The air in the ruins tasted of ash and endings. A small figure moved in the shadows, a ghost in a city of ghosts. His hands, too delicate for their grime, sifted through the debris of what was once a street café. They closed around a sodden mass of paper, pulling it from beneath a skeletal beam. A newspaper.
He was a six-year-old Arkhandian. Homelessness had been gifted to him by the divine, a consequence of gods competing over domains he could not comprehend. His family, a bloodline of innovators and thinkers, was now a footnote, a story of a line thought to be completely perished. He was the sole, forgotten remainder. The world had once called him a prodigy, a jewel of the technological industry. Now, he lived in the rubble that industry had become.
He crouched, his back against a crumbling wall, and began the meticulous process of opening the ruined paper. It was an act of archaeology. He peeled the pages apart with a tenderness one might reserve for a holy text, wiping away the grime and the distinct, bitter dust of gunpowder with the frayed cuff of his jacket.
Finally, the front sheet was legible.
The headline was a stark, black slash across the grey page: 'New Colonel Candidate at Only 19 Years Old, Ordovia States.'
Beneath it was a photograph of a young woman, her face all sharp angles and resolve, her eyes holding a hardness that belied her years. Her uniform was impeccable.
The little boy's eyes lingered on the image. Then, slowly, he tilted his head back until it met the cold stone behind him. His gaze lifted to the sky—a perpetual, bruised twilight, stained by the smoke of a forever war.
A sound escaped him, not quite a laugh, not quite a cough. It was the dry rustle of dead leaves.
"Isn't she a genius?" he whispered to the uncaring darkness. The words hung in the frozen air, a cloud of condensation that quickly vanished. "Obtaining the first page of a newspaper. At a young age, too."
He sighed then, a long, weary exhalation that seemed to carry the weight of everything he had lost. In the quiet that followed, the rustle of the newspaper was the only sound as his small hand crumpled the page, the image of the young colonel twisting into a shapeless ball in his fist.
Step by labored step, he navigated the skeletal remains of his old neighborhood. His destination was not a home, but a memory of one, the hollowed-out shell of his family's abode, now just a crumbling annex behind a still-functioning worksmith's shop. The forge's heat provided a cruel mockery of the warmth that once lived within those walls.
Under the cloak of the perpetual, smoke-stained twilight, he became a ghost. With movements honed by desperation, he performed his nightly ritual: a furtive tap into the worksmith's main power line. A spider's web of stolen wires, almost invisible against the soot-blackened brick, carried the precious current into his ruin.
The familiar, low hum of his welding machine coming to life was a sound of rebellion. Its electric blue light flickered against the broken walls, illuminating his focused, grime-streaked face. There would be no more waiting, no more planning. Tonight, with the stolen energy coursing through his tools, he would complete it. He would finish his one great idea, his only weapon.
The light finally died, plunging his world back into the deep blue of night. A metallic click echoed in the silence as the gauntlet, still glowing faintly with trapped heat, settled into its final form. It was crude, scarred by imperfect welds and hammer strikes, but it was complete. It was functional.
A shudder wracked his small frame. "I can't feel my hands…" he muttered into the encroaching dark.
The cold was a physical presence, a biting entity that stole the warmth from his breath and the sensation from his limbs. At just six years old, Daniel Renghod had long since stopped sweating; his body had nothing left to give. The only thing that had held the freezing void at bay was the searing heat of the welding machine—a torture in itself that had seeped through his skin, deadening nerves and leaving a phantom scorch deep in his bones.
He stared at the creation resting on the anvil. The silence stretched, broken only by the faint tink of cooling metal.
And then, he laughed.
It began as a low, disbelieving chuckle and erupted into a full, manic crescendo that echoed off the ruined walls. It was the sound of shattered nerves and triumph wrung from despair.
"My greatest creation…!" he cried out to the uncaring stars. "I've finally done it! Hahahaha~!"
It was, he estimated with a prodigy's unforgiving eye, perhaps two-thirds the quality of the military's standard issue. But at that moment, it was more than a piece of equipment. It was an act of defiance. It was the most meaningful thing left in the world.
The Sun rose again, casting a harsh, brilliant light over the ruins—a stark, almost cruel kind of beauty. Frost glistened on broken stone and twisted metal, and the air bit with every breath. Daniel stirred, his small body stiff and aching from a night spent on cold ground, huddled near the fading warmth of his tools.
He rose slowly, every movement deliberate. A faint, weary smile touched his lips as he brushed dust from his worn clothing. "Hah…" he murmured, his voice still rough with exhaustion. "I really feel like Tonio Spark from Metal Hero."
