First Person POV – Arthur Crown
My name is Arthur Crown.
Yeah, I know how it sounds — like something out of an Arthurian fan club. But don't knock it until you get the full story.
I was born in December 2001. My "mother," bless her heart, dropped me off in a collection box at a fire station on a freezing winter night. Miracle number one: I didn't freeze to death. Miracle number two: I wasn't stolen by anyone before dawn. Instead, I was found by the now retired fire chief, Brian O'Shaughnessy, who trudged through three feet of snow to get me to a hospital. The man saved my life — and, for some reason, decided to name me Arthur Crown. Maybe he was a fan of Camelot and didn't want to go all the way. I never asked, when asked in interviews I told the reporter as such.
The rest of my childhood wasn't so miraculous. I grew up in an orphanage that always hovered between underfunded and completely broke. I guess I stood out — spelling bees, sports, chess, you name it. I was a walking fundraising poster. They called me "the wonder kid," which was just a polite way of saying "cash cow." At some point, they quietly took my name off the adoption list under "special circumstances."
The other kids tolerated me — not quite friends, not quite enemies. I learned early to smile when people cheered and keep quiet when they whispered. Still, I had my escapes. Chess. Books. And, secretly, anime and web novels, Shadow Slave was my favorite. Maybe because the idea of fighting your way up from nothing felt... familiar.
By fourteen, I'd built a facial recognition algorithm for a U.S. Army contractor. They paid me five million dollars, which I of course poured into Bitcoin and startup stocks. At eighteen, my earlier investments paid off and I left the orphanage behind, started my own company, and turned my obsession with technology into a tool for change. I sponsored orphanages and fire stations, rebuilt schools, and made sure no kid would ever feel the way I did — forgotten and left behind. If there's one thing I learned in all that time, it's this:Your treatment in life is based on the value you bring to the table if you don't well.
Charity galas were supposed to be boring. The kind of nights where billionaires shook hands trying to look like they actually gave a rats ass about orphans and the cameras flashed until your cheeks hurt. I'd hosted dozens, but this one felt different. Only in this country are charitable foundations required to have a board and yearly profit We were unveiling a new shelter project—Large enough that even if the matron wanted to cram in children it would at least be two per room and had solar panels for electricity and various teachers to set up workshops teaching these kids profitable skills for when they leave the system. My dream of giving every orphan a place to belong was finally real.
I stood at the podium, Reporters filled the hall; kids from the shelters we were relocating waved flags with our logo. For a moment, I forgot about shareholders and contracts. These were my people—proof that all the years of struggle meant something."Today isn't about me," I began. "It's about what we can build when humanity joins hands when kindness stops being charity and starts being the norm."
Then, in the middle of it all, a flicker of movement caught my eye—a security man glancing up, hand to his earpiece.The world snapped in half.A single crack, soft as a snapped twig.Something hot punched through my chest.No cinematic slow motion, Just the sound of the microphone hitting the floor and the color draining from the world.I remember the confusion first—the audience frozen, someone screaming, my knees hitting marble. Then the cold, spreading out from the wound like ink in water.They said the body fights to stay alive, but I felt… calm. Detached. My mind drifted to the people who'd trusted me: Brian O'Shaughnessy, the children's drawings on my office wall I bought for ridiculous amounts, the staff who believed in the company's mission few as they were. Would they be all right?I wanted to stay—to tell them to hold the line, to remind them what we were fighting for.
But even kings don't get to choose their ending.The lights dimmed. The applause faded into static.And as the world turned to gray, one thought lingered in my mind: Every kingdom, no matter how beautiful, eventually crumbles.