The room was barely a room.
Four walls leaned inward as if conspiring, their cracked stone stitched together with rot-dark wood and rusted nails. The ceiling sagged low enough that taller men had to hunch. A single oil lamp burned on a crate, its flame wavering, throwing shadows that crawled like insects across the walls.
Aiden Cross stood before a cracked mirror.
It had once been part of a dressing table from the upper districts—polished, silver-backed, expensive. Now it was spiderwebbed with fractures, its edges chipped, its surface warped just enough to distort the face staring back.
Seventeen years old.
Tomorrow, eighteen.
He studied his reflection without blinking. Messy black hair that refused to stay down. A thin scar cutting through his left eyebrow from a knife fight he barely remembered. Eyes too sharp for someone born in the slums, too alive for someone who should've learned to look down.
"Property," he murmured.
The word tasted bitter.
In the kingdoms, eighteen meant adulthood. Ceremony. Celebration. A future stepping forward.
In the slums, it meant ownership.
He looked away from the mirror and sat on the edge of his narrow cot. The mattress creaked beneath his weight, straw shifting inside its torn cloth skin. Beneath the bed, his fingers found the familiar shape wrapped in oilcloth.
A knife.
Not a weapon.
A tool.
He unwrapped it slowly, reverently. The blade caught the lamplight, dull along the edge from weeks of use. He set a whetstone on his knee and began to sharpen it with steady strokes.
Scrape.
Scrape.
Scrape.
The sound filled the room, rhythmic, almost calming.
This was how he survived fear.
By pretending tomorrow was just another job.
The knife wasn't for fighting. Fighting got you killed. Fighting drew attention.
The knife was for cutting rope. Opening crates. Cleaning meat. Scraping rust. A working knife.
Aiden sharpened it the same way he always did—careful, methodical, slow enough to think.
Faces rose uninvited.
Joren, with the crooked grin and missing finger. Awakened a Miner card. Taken north. Never came back.
Mira, who used to braid flowers into her hair. Awakened Weaver. Bought by a textile guild. Rumor said she lost her hands in a loom accident. Rumor said worse.
Tomas.
He stopped sharpening.
Tomas had been loud. Always loud. Laughing even when he was starving, shouting challenges at the older kids, swearing he'd awaken something legendary. Knight. Hero. Something that would punch the world back.
On Awakening Day, Tomas never showed up.
No card registered.
No record filed.
The slums whispered for weeks.
Defective.
That was the word.
A destiny that failed to manifest properly. No classification. No category.
No protection.
Aiden resumed sharpening, jaw tight.
Scrape.
Scrape.
Defectives were unclaimed. Unrecorded. Not legally people under kingdom law. They slipped through the cracks between destiny and bureaucracy.
Some said they were taken for experiments.
Some said they were fed to monsters in the tunnels as offerings.
Some said they simply vanished.
Aiden didn't believe in simple vanishings.
The knife edge grew smoother, sharper. His hands never shook.
A knock came at the door.
Three soft taps. A pause. Two more.
He exhaled. "It's open."
The door creaked inward, letting in a sliver of fog and the familiar shape of Old Maren. She stepped inside slowly, leaning on her cane, her shawl pulled tight around her thin shoulders.
Her eyes went to the knife.
Then to his face.
"You always do that the night before," she said.
Aiden smiled faintly. "Bad habits die hard."
"Bad habits die," she corrected, shuffling closer. "Hard habits survive."
She lowered herself onto the crate opposite him with a small grunt. The lamplight carved deep lines into her face, every wrinkle a memory of something endured.
"You eat?" she asked.
"Enough."
She snorted. "Liar."
She reached into her shawl and pulled out a small bundle wrapped in cloth. Bread. Real bread, not the stone-hard scraps from market sweepings.
Aiden's throat tightened. "Maren—"
"Eat," she said, pressing it into his hands. "You'll need strength tomorrow. Whatever comes."
He didn't argue. He never did with her.
As he ate, she watched him with an expression he couldn't quite read.
"Do you remember your parents?" she asked suddenly.
Aiden paused mid-bite. "No."
"That's a lie," she said gently. "You remember pieces. Everyone does."
He swallowed. "I remember hands. Lifting me. That's it."
She nodded. "Enough."
Silence settled again, broken only by the faint scrape of blade on stone.
After a while, she spoke.
"There's talk," she said.
Aiden didn't look up. "There's always talk."
"This is different." Her fingers tightened around her cane. "Collectors have lists ready. Names. Faces. They're watching the slums closer this year."
"Why?" he asked.
She hesitated.
"Because the tunnels are stirring," she said. "And the Guardians are short on bodies."
Aiden's lips curled. "They always are."
She leaned forward. "If your awakening goes wrong—"
"Defective," he said flatly.
"Yes." Her voice dropped. "If that happens, don't go to the square."
He finally looked at her.
"Then where do I go?"
Her eyes flicked to the small, grimy window. Beyond it lay the slum's edge. The old drainage paths. The collapsed tunnels no one officially monitored.
"Anywhere they aren't," she said.
Aiden considered that.
Running meant abandoning everything he knew.
Staying meant becoming something he didn't choose.
He returned to the knife, testing the edge with his thumb. A thin line of red welled instantly. He watched it bead, then wiped it away.
"I don't run well without a direction," he said.
Maren sighed. "Stubborn boy."
He smiled at that. "You raised me."
She stood with effort, placing a hand on his shoulder. Her grip was frail, but warm.
"No matter what card you get," she said softly, "remember this—"
"I'm still me," Aiden finished.
She nodded. "That too."
She moved toward the door, then paused.
"Sleep," she said. "If you can."
After she left, the room felt smaller.
Aiden finished sharpening the knife, cleaned the blade, and wrapped it carefully. He placed it back under the bed, then lay down on the cot, staring at the ceiling.
Sleep didn't come.
His mind replayed the collector's grin. The girl's scream. Tomas's empty spot in the alley.
Destiny.
They said it was written by gods.
If that was true, then the gods had never walked the slums.
Time passed in slow, uneven breaths.
Then—
Bong.
A deep bell rang from the city.
Aiden's eyes snapped open.
Bong.
Another bell, heavy and distant, rolling through stone and fog alike.
Midnight.
Bong.
The sound carried authority. Finality.
Awakening Day had begun.
Aiden sat up slowly.
His chest felt tight—not from panic, but from something deeper. A pressure, low and steady, like the world itself leaning in.
He stood before the cracked mirror one last time.
The boy staring back looked the same.
But everything else had changed.
Aiden rested a hand over his heart, fingers splayed, feeling the steady beat beneath his ribs.
"Just don't give me 'Slave,'" he whispