Chapter 5
A new beginning.
That was what he told himself. The illusion didn't even last until sunrise.
"UP! EVERYONE UP RIGHT NOW!"
A harsh voice ripped through the cold dormitory. The older boys around Ryudien immediately scrambled out of their thin beds, faces pale with fear. Still half-asleep, Ryudien sat up, rubbing his eyes.
"What's going on—"
Crack!
A whip snapped against the metal bed frame just inches above his head. He flinched violently.
"Less talking, more moving!" the overseer barked, his thick cane pointed toward the door. "The coal cargo wagon has arrived. Every single one of you will haul sacks today. No excuses."
Ryudien opened his mouth again, still confused. "But I thought—"
The overseer grabbed his jaw roughly, forcing the small boy to look up at him. "Listen carefully, brat. In this house, you're not children. You're free labor. You work, you eat. You slack off…" He leaned in closer, his breath foul. "You bleed. Now get to the yard before I decide to make an example out of you."
Ryudien's heart sank as the last trace of hope shattered. This wasn't an escape. It was just another kind of hell.
From that morning onward, the Willoreach Welfare House revealed its true, brutal nature. It was not a sanctuary, but a forced labor camp disguised behind charitable walls. At seven years old, Ryudien was thrown straight into a relentless cycle of heavy manual labor.
His daily routine was a waking nightmare. At dawn, he was forced to haul heavy, soot-stained sacks of coal from the delivery carts down into the freezing basement boilers. When the coal yards were empty, he was assigned to scrub the massive, grease-caked iron stoves in the facility's kitchens until his small fingers bled, or to drag splintered logs through the mud to feed the estate's massive heaters. The work was endless, back-breaking, and far beyond the physical capacity of a child, but any hesitation was met swiftly with the biting lash of the overseer's whip or brutal hours locked inside a dark, suffocating storage closet without food.
Two years passed—two years of endless labor, two years of starvation, and two years of beatings.
By the age of nine, Ryudien barely resembled a normal child anymore. His body was emaciated, his hands wrapped in perpetual calluses, and his eyes had lost the spark that children were ever meant to have.
One afternoon, while dragging a heavy load of coal across the yard, a cold voice cut through the noise.
"You."
Ryudien froze instantly.
The supervisor pointed a thick finger at him. "Come with me."
Without a word of protest, Ryudien obeyed. Disobedience only invited agony. The supervisor led him through the maze of the main building and into an office he had never been permitted to enter. Standing inside was a tall man draped in a heavy black coat.
Ferwel Noxes.
The moment Ryudien laid eyes on him, an instinctual alarm flared in his chest. The man's golden eyes were utterly devoid of warmth—neither angry nor cruel, merely clinical, as though he were appraising an inanimate object rather than a living child.
The supervisor bowed deeply. "This is the boy you requested, sir."
Ferwel gave a slow nod. He stepped forward, the heavy click of his boots echoing in the quiet room, before crouching down until their eyes met levelly.
"What is your name?"
"...Ryudien."
Ferwel studied him in silence, letting the seconds stretch. Then, a faint smirk touched his lips. "You've survived this place for two years." His expression remained chillingly flat. "Impressive."
The word carried no praise; it was a mere observation. Rising to his feet, Ferwel tossed a heavy leather pouch of coins onto the desk. The supervisor's eyes bulged with greed.
Ryudien stared between the pouch and the man. "...You're buying me?"
Ferwel looked down at him, a smile curving his mouth that held zero empathy. "I'm offering you an opportunity. A place where you might actually belong."
Something fragile and dangerous stirred deep within Ryudien's chest—hope.
When they stepped outside into the courtyard, Ryudien glanced back one final time at the gray, oppressive walls of the welfare house—the place that had stolen two years of his youth.
Maybe...
Maybe things will finally be different.
Hours later, the carriage ground to a halt deep within a mist-shrouded forest. The air here felt thick, unnaturally heavy, reeking of old blood and isolation.
Ryudien stepped down cautiously. "Where are we?"
Ferwel didn't even bother looking back. "A place where weak children become strong."
Ryudien's blood ran cold.
GROOOANNNN—
A massive iron gate groaned open, revealing an enormous, dimly lit hall beyond. Inside, dozens of children sat in silence. Some were bandaged and bleeding; others stared into empty space with hollow eyes, as if something vital inside them had already snapped. From the deep shadows came the faint, ominous chink of iron chains.
Ryudien instinctively tried to step back, but Ferwel's hand clamped down on his shoulder. The grip was iron-tight, cold, and inescapable.
"Welcome." Ferwel's smile widened, stretching uncomfortably across his face. "It begins tonight."
Standing at the center of the hall like a monarch surveying his domain, Ferwel swept his cold golden eyes across the hundred terrified children.