For a moment, he stood there in the entrance of his broken home, the morning sun catching the crude but solid form of the gauntlet now secured to his arm. Its surface, though rough and uneven, gleamed with a promise of power. Of return.
Then, drawing a deep breath—as though filling his lungs not just with air, but with resolve—he stepped fully into the light. Back straight, head high, he stood gracefully amid the devastation, a figure of defiant pride against the backdrop of loss.
And he shouted, his voice clear and carrying in the morning stillness, a declaration to the sky and to the world that had tried to erase him:
"Now! I, Daniel Renghod—last son of the Renghod line, once-in-a-century genius—shall rise again!"
The words hung in the frozen air, not just a promise, but a warning. The genius had not perished. He had been forged anew in fire and solitude. And now, he was ready.
The rhythmic, brain-dead crunch of boots on frost was like a drumbeat leading to his ambush. A patrol. Five soldiers. Green parkas, standard-issue rifles, the same monotonous chant—"1… 2… 3… 4…"—that had once filled him with awe. Now, it just sounded lazy.
Danny waited, a shadow in the rubble, a predator's patience overriding the six-year-old's impulse to rush. He watched the last man in line, a lanky soldier whose focus was on the back of the helmet in front of him.
Perfect.
As the man passed his hiding spot, a metal-clad fist shot out. The gauntlet's clawed fingers clamped over the soldier's mouth, yanking him off his feet with a brutal, mechanical whir. There was a brief, muffled scuffle in the dirt, a dull thud, and then silence. The chanting ahead continued, unwavering, too loud and too disciplined for anyone to notice a single missing note in their monotonous song.
Daniel emerged from the shadows, dragging the unconscious soldier by the collar. He looked down at his catch, then at the gauntlet on his arm, a smirk playing on his lips.
"Hmph," he muttered, giving the soldier a little nudge with his boot. "What a nice catch. Your form was atrocious, by the way. All that marching and no situational awareness. It's almost embarrassing."
For a moment, he stood there—a small boy in oversized, scavenged clothes, overshadowed by the armored bulk of his victim. But in that moment, he wasn't the smaller one. He was the apex predator. His outstanding intellect had planned this; his shocking, desperation-forged physical strength had executed it; and his greatest creation, the Renghod Reclamation Gauntlet, had made it effortless.
Daniel Renghod, last of his line, was no longer just a survivor hiding in ruins. He had become a quite terrifying force.
Well, at least equal to that of an average, barely-armed soldier. Which, in his professional opinion, was a pathetically low bar to clear.
"Pft. What is this rusty barrel?" Danny sneered, kicking the soldier's discarded rifle. It skittered across the frozen ground. "I can tell you're nothing but a meat shield for the front line. They didn't even bother giving you decent maintenance, let alone decent training."
The soldier's eyes, wide with a mixture of terror and fury, bulged above the iron grip of the gauntlet clamped over his mouth. He struggled, a muffled shout dying in his throat.
"Hush…" Danny's voice was a chilling mockery of comfort. "Don't waste your energy. I'll release you soon. I promise."
Suddenly, a sharp crack echoed from further down the street—another soldier firing a warning shot at a stray dog or a trick of the light. The sound was a trigger.
Danny's own reaction was instantaneous, a reflex honed by paranoia. His finger, small but steady, squeezed the trigger of the pistol he'd already lifted from the soldier's own holster.
BANG.
The shot was deafening at close range. The soldier's body jerked once, then went still.
In the ringing silence that followed, Danny let the body slump to the ground. He dropped the pistol beside it with a look of faint distaste, as if he'd just handled something unclean.
"There," he said calmly, wiping his gauntlet on his pants. "I released you."
The echo of the gunshot faded, replaced by the distant, unchanging rhythm of the other patrol. They hadn't heard. Or they didn't care. Danny's attention was already off the corpse, his prodigy's mind dissecting the tools left behind.
He nudged the soldier's rifle again with his boot. "A meat shield with a meat-shield's weapon," he muttered, his nose scrunched in disdain. "A glorified hammer. No finesse."
His eyes, sharp and calculating, scanned the rest of the kit. The sidearm was marginally more interesting, but still a blunt instrument. Then his gaze landed on the soldier's belt: a standard-issue grenade, its pin gleaming dully in the cold light.
A slow, wide smirk spread across his face. "Oh, hello there…"
He scooped it up, turning the explosive over in his hands with the reverence of an artist finding a new pigment.
"Now," he whispered to himself, his earlier arrogance melting into pure, unadulterated scientific curiosity. "How can I modify this…?"
He was already walking back towards his workshop, the dead soldier forgotten. His mind raced, schematics overlaying his vision.
"The fragmentation pattern is hopelessly inefficient. A simple expansion of the casing's scoring could increase yield by… twenty-three percent? No, thirty. More shrapnel, less wasted energy." He glanced down at the gauntlet on his arm, its power cell humming softly. "And the trigger mechanism… archaic. A simple piezoelectric igniter, synced to my actuator's kinetic pulse… I could arm it, throw it, and detonate it on impact. No fuse, no time to react."
He ducked back into the shadows of his ruined abode, the grenade held up like a precious gem.
"They want to hand out simple toys to simple soldiers," he said, his voice dripping with contempt. "But a Renghod… we improve upon everything we touch."
"Stop. Don't come further, Allain."
The machine's low buzz filled the tense space between them. Four years had sharpened Daniel's skills, his focus, his gauntlet—but some things never changed. Like the wary stillness that fell over him when Allain entered uninvited.
Allain ignored the warning, stepping fully into the lamplight. His smile was all easy confidence. "Well, isn't this nice, Danny? Very… industrious of you. Killing the worksmith, conquering his forge. Making it your own." He tossed a folded newspaper onto the soot-streaked table between them. "The Table has called."
Daniel didn't look up. He placed his tools down one by one with deliberate calm. Only the flicker of his eyes toward the paper betrayed any interest. "I don't care." A beat of silence. Then, casual as a knife-slide: "What's that about?"
"Oh, this?" Allain tapped the headline. "It's about that wunderkind Colonel from Ordovia you're so obsessed with. The one who keeps making the news."
Daniel's hand stilled. The gears in his mind, always turning, clicked into a new configuration. "Hilda," he said, the name leaving his mouth not as a question, but a statement of fact. He had followed her career like a blueprint, studying the enemy's newest, shiniest weapon.
"The very same," Allain said, watching him closely. "She's done it again. Saved hundreds. They're calling her the 'Shield of Ordovia' now. Poetic, isn't it? While you're down here in the dark, she's up there in the light, being their hero."
The air grew thick, charged. The buzz of the machine seemed to deepen into a warning hum. Daniel finally looked up, and his eyes were cold.
"She's not a hero," he said, his voice low and precise. "She's a symptom. A symbol they parade around to prove their system works. While that system grinds the rest of us into dust."
He picked up a hydrospanner, his grip tightening. "They don't need a shield. They need a reckoning." His gaze fell back to his gauntlet, its new, modified plates gleaming. "And I am nearly ready to deliver it.
…
Daniel's eyes, which had been fixed on his gauntlet, went distant for a fraction of a second. The hum of the machine seemed to fade into silence as the pieces clicked together in his mind. His head snapped up, his gaze sharp and intent, finally locking onto Allain.
"Wait."
The single word was not a shout, but a command, cold and clear, cutting through the air. He took a single, deliberate step forward.
"Now I care. Explain."
The polished oak door of the council chamber burst open with a force that silenced the room's low murmur.
All eyes turned toward the entrance. There, small but crackling with furious energy, stood a ten-year-old Daniel Renghod. One of his hands was smudged with oil; the other was encased in a rough, partially assembled gauntlet, wires still exposed and faintly humming.
"Sander!" Daniel's voice was sharp, cutting through the formal air. "Explain this instant! What do you mean I have to stop developing my gauntlet—or else the entire council will come after me? A ten-year-old?"
From the side of the room, leaning against a bookshelf with an expression of pure theatrical delight, sixteen-year-old Allain slowly brought his hands together in a soft, deliberate clap.
"Finally, huh?" he said, his voice carrying a clear note of pride as he pushed off the wall and walked toward Daniel, not to stop him, but to join him. "Took you long enough to show up and ask them yourself."
He came to a stop just behind Daniel's shoulder, a tall, grinning shadow offering silent backup. His presence transformed Daniel's solitary outburst into a staged confrontation. Allain's smirk was a challenge directed at the councilmen, his eyes saying, Go on. Try to explain yourselves to the prodigy you're trying to stifle.
Councilman Sander's face flushed a deep crimson, his composure cracking. "This is not a matter for children to debate!" he thundered, the words echoing in the stunned silence. "This is a council order! Your… contraption is a danger to yourself and to the fragile peace we maintain!"
"It is a matter of my work!" Daniel's voice, though higher in pitch, was no less commanding. Allain's silent, grinning presence at his back was a shield, transforming his solitary outrage into a united front. "And I'm not debating. I'm demanding an answer. What is the real reason?"
