CHAPTER 1: "The Awakening of Nothing" - REVISED
The crystal shattered.
Kain Veyron stared at the fragments glittering on the ceremonial platform, his hand still pressed against where the Affinity Stone had been whole seconds ago. Around him, Ironpeak Academy's Grand Hall held its breath.
Two thousand students. Fifty instructors. The Great Families in their observation boxes.
All watching him fail.
"Impossible." Headmaster Torvald's voice cut through the silence. "The stone doesn't break."
But it had. Right there in Kain's palm.
The Affinity Stone was supposed to glow—show what kind of tamer you'd become. Dragon Affinity meant elite forces. Phoenix meant command. Even common Wolf or Bear meant you mattered.
The stone was supposed to tell you that you had a future.
Kain's had exploded into dust.
"Check it again," someone muttered.
Torvald's assistant rushed forward with the backup crystal. She pressed it into Kain's hand, her expression pitying in a way that made his stomach turn.
Please, Kain thought. Please show something. Anything.
The backup stone flickered.
Then pulsed with light so dim several students laughed outright. The glow barely illuminated Kain's fingertips.
And the color...
"Gray," Torvald breathed.
The assistant leaned in, squinting. Her face went pale.
"Headmaster." Her whisper carried through the front rows, spreading like poison. "The appraisal reads... Trash Affinity."
The laughter started small—a snicker from the Dragon students who'd awakened minutes ago to thunderous applause. Then it spread like a wave breaking against rocks.
"Trash Affinity?"
"What can he even tame? Garbage?"
"The Veyron family's charity case finally shows his worth."
Kain's vision blurred. This couldn't be happening. Ten years he'd worked for this day. Ten years since the Rift breach killed his parents and Uncle Gareth took him in. This was supposed to prove he wasn't charity wasted.
"Mr. Veyron." Torvald's warmth—the congratulations he'd shown high-ranking students—evaporated. "Step down. We'll discuss your placement later."
Placement. The word tasted like ash.
Kain turned to walk down, legs numb, and his eyes found his uncle in the family section.
Uncle Gareth stood with the merchant families—not noble enough for the Great Family boxes, but wealthy enough to matter. Kain had lived in his house for ten years. Worked in his warehouses. Studied until midnight to make him proud.
Their eyes met.
Gareth's shoulders tightened for half a second—the same tic he had when a trade shipment was lost at sea, that instant of calculation before cutting losses.
Then his shoulders relaxed into perfect indifference.
He turned his back.
The message was clear: Don't come home.
Something in Kain's chest cracked clean through.
He stumbled down the platform stairs, the laughter swirling around him like a storm. His hands shook. His chest felt too tight.
Trash. You're nothing. You're worse than nothing.
"Kain."
The voice made him stop.
Sera.
She stood at the crowd's edge, hands clasped, her golden Dragon Affinity mark still glowing on her wrist. His childhood friend. The girl who'd promised they'd conquer the Rifts together.
Their eyes met.
For the briefest moment, her Dragon mark flickered—pulsed toward him like it wanted to reach across the distance between them.
Then she clenched her fist. The mark steadied.
And she turned away.
Didn't say a word. Didn't offer comfort or acknowledgment. Just walked back to the Dragon section where she belonged.
Kain stood alone in a hall full of people, completely invisible.
I'm alone, he realized. Utterly alone.
He didn't remember leaving. Didn't remember walking through academy halls or crossing the Rift chasm bridge or stumbling into the lower district where "expendable" students lived.
He only came back to himself when he found his hands pressed against cold stone in an alley, gasping for air, vision swimming.
Trash.
The word echoed like a death sentence.
A sound made him look down.
Something moved in the shadows.
A rat.
The most pathetic creature Kain had ever seen. Missing half its tail. Patches of fur gone. One eye crusted shut. It limped on three legs, dragging the fourth.
It looked up at Kain with its one good eye.
And Kain laughed—bitter, broken.
"Perfect. The trash tamer finds his trash beast."
But as he stared, something shifted.
The world doubled.
The rat was still there—small, dying. But overlaid on it like a ghost was something else. Something massive. Ancient. Eyes that glowed like dying stars.
Golden letters burned across Kain's vision:
[EYES OF ANCIENT TRUTH AWAKENED]
[TRUE NAME DETECTED: ????]
[SEALED FORM: SEWER RAT]
Kain's knees hit the cobblestones.
"What—"
The vision faded. Just a rat again. Broken. Dying.
But watching him with intelligence rats shouldn't have.
"You see me." The voice was inside Kain's head—raspy, old, drowning in bitterness. "Congratulations, boy. You're even more cursed than I thought."
