pale and small, and felt no connection to them. He searched the blank canvas of his mind for a name, a face, a memory—a mother's smile, a father's voice, the taste of a favorite food. Nothing. There was only the white room, the beeping, and a profound, hollow emptiness where a person was supposed to be.
A woman in a crisp blue uniform entered the room, her soft-soled shoes making no sound on the polished floor. She had a kind face, crinkled at the corners of her eyes, but her smile faltered when she saw him awake and staring at her with wide, vacant eyes.
"Oh, you're awake, dear," she said, her voice a gentle murmur. "You gave us all quite a scare. How are you feeling?"
He opened his mouth to answer, but no sound came out. What could he say? I feel empty. I feel like a book with all the pages ripped out.
"Can you tell me your name?" the nurse asked, pulling a small stool closer to the bed.
He shook his head, the movement sending a fresh wave of pain through his skull.
"What about your parents? Do you know where they are?"
Another shake. The void in his mind felt vast now, an endless, starless night. The nurse's kind face was starting to blur. A single, hot tear escaped his eye and traced a path down his cheek. He wasn't crying from sadness, but from a terrifying sense of being utterly and completely lost.
His fingers, searching for something to hold onto, closed around a cool piece of metal against his chest. He looked down. Hanging from a simple silver chain around his neck was a small, smooth locket. It was unadorned, save for a single name elegantly engraved on its surface: Kaelen.
He clutched it, the metal cool and solid in his palm. It was the only thing in the entire world that felt real.
"Kaelen," he whispered, the name feeling foreign on his tongue. It was his. It was all he had.
Weeks bled into one another. No one came for the boy named Kaelen. No frantic parents, no concerned relatives. The police ran his picture, checked missing person reports, and found nothing. He was a ghost, a child who had simply appeared in the world, five years old, with a bump on his head and no past.
Eventually, the inevitable forms were signed, and Kaelen was escorted from the sterile white of the hospital to the oppressive grey of St. Jude's Orphanage. It was a grim, soot-stained brick building that loomed over a forgotten London street, its windows like vacant eyes.
Life inside was dictated by bells and routine. The matron, Mrs. Gable, was a stern woman with a face that looked like it had been carved from stone, but she was not cruel. She was merely efficient, running the orphanage with a detached sense of duty. To her, the children were assets to be managed, fed, and clothed until they could be moved along.
Kaelen learned quickly. He learned to be quiet, to be invisible. He ate what was given to him without complaint, made his bed with military precision, and never, ever drew attention to himself. He was a small shadow drifting through the noisy, chaotic halls. He watched the other children, observing the complex dance of alliances and rivalries, the currency of secrets and sweets, the ever-present threat of the older, bigger boys. He saw kindness as a commodity, traded for favors, and cruelty as a tool used to establish dominance. He learned, but he did not participate. He was a spectator to the life happening around him.
For two years, he existed in this grey limbo, his locket always tucked beneath his threadbare shirt, a secret comfort against his skin. He was kind in a passive way, never joining the bullies, occasionally leaving a piece of his dessert for a younger child who was crying. But it was the kindness of a hollow man, an echo of a person he couldn't remember being.
Then, he met Elara.
She was a year younger than him, with flyaway brown hair and eyes that seemed to see worlds no one else could. While other children ran screaming in the paved yard, she would sit in a corner, tracing patterns on the ground with a stick, whispering stories to herself. She didn't try to force her way into the loud, established groups. Like Kaelen, she was an island.
One afternoon, she approached him where he sat on the bottom step of the fire escape, his usual perch for observing the world. She didn't say a word. She simply sat down beside him and held out a small, slightly squashed biscuit.
He stared at it, then at her. Her gaze was direct, her expression one of simple, uncomplicated offering. He took the biscuit, and their fingers brushed. It was the first time in two years anyone had touched him with gentle intention.
That small gesture was the key that unlocked something within him. They began to talk. Or rather, she talked, and he listened. She told him of magical forests that grew between the cracks in the pavement and of brave knights who lived in the clouds. He, in turn, found himself sharing the one thing he had: the vast, silent emptiness of his past. She didn't look at him with pity. She simply nodded, as if a boy with no memories was just another character in one of her fantastic tales.
Elara became his world. She was the color in his grey existence. Her laughter was the only music in the monotone drone of the orphanage. He was no longer a spectator. He had someone to protect.
His first inkling that he was different came a few months later. An older boy named Mark, known for his casual cruelty, snatched a drawing from Elara's hands—a detailed sketch of a dragon she'd spent all morning on.
"What's this rubbish?" Mark sneered, dangling it just out of her reach.
Elara's face crumpled, tears welling in her eyes. Kaelen, who had been watching from a few feet away, felt something hot and unfamiliar surge through his veins. It wasn't the dull ache of his own loneliness; it was a sharp, focused rage. He didn't shout. He didn't run. He just stared at Mark, his small hands clenched into fists, and wished—with every fiber of his being—that the boy would just fall over.
As Mark took a step back to better admire his prize, his shoelaces, which had been securely tied moments before, suddenly twisted into an impossible knot around each other. He yelped, his arms flailing, and crashed to the ground. The drawing fluttered from his grasp.
Kaelen calmly walked over, picked up the drawing, and handed it back to a stunned Elara. Mark scrambled away, grumbling about his clumsy feet. Kaelen looked down at his own hands, a strange warmth tingling in his palms. He didn't understand what had just happened, but he understood the feeling it gave him: control. Power. The ability to protect what was his.
Years passed. The strange occurrences continued, always small, always tied to Elara. A scraped knee of hers would heal faster than it should. A toy she'd lost would inexplicably turn up under her pillow. He even learned to change his hair from its usual black to a startling blond, a trick that made her gasp with delight. It became their secret game, a small spark of magic in their bleak world. He still didn't have a past, but he had a present, and for the first time, he began to imagine a future. One with Elara in it.
He was ten now, and his quiet observation had sharpened into a keen, analytical intelligence. He saw the patterns of the orphanage, the weaknesses and fears of the other children. He saw Mark and his two friends, whose casual bullying had grown more persistent. He watched them corner a new, scrawny boy in the yard, their laughter sharp and cruel as they stole his meager lunch.
Kaelen didn't intervene. He just watched from the library window, his expression unreadable. Elara was safe, busy reading in her favorite chair. That was all that mattered. But as he watched the bullies shove the smaller boy to the ground, a cold thought settled in his mind, clear and precise as a shard of glass.
Kindness was a weakness. The boy was crying because he was kind and weak. Mark was laughing because he was cruel and strong.
The world was not a fairytale. It was a place of predators and prey. And he knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, which one he had to be to keep Elara safe. He looked from the crying boy back to the bullies, memorizing their faces, their smirks, their posture. He wasn't just observing them anymore. He was studying them. He was learning his enemy.
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