Noah woke up, he was in a place he had never seen before. The walls were white, and so were the beds.
But Noah didn't care. He was looking down, his eyes broken looking into nothing, he wanted death to find him now, or if he was in heaven, he wanted to see his parents again, just one more time.
A woman with a beautiful silhouette of gray hair and reddish eyes, was sitting on a bench close to Noah's bed. "A child was found on the side of a beach in Port Maria, one of the most trafficked ports in the whole continent. Who are you?" The woman said, reading something in a folder.
Noah looked at her for a few seconds and let his eyes fall back into the same position.
"A child with no manners…" the woman said and grabbed Noah's chin.
Noah held on to her wrist and started freezing it. She quickly let go of him.
"Interesting," she said as she moved her wrist. "My name is Ada, Ada Steelheart, what happened to you?"
Noah held his tears and looked at her. He opened his mouth and told her everything that had happened on the island.
"You call those things curses. Here we call them sins, the walking manifestation of the sin of humanity and the sin that you describe is the skin of Kain, the biggest and oldest sin of them all." She said, taking notes on a machine that Noah had never seen before. It had some sort of button that you press, and letters popped up on a little window like magic. The woman calls it a laptop.
The woman opened her mouth to speak but closed it immediately.
"Where am I?" Noah asked.
"You are in a hospital in Larentsia, the capital of Monteloence." She pointed at a map. "Do you know how to read a map?"
Noah looked confused. "What do you mean this is not called the United Kingdoms? Not just that were is Almeria and Canada, Mexico too is gone."
The woman looked at him like he was crazy.
"No, there was a map my grandparents let me see it is the same, but the names have completely changed."
" Well, maybe it had a fake map. The world hasn't changed in many years, not even after the Fifth World War exsept all weapons other than swords were destroyed as a unanimous vote to prevent the destruction of the world on a massive scale. All nuclear and even firearms were destroyed. All schematics for any weapon other than swords were burned or erased from history. Now we go by the knight code. Many people like it that way."
"What is the knight code?" Noah asked
The code of the Knights is the rules that all knights follow by the way you called us exorcists but here we are all knights, there are ranks, but we are all knights."
Noah stayed silent. The lady got up and handed him some pants and a shirt. Noah looked under the covers. "Oh, I'm naked."
"We had to remove your clothes. You didn't really have any serious injury, unsure how if you receive a hit from the skin of Kain.
The clothes were dirty and covered in blood, so…"
They looked at each other. Noah confused: "What is it?"
"Was your father as gifted as you are?"
"Pardon?"
The woman brushed and looked to the side. "Nothing! Please change and step outside this room. I need to take you somewhere."
5 minutes passed and Noah came out of the white room and saw a bunch of nurses and female doctors they all looked at Noah and said some weird thing like, "He is so cute. How much do you think he will be sold for?" And "I might ask for a loan just to get him."
Were they talking about him? It felt like they were looking and talking about an object, not another human being.
"Kid," Noah heard the lady calling him.
"I'm not a kid my name is Noah, Noah b-... just Noah."
The lady smiled Well Noah, you have two options. One of them is more exciting than the other one. You become a knight, or the second one… you become a slave." She said as she turned on a cigarette and inhaled.
"A—A slave?" Noah didn't like the sound of that.
"Yes, in this world governed by women, men either become expendable soldiers to fight in the wars that we started, or you become. How do I put it in words you understand: A woman purchases you. Any woman with enough money can do that, and if you are purchased you belong to her. She can do whatever she wants with you, and you can't refuse."
Noah stopped walking. He's eyes opened wide, the woman exhaled and let go of the smoke she inhaled. Noah grabbed the tip of the cigarette that was on and turned it off with his bare hands.
"That smells horrible." his eyes looking at her.
A stare that sent shivers down her spine.
She smiled and threw away the cigarette. "What did you choose, you little monster?"
"I chose to be free."
She smiled and started walking again, smiling at a car. "Get in, you need a sword."
2 hours pass.
Noah was really confused about how something made out of metal ran as fast, even faster than a horse, so many buildings that sem to be impossible to build. Almost everything looked like magic, but no, it was all built by humans with hard labor more like with slaves. From what he heard from Ada, the ones that are born with gifts are females and males tend to be weaker than females. This made females look at males less than them, so they became slaves. Now that they are able to do is follow orders.
What a sad life
Their destination was a cave with stairs going down the got close to the door and Ada held out her hand with 3 fingers up. "There are 3 levels. The first level is for guardian lever knights, the second is for paladin knights and the third is for king level knights. Now choose your eyes and let your guardian angle show you your path."
Noah closed his eyes and instead of a path, Noah started remembering his life, his parents, grandparents and the people of the island. Without him ever noticing, he started walking down every step of the way, his eyes closed, remembering the times he laughed, he cried and the times he felt the warmth of his family…
And the pain he felt when he lost them.
Jaune felt his hand grab wood and started to pull something long out. Exactly 33 inches were pulled out and Noah opened his eyes. What he saw was what he could guess was a sword with a wooden handle and runes going from the tip of the blade to the bottom all around the edges of the sword.
He felt warmth emanating from it as he looked around. He saw that the place where he grabbed the sword was some kind of shrine and there were 3 other shrines on every wall of the room.