Kain's breath stopped. "You can talk?"
"Course I can talk." The rat limped closer. "Question is whether you're stupid enough to listen."
"I awakened nothing. I'm—"
"Trash?" The rat's laugh was wet gravel. "That what they told you? That's what they wanted you to think."
The golden text flickered:
[BOND OFFERED: ACCEPT Y/N]
"What are you?" Kain whispered.
The rat sat back, its eye boring into his soul.
"What they threw away when gods got too dangerous. What they sealed when they realized some powers can't be controlled." Its voice dropped. "What's left when you strip divinity to its bones and bury it so deep that light forgets it existed."
Pause.
"I'm forgotten. Just like you're about to be."
Kain's hand moved without thinking.
"Wait. If you're really—"
"Gonna bond with me?" The rat's tone mocked. "Boy, I'm a dying rat in an alley. Bottom of the bottom. You bond with me, that's your one beast slot filled with garbage. No take-backs."
Kain's hand trembled inches from matted fur.
He should walk away. A pigeon would be better than this.
But those eyes. That voice. That flicker of impossibility overlaid on the dying creature.
"They all left me," Kain said quietly. "My uncle. Sera. Everyone. They said I'm trash."
"You are trash." The rat agreed. "By their definitions. By their rules."
"Then what's the point?"
"The point?" The rat tilted its head. "Boy, their definitions don't mean shit. You think I'm worthless because I'm a rat?"
Its voice rose, ancient fury bleeding through.
"I have devoured the roots of reality itself. I have walked between worlds. And they still couldn't kill me. All they could do was make everyone forget."
The golden text pulsed:
[BOND OFFERED: ACCEPT Y/N]
[WARNING: FIRST BOND IS PERMANENT]
Kain looked at his hand. The rat. The choice.
Everyone thinks I'm worthless. Maybe they're right.
Or maybe...
"What's your name?"
The rat went silent. When it spoke again, its voice was soft. Broken.
"It's been a long time since anyone asked me that."
Kain pressed his palm against matted fur.
[BOND ACCEPTED]
[FIRST BEAST BONDED]
[NAME: ????—SEALED]
[CURRENT FORM: SEWER RAT LV. 1]
[AFFINITY: TRASH TAMER]
[SPECIALTY: BONDING WITH THE FALLEN]
Power surged through Kain—not explosive or glorious. Quieter. Like something ancient and tired finally finding rest.
The rat glowed faintly.
And changed.
Its crusted eye cleared—opened whole and aware, glowing with the faint gold of dying stars. The broken leg straightened enough to bear weight. Wounds didn't heal completely, but something underneath shifted.
Something woke.
Kain felt it in his chest like a second heartbeat. The bond. The connection to something pretending to be nothing.
Then—
A flash. A vision not his own.
A temple carved from a tree the size of mountains. Millions kneeling before a throne. A creature with cosmic fur and eyes that held galaxies. Worshipped. Feared. Divine.
Then chains. Sealing. Falling. Forgetting.
Until nothing remained but a rat in the dark.
Kain gasped, the vision fading.
The rat—his rat, his beast, his bond—looked up with both eyes clear.
"Now you know what they did to us." Its voice was steady now. Stronger. "Now you know what you really awakened."
"What—" Kain's voice shook. "What do we do?"
"Three options, boy. Die in obscurity. Run and die slower."
The rat grinned with broken teeth.
"Or you figure out what it means to tame the things they threw away. And show these bastards that 'trash' was never the right word."
Somewhere distant, academy bells rang. Assignments tomorrow. The "expendables" would get suicide missions into the deep Rifts.
Kain had bonded with a dying rat.
He had no family. No friends. No future.
But standing in that alley with a beast that whispered impossible things, Kain made a decision.
The rat climbed onto his shoulder with surprising strength.
"You never told me your name," Kain said.
"Names have power. Mine was sealed for a reason." Pause. "But you can call me Riven. It's what's left when everything gets torn away."
"Riven." It felt right. "What do we do first?"
"First? You survive tomorrow. They're sending you somewhere you're supposed to die."
Riven's laugh was dark. Old. Dangerous.
"Don't."
"And then?"
"Then you find the others like me. The ones they buried. The ones they fear."
His eyes glowed gold.
"And you wake us all up."
Kain walked out of that alley with a rat on his shoulder and something ancient burning in his chest.
The academy had called him trash.
The world had thrown him away.
But Riven's voice whispered truth:
You don't tame beasts, boy. You resurrect gods.
Somewhere deep in the Rifts, something felt the first bond snap into place after ten thousand years of silence.
Tomorrow they would learn what trash could devour.
[END CHAPTER 1]
Word Count: 1,847 words