I swear, the world doesn't care if I exist.
The wind cut across the outskirts of Darnsworth City like a rusty blade, carrying the smell of wet stone, coal smoke, and something sour I couldn't quite place. My boots squelched through mud that had been there since last week—or maybe last month; I stopped caring. Three jobs today, three jobs tomorrow, and three jobs every day. The city didn't care. The world probably didn't care either, but I hadn't met it yet, so I couldn't be sure.
The first job was a delivery: parcels from a corner market to a brassworks factory that looked like it had been assembled out of nightmares and iron scraps. The cart squealed like it had a personal vendetta against me, and the horses snorted clouds of steam. Every step, every jolt, my back ached, but I didn't complain. Complaining doesn't pay, and Lira needed food.
Job two was clearing rubble in the construction district — bricks, mortar, the kind of work that leaves your fingers bleeding and your nails split. I kept a running count of how many bricks I could lift before I had to catch my breath, as if scoring points against fate would make it stop laughing at me.
The third job… well, that one bordered on the illicit. Cleaning chimneys, running errands for drunks in dark alleyways, and carrying messages people didn't want traced. The pay was slightly better than honesty, but slightly better wasn't much better at all. Still, it kept Lira fed.
By the time I trudged back home, the sky had curled into its night cloak. Lira was there, sitting on the doorstep of our cramped, soot-stained room. Her small hands clutched a tin cup of soup that had probably gone cold a while ago. "You're late," she whispered. Not accusing, not scolding — just the quiet weight of worry.
I forced a grin. "Traffic," I lied. Carriages. Steam carts. Whatever passed for the city's veins. I didn't need her knowing the truth: that Darnsworth doesn't care, the factories don't care, the people barely notice, and neither does the world.
She tilted her head at me, eyes wide and strange tonight. "Brother… did you hear it?"
I blinked. "Hear what?"
"The sound," she said softly. "The one… under everything else. Like it's whispering."
I laughed. "Maybe it's just the wind."
But when I looked at her, I felt it too. Not a sound, not a word, not a tone — a presence. It pressed at the back of my skull, tugged at my ribs, made my teeth itch. The kind of presence that screams quietly: there's more than this world, and it's watching.
I shook my head, dismissing it. Her tiny hand slipped into mine. Warm. Real. Anchoring. I let myself forget the whispers for a moment. Let myself feel something human.
She smiled faintly. A small miracle, that smile. Then she said, "I think… I can hear it better than you."
My chest tightened. Barely ten, and already touched by whatever reaches beyond. I should've been terrified, but instead, I felt… protective. Determined. She didn't deserve this world — she didn't deserve the outskirts, the grime, the ceaseless grind.
I sat with her as rain began to patter on the tin roof. The streets outside hissed under the horses' hooves, the creak of carts, the distant laughter of those who had it better than us. And beneath it all, faint, impossible, almost imperceptible — the sound beneath silence.
I didn't know what it was. I didn't know if it mattered. But somehow… I already feared it.
Then came the small moments of life that made the struggle worthwhile. Lira shivered, so I gave her my worn coat — it smelled faintly of sweat and coal, but at least it was dry. She laughed at my attempt to balance three parcels while putting the coat around her shoulders. Her laugh was a candle in the dark, fragile and bright, and it kept me moving forward even when the world pressed down like an iron lid.
That night, as I lay on the thin mattress, exhausted from three jobs, I listened to the wind whisper around our small room. Faint. Cold. Watching. And I felt, deep in my bones, that the world was real. Not yet awake, not yet calling fully, but present. Waiting.
And somewhere, far below or above, I could swear the city itself was listening.