"My name is Ferwel Noxes. I am your employer." He paused, letting the silence settle like a physical weight. "There are no rules. No mercy. No second chances."
A heavy, suffocating quiet swallowed the room.
Then, Ferwel delivered the decree. "This is a selection. A test to determine who is worthy of bearing the name of Noxes."
Confused murmurs rippled through the crowd.
Ferwel's gaze sharpened into a razor's edge. "Kill each other. Until only one remains."
The words struck the room like physical lightning.
"What?!" "N-No!" "You can't be serious!" "Why do we have to do this?!"
Panic erupted instantly. Children began scattering, backing away in terror, while others wept openly or begged for mercy. Ferwel watched the chaos unfold without blinking.
"Begin."
The first scream pierced the air like glass.
"Arghhhh!"
A boy collapsed backward, a crude iron dagger buried deep in his chest. Standing over him was another child no older than ten, with messy green hair and heavy, sleepy yellow eyes, breathing in ragged gasps as he stared down at his kill.
"All I need to do is survive, right?" the green-haired boy muttered, his eyes wild with adrenaline.
In a heartbeat, the hall devolved into a bloody slaughterhouse.
"Watch out!" a boy yelled, stumbling backward.
Ugh.
"Watch your back," a cold voice murmured. A dark-haired boy with piercing yellow eyes withdrew his blade from a fallen victim, his gaze immediately snapping upward to meet Ferwel Noxes's eyes. Ryudien watched it all unfold with a frozen heart.
Screams echoed off the stone walls. The shriek of clashing metal, the sickening wet thud of falling bodies—children who had never harmed a soul were suddenly forced to tear at each other like cornered beasts.
Ryudien didn't strike a single blow.
The moment the massacre began, his instinct for survival unlocked a dormant power—Clone Manifestation. He conjured duplicates of himself, scattering them across the hall to confuse, misdirect, and evade. He ran. He hid. He swapped places with his illusions over and over, cheating death by a hair's breadth with every passing minute.
By the time the bruised twilight bled into the windows, the floor was painted crimson.
Out of 67 children... only ten remained breathing.
Ferwel Noxes, who had watched the entire spectacle from an elevated platform with arms crossed, slowly descended the staircase. His expression remained entirely unreadable. He had designed this trial expecting a single victor.
Yet, as he surveyed the ten blood-soaked, exhausted children standing amidst the carnage, a subtle shift occurred in his cold eyes. A faint, unsettling smirk crept across his face.
"Magnificent," he murmured. Then, raising his voice, "Magnificent!"
The surviving children flinched at the boom of his voice.
"I prepared this trial expecting only one of you to crawl out alive," Ferwel said, a rare hint of satisfaction lacing his tone. "Instead, ten of you... ten of you refused to die."
He strolled casually through the bodies, stepping over corpses as if they were autumn leaves. Stopping before the exhausted group, he spread his arms wide.
"That raw, desperate will to survive... that is precisely what I required. I acknowledge all ten of you. From this day forward, you are no longer trash. You are the seeds of Noxes."
His smile turned razor-sharp. "Do not celebrate just yet. This was only the beginning."
What followed were years of relentless, agonizing training. Days melted away without rest; nights bled into agony. Ferwel methodically dismantled them, breaking their minds and bodies down only to reforge them into living, breathing weapons.
By the time Ryudien turned fourteen, he had officially earned his place as a full-fledged operative of the Noxes Organization. Among the ten survivors, he was the final one Ferwel acknowledged—not because he lacked strength, but because he was the most stubborn, the absolute hardest to break.
The deep-seated trauma and terror Ferwel instilled in him became his second nature. From that day on, Ryudien executed every command without hesitation, even the ones soaked in blood.
A human weapon, forged entirely through torment and tears...
The dark, blood-soaked memories abruptly fractured, shattering into dust. The harsh scent of copper and gunpowder vanished, replaced by the gentle, sweet aroma of warm milk and the soft, cheerful chirping of birds drifting through an open window.
All the haunting ghosts of Ryudien dissolved the instant a pair of wide, round eyes blinked up at a sunlit ceiling.
Now, she was Elyra.
The next day, as Elyra sat in the courtyard playing wooden blocks with Eldern in Eldern's room, Damnern approached them with a measured stride.
"Eldern, it's time for training," Damnern said, his tone carrying the firm expectation of a warrior father.
Elyra scrambled to her feet instantly, planting herself squarely in front of her brother. "No! Eden can't twain today!" she snapped, glaring up at the Fifth Strongest Warrior with fierce protectiveness.
Don't worry, Eldern, Ryudien whispered silently within the depths of the toddler's mind, narrowing her eyes at the man before her. I'll protect you from this bastard.
To be Continued...