Ada entered the room clapping, "My, my, we finally got to see a king in a river of Queens. Your angel is strong, you little monster, tell me what your power is?..."
I explain what my power did, what my gift was capable of doing and its side effects.
"That is weird. No gift has ever had any side effects. Something that could come to be similar is this girl. When she uses her fire gift is hotter than the surface of the sun, she killed her whole family when she was young. You know, puff is incinerated to ashes in a matter of seconds. Her flame is powerful, and she learned to control it, but you know you become the reason your family dies. There is not much psychology can do."
"Sorry to sound heartless, but why are you telling me this?" Noah said, looking at his new sword and trying to read the inscriptions on the blade.
"Well, little monster… oh how about ice cube? Because you know you are small, and your power is ice? Eh? Eh? What do you think?" Ada said, grabbing Noah by his shoulders and shaking it lightly.
"I… Don't care? Is that a nickname — ice cube?" Noah was confused.
"Yeah, anyway, ice cube is telling you this story because on your 13th birthday… how old are you right now?" She said, stopping inform and looking at him.
"A week ago I turned 9, I think."
" Well, Noah, you will join the academy, and you will be paired with another person, most likely a woman, and you and the girl that I mention will join the academy at the same time. So just keep that in mind." Ada said loking at Noah with a smile.
Noah looked around. "Uhhh… where am I staying?"
"Ah…"
Two hours passed in the same magic being called a car and Noah and Ada came to a stop in a mansion. Almost all people were men.
The doors open almost magically on their own, letting the car go through everyone's boweled and saying, "Welcome back, Lady Steelheart."
Noah got out of the car and looked around. "Hey, Ada, do I have to do this as well?"
Ada started thinking and then said, "No, it would be funny, but no. Here is the deal, Noah, you get to live freely in this mansion and go to a knight's academy, with the condition you become my adoptive son and make company with my other son. He 5 years old. You will have 3 sisters and a brother," Ada said with a smile on her face.
Noah felt a bit uncomfortable, and he griped his sword hard.
"You don't have to call me mom, Ada is fine. I don't think I can measure what your real mother was for you. She was like a safe house for you and I don't want to take that from you," She said, placing a hand on Noah's head.
"T-thank you." Noah said as he contained his tears.
A few seconds passed, and a little boy started running towards where Noah and Ada were standing and hugging his mother. He looked beat up.
A girl appeared on the stairs that were at the entrance of the mansion. "There you are, mom, your son was trying to read the knight's books," she looked around Noah. "Who is the other rat?" Noah squinted his eyes. He already hated her.
She was 5'7 slim and had blond hair with crimson eyes.
"This is your new brother. His name is Noah," Ada said, but the girl didn't look too happy.
"Another good-for-nothing man, you can't pick up any stray dog from the streets and say is your son. Another two girls came out. They were older than the speaking one, one had black hair and glasses and the other one looked similar to Mrs.Rose. They looked disgusted just by looking at Noah.
"Beautiful family, you got here, Mrs. Ada," Noah said as he looked at the 3 girls.
"As you can see, men do not look like human beings to women. This is and will always be the treatment all man will always get."
Noah without a word. He gave her his sword mostly because he didn't know how to use it and smiled.
"My father once said that I was a free man. Noah's hands started to feel a small layer of crimson water appear on his fists. "Who do you think is the strongest of the three of them?"
Ada looked at Noah and understood what he was going to do. "I assume there is no other way, the one with the glasses is Nina, the eldest of my daughters."
Noah's breath started to turn white even though it was the middle of the day and a pretty sunny day. Noah disappeared and appear in front of Nina with a smile and slammed his fist into her face. She flew.
The other two looked at Noah in disbelief. "A-a-a gift in a man?!"
"I'm no stray dog. My name is Noah. It's a pleasure to meet you big sisters," Noah said as his eyes shined with blue light like two full mons.
A few minutes later in the dining room bigger than Noah's old house, Noah is sitting drinking a boiling-hot cup of tea.
"Now that everything has settled, I would like to introduce all of us. This little guy is Leo. The girl that calls you a stay dog is Haily. The girl in the middle that looks like she is listening to rock music is Aria and that one that you punch is Nina."
Nina slammed the table and said, "No, he punched me, he needs to be killed or better tortured and put in jai-" she stopped as Noah took a sip of his tea. She looked at his eyes.
"N—never mind." She sat back down
Ada decided to place her hands on Noah's shoulder and this is Noah or ice cube."
With a massive bump on her cheek, Nina rubbed her temples. "Great, she gave him a nickname."
Noah looked at Ada. "So it's not only me?" Then he looked at the girls sitting in front of him.
All of them nodded and Ada looked around. "Well, these are tiny bones," she said, pointing at Hailly."
"My powers let me create bones."
"She is a tiny shadow," she said, pointing at Aria.
"I can use shadows at will," she said, shipping some of her tea.
"Nina is tiny flower."
"I created rose petals hard enough to cut through metal."
Noah slapped his forehead "and I'm tiny ice cube because I could create ice... YOU ARE NOT ORIGINAL WOMAN!!" he said, pointing at Ada.