By the time the city decided he belonged, it had already taken everything else.
Belonging did not feel like acceptance. It felt like being filed into a crack where the wind could not reach—dust settling into corners no broom bothered to sweep. The street no longer paused at his shape. It learned him the way it learned broken stone: by stepping over it often enough that it became part of the path.
He moved before the sky fully changed.
Not from discipline. Not from purpose. From habit.
Dawn was the hour when hunger hurt less sharply. When the night's cold had not yet lifted and the day's cruelty had not warmed its voice. The city had a rhythm, and he had been beaten into hearing it.
Stone was slick with condensation. The air carried yesterday's breath—old smoke pressed into mortar, damp refuse, sour beer near shuttered taverns, and the faint sweet rot of fruit crushed under wheels. The taste lingered on his tongue long after he swallowed.
He kept his remaining hand hidden.
Not from shame—shame required space—but because eyes were greedy. Absence became opportunity. Opportunity became entertainment.
He had learned this early.
Once, a boy had tried to pry a coin from his palm while he slept. The fingers were quick but careless. Pressure shifted near his ribs and he woke like an animal, heart slamming bone. He didn't chase. He couldn't. He bit the inside of his cheek until the need to scream folded inward and became something smaller.
He learned how to sleep.
Back to stone. Knees drawn up. Hand trapped between chest and thigh. He learned where laughter thinned and footsteps grew lazy. Effort mattered in the city.
Most cruelty was lazy.
He drifted toward the market's outer edges, where scraps were shed without ceremony. Vendors wiped boards clean and tossed peelings and bones aside. On good days he caught a bruised apple before it touched the ground. On bad days he watched rats eat better than him.
He learned food by smell the way other children learned songs.
Oil and salt meant fried dough. Burnt sugar meant stretched sweets over nuts. Meat was rare. When he smelled it, his body reacted before thought. Saliva flooded. His stomach clenched hard enough to bend him. His legs wanted to move.
He trained that out of himself.
Not with resolve. With repetition.
Every time he smelled meat and did not move, something inside him pressed inward, like a door closing one notch further. Every time he forced his eyes away, the world sharpened in an uncomfortable way. Footsteps separated. Coins rang clear. The quiet scrape of a blade shifting under cloth reached him from farther away than it should have.
It was not a gift.
It was a consequence.
The city demanded awareness from the weak because the unaware did not survive long enough to become scenery.
He reached a small shrine as first light crept between buildings. The figure there had been worn smooth by weather and neglect, its face reduced to suggestion. Faded ribbons hung limp. A bowl of water had long since turned cloudy.
Even gods were forgotten unless they were useful.
A few beggars huddled along the low wall. No greetings. No shoving. That was permission enough.
He sat with his back to stone and let his breathing slow.
The place where his arm should have been pulsed faintly—a distant drum. Not pain. A reminder. As if the limb still occupied space and the world refused to admit it was gone.
He adjusted his posture so the cloth didn't rub his shoulder raw. The shirt was thin, rough, always damp with old rain. He closed his eyes halfway.
Closing them fully invited memory.
It arrived anyway.
A chant surfaced without warning—not from the street, but from somewhere deeper. The syllables had no meaning left, only weight. Smoke followed. Not the city's smoke. Cleaner. Sharper. Fields burning. Roofs burning.
His jaw tightened.
The flashback slipped in cleanly.
Two arms. A house that believed in him. His mother's voice going quiet—not calm, but listening. His father's hand shaking as it held him back from the door. The night air tasting wrong.
Then the men.
They did not shout. They worked.
They moved like people who would do this again. Tools wrapped in cloth. Sacks ready. Villagers were not enemies. They were materials.
His mother covered his eyes. He hated her for it, because fear wanted certainty. But her hand smelled of soap and herbs, and that made the memory worse.
The first plea broke.
Then another.
The chant returned, and the pleas changed into something else—broken, involuntary. The sound of rules being replaced.
The men spoke in clipped tones. Practical. Measured. They looked upward between actions, as if waiting for approval.
Something that did not care answered.
Metal clattered.
The present snapped back.
A vendor had dropped a knife. It rang and went still. No one reacted. The city saved its attention for larger violence.
He exhaled slowly.
The pressure in his chest settled deeper, tighter. Memory brought weight. Endurance shaped it.
He did not have words for it.
But he understood forging.
Hunger had forged him. Cold had tempered him. Fear had hammered him until fear no longer made him run—it made him watch.
He stood and moved as the market woke fully. Laborers passed, boots solid, belts heavy. His eyes tracked the pouches.
Not to steal.
To understand distance. Attention. Risk.
He slipped behind a cart while a merchant shouted at an apprentice. The flinch in the apprentice's shoulders echoed something old and sharp. His throat tightened.
He kept moving.
Dirty water splashed near his feet. He recoiled, then forced stillness. Recoil drew eyes.
In.Out.Slow.
For a brief moment, the world thinned. Sounds organized. Near became near. Far softened. He could almost tell where people stood without looking.
Almost.
It faded.
His body trembled—not from cold, but from effort. Holding that awareness cost him. He let it spill.
In stories, the first step was revelation.
His was learning to hold together for three breaths longer than yesterday.
He found a discarded bun near a basket. Stale. Half eaten. Real.
He took it quickly, stepped into shadow, and tore off a small piece with his teeth. He chewed slowly, forcing restraint. The taste was bland and heavy.
But it was food.
Relief cut deep enough to ache.
He swallowed.
The city continued.
Men passed carrying planks. Talk drifted—wages, a crude joke, a corpse found nearby. Death did not slow them.
He finished the bun and wiped his mouth. Grease lingered.
He wanted more.
Want was dangerous.
He walked on, letting the crowd erase him. Memory returned in fragments—the quiet before the village fell, the dogs going silent, the smell that followed. Iron.
He stumbled. A shoulder hit him and kept going. He caught himself against stone and stared at his thin, dirty hand.
Real.
The missing arm shaped everything—balance, movement, fatigue. He had learned the mathematics of absence.
And somewhere in that learning, something in him had hardened.
Not hope.
Stubbornness.
The kind that survived because it refused to give the world the satisfaction of finishing the job.
He pushed off the wall and merged into the noise.
The city was awake. Grinding. Hungry.
He had no destination.
But he understood something now, cold and clear:
The village was taken because it was weak.The city kept him for the same reason.
Weakness was currency here. It was spent. Traded. Consumed.
If you lasted long enough, the city stopped trying to kill you directly—not from mercy, but from boredom.
That was belonging.
He breathed in, felt the pressure settle, and kept walking.
Survival was no longer a beginning.
It was a practice.