Sander spluttered, his eyes darting between the prodigy and his provocateur. "The resources you drain, the attention you draw—it is unsustainable! We are a council of survival, not of… of indulging a child's dangerous hobbies!"
From behind Daniel, Allain let out a low, mocking chuckle. "Indulging? Is that what you call it when he single-handedly reroutes power for a block? Or when his 'contraption' dragged one of your own 'peacekeeping' soldiers into the shadows without a sound?" His gaze swept over the other councilmen, who shifted uncomfortably in their seats. "Seems more like you're scared. Scared his genius will outgrow this little box you've built for yourselves."
Daniel's eyes never left Sander's. The pieces, sharp and cutting, clicked into place. It wasn't about safety or resources. It was about control. About maintaining the stagnant order they presided over. His gauntlet wasn't a hobby; it was a threat. A symbol of the innovation and power they had tried to bury with his family's legacy.
He took a final step forward, the hum of his unfinished gauntlet the only sound in the room.
"Your order is meaningless," Daniel stated, his tone cold and final. It was not the plea of a child, but the declaration of a force of nature. "You cannot stop progress. You can only choose to be left behind."
With that, he turned his back on the entire council, a gesture of breathtaking disrespect. The stunned silence was absolute. Allain's grin widened into something triumphant and fierce before he too turned, falling into step beside the small, retreating figure.
The polished oak door did not slam. It clicked shut with a quiet, definitive finality. The council was left with the echo of a promise and the chilling understanding that the genius they had tried to suppress had just declared war on their world.
It was pouring heavily outside, the sound of harsh rain silenced every other noise. The torrents felt like speeding bullets as they came crashing down. Daniel looked at the weather with a deep sigh. Daniel didn't have much to cover him from the rain.
The council's heat was instantly forgotten, replaced by the shocking, bone-deep cold of the rain. Daniel stood frozen for a second on the steps, his small frame shuddering as the water soaked through his thin, scavenged clothes. The adrenaline that had fueled his defiance evaporated, leaving a hollow, trembling void.
Allain, shrugging his own heavier coat tighter, looked down at him. "Well, that went—"
"Shut up," Daniel whispered, his voice barely audible over the storm.
He hugged himself, the crude metal of the gauntlet cold against his skin. The councilman's words echoed in his mind, not as a threat, but as a taunting truth. A child's dangerous hobbies. The resources you drain.
A sickening doubt uncoiled in his gut. What if they're right? What am I but an orphan playing with scraps? A nobody from the rubble, thinking he can challenge an empire. He looked down at his gauntlet—a mess of exposed wires and rough welds. It wasn't a weapon of revolution; it was a pathetic toy. The weight of it felt like the weight of the entire city, crushing him. He was just a stupid child, wet, cold, and alone.
His breath hitched. He was nothing.
Then, his eyes lifted from his own creation to the street before him. Through the curtain of rain, he saw the flicker of a candle in a window across the way—the worksmith's old home, now his forge. His sanctuary. His mind, trained to solve problems, automatically traced the path of the stolen power line that fed it, the line that also powered the dim, flickering lights in the hovels next door.
He saw a woman quickly usher two shivering children inside a battered doorway. He saw an old man huddled under a makeshift awning, trying to stay dry.
They were all just "nobodies." They were told their place was here, in the rain and the ruin. That survival was the only ambition allowed to them. That advancement was impossible.
The council's fear wasn't of a child. It was an idea. The idea that a nobody from the slums could possess a power they couldn't control. The idea that he could show everyone else that the boundaries placed on them were lies.
The doubt didn't vanish; it was forged into something harder. Into purpose.
Allain was watching him, his usual smirk gone, replaced by a look of quiet expectation. He wasn't going to give Daniel courage. He was waiting to see if Daniel would find it himself.
Daniel's shivering stopped. His small hands, one flesh and one metal, clenched into fists.
Without a word, he turned his back on the council building and stepped off the stairs, into the flowing gutter. The water was ice-cold, but he didn't flinch. He began to walk, not with haste, but with a grim, newfound determination, heading straight for the glow of his forge.
Allain's grin returned, wider and more genuine than before. He fell into step beside him. "Where to now, boss?"
Daniel didn't look at him, his eyes fixed on the light ahead, a lone star in the drowning dark. "The council is afraid of the attention I draw?" he said, his voice low and steady, carrying a new, dangerous edge. "Good."
He lifted his gauntleted arm, rain sizzling on its warm power core.
"Then it's time to give them something to really look at. It's time to build something they can't ignore."