Askai ate his breakfast in silence, each bite slow and mechanical, as if every movement reminded him that he was caged — not by walls, but by this eerie stillness around him.
Only a few hours had passed since Vance had gone, and already the quiet was suffocating him. He was not used to it at all. It made his thoughts echo louder in his head, scrounging up memories he had safely locked away. He had always been a creature of motion — of risks, of nerves, of sweat and pain — anything that keeps his feet in motion and thought from turning inwards.
He wasn't as scared of the dark as much he was of his own inner churnings.
He should have jumped into the streets by now. But then he had gone ahead and promised Jordan to stay put.
He leaned back in his chair, his dark eyes narrowing at the empty space and a groan erupting from his chest.
His mind refused to relax. It circled like a wolf denied a hunt, always returning to Jordan, to their last conversation...
Jordan had been his eyes and ears on the street ever since they made that deal with Uncle Tommie — the deal that was supposed to give them all a life free of blood and shadows. One that was only half executed.
Askai snorted bitterly. What a dream that had been.
This — this quiet, civilian existence — had never been the life Askai imagined for himself. He could not dare to.
He had no fantasies about redemption, no naive hope of safety. The idea of peace had never been more than a stranger's fairy tale — because he knew exactly where he came from.
He was a boy raised in the gutters of the West, graced only by the rare gift of surviving what should have killed him long ago. He believed, with cold certainty, that his greatest accomplishment would be simple:
To live past his twenties.
Men with a taste for adrenaline — men like him — rarely lived long enough to become wise.
All of this… all of this impossible hope…of living a simple life worrying over food, rent, shifts…. It was Jordan's dream.
Askai dragged a hand through his hair, remembering. Even now, he could see Jordan as a boy — stubborn but shy and stupidly hopeful. While Askai had learned to stop looking at families sitting at park benches — had trained his heart not to yearn — Jordan never had.
It had been Askai's belief that affection was a disease that would one day ruin them both.
He had already loved and lost Marlie. And after that Askai had sworn he would never again allow a heart inside his ribs. Death and Pestilence walked hand in hand through every slum street they slept on. Feelings were weaknesses that cost far too much and spared them nothing but pain.
But Jordan… Jordan had picked up a stray anyway.
It had been raining that night when they had finally moved on from footpaths. Jordan had just turned eleven, Askai fourteen — though they had already lived three lifetimes more than boys their age should.
Kael had been three then. A round-faced child with chubby hands and curious eyes, clinging to his mother's leg in that tiny rented room next door.
Right next to their first home.
A miracle paid by Moraine.
Not even a month had passed when the fever struck the streets.
A sickness that swept the West like a curse — sending the old, the young, and the unlucky into the waiting arms of shallow graves. People were dropping like flies but no one knew the cause. But rumors — nasty, angry things — spread like wildfire:
The East was poisoning them.
Askai had never forgotten the chaos that followed — the riots, the screams, the sound of anti-riot gunfire cracking through the night like thunder tearing the sky apart.
He had left Jordan healthy and laughing that morning. Askai had gone to the other end of the town, near the industrialized district, to make a necessary delivery—a grim transaction that was supposed to ensure their solvency for the coming month. He was expected to return by the evening, the timing crucial for their next steps, but the violent riots broke out swiftly and savagely, turning the streets into a chaotic, lethal battlefield.
Askai, though he was experienced with a knife, was still a lad and had to find a precarious shelter to wait out the bloodshed. The city became a maze of burning cars and warring factions, paralyzing all movement. It was a brutal, anxious two days before he could finally find a break in the chaos, evade the roaming gangs and the sudden, brutal police presence, and desperately find his way back home - only to find his brother pale, burning, and shaking beneath a pile of blankets.
Askai could still taste that fear — choking him.
The woman who tended him, Kael's mother, looked exhausted, her skin too thin, her eyes shadowed by worry. It was strange seeing her there because even as neighbours, they were never close.
The reason for her presence, however, was standing quietly in the deepest shadow of the far corner, watching over Jordan with an unnerving, absolute stillness. He was Moraine Valez. And the woman, like everyone else who moved in this orbit of power and desperation, must be working for him.
That was the day Askai had come to admire him, not as a boss or a tyrant, but as a protector. Moraine was cruel, yes, and relentlessly demanding, but he cared for his boys, for the people under his shield.
He cared what happened to them.
Jordan was all Askai had—the only true anchor in his chaotic, salvaged existence. If he lost Jordan, Askai had no idea who or what he would be living for; the thought was a void of absolute darkness.
When he saw his brother lying there, twitching and consumed by the heat, knowing in his heart that this kind of fever often ended in the cold, finality of death, he realized how perilously close he was to losing everything.
They had finally secured a small home, a sliver of normalcy, and Jordan had already begun building castles in the air - to live and to rule.
It was just too cruel.
Askai's rigid control snapped. The terror was a physical weight, crushing him. He broke down, sinking onto his knees on the damp, cold concrete, his fists clenched tight enough to draw blood.
He didn't plead with God; he pleaded with the only god who listened in the West.
"Moraine!" The name was a raw, choked sound of desperation. "Take him to a hospital in the East! Please! They can help. They have the medicine. The whole West knows it, but those doors—they are shut for us forever. Please, Valez, don't let him die here."
Moraine walked slowly out of the shadows. He was a formidable power in the West, a rising lord who was destined to succeed Uncle Tommie. The whole West knew it, but the gates of the East made no discrimination between a dying mongrel and a rising king. The Glass Wall was absolute.
Moraine calmly patted Askai's shoulders, a rare, rough attempt to console him, his touch heavy and strangely comforting.
"There are no doors open for us, Askai," Moraine said, his voice quiet, lacking his usual sharp authority. "Not for me, not for you, and certainly not for Jordan. You know the cost of crossing the line."
That was the first time he had caught an edge of helplessness in Moraine's words and perhaps the last. The night changed something within him.
Askai knew it. He felt it.
It was the night Moraine decided to challenge the foundation of the city of Nolan - the Glass Wall. He walked down a path that ultimately saved the West from annihilation, but which, tragically, doomed him and those he sought to protect in the end.
That night, for the first time in the history of the Nolan, something was smuggled across the Glass Wall from the East: the potent, life-saving medicine.
Moraine had sent them—not just for Jordan, but for the many other sick people in the West—the very next night.
While it saved Jordan's life, restoring the breath and fire to Askai's only family, it could not save Kael's mother. The woman, weakened and malnourished from years of hardship, already dealing with a multitude of her own ailments, slipped away quietly in the night. The price of Jordan's salvation was a life paid to the unforgiving streets, a life taken in a brutal, hidden exchange.
Kael was supposed to be sent to an orphanage. But Jordan, barely eleven and still shaking from fever, stood in the doorway of that small room and declared:
"He's family."
Neither Askai nor Moraine had the heart of refusing him. And so Kael became their third brother.
Their new beginning. Beginning of a new hope. And hope, Askai had learned, was a dangerous thing.
It lured them into a deal with Uncle Tommie— a life in the East, clean papers, a future that wasn't soaked in blood — in return for one favor. He was meant to maintain the bargain, let the boys fade from the West's underworld.
But Moraine — the bastard — clawed Jordan back into darkness. And shoved Askai into the light. Maybe he wanted to see them as broken and shattered as he was…
Askai pressed his palms against his eyes, his breath ragged. The room suddenly felt too small, too quiet… too lacking in the noise and chaos that had always steadied him, helped him escape his thoughts. They were rolling in unheeded now.
Askai needed a feeling so devastating that it would sweep away the storms in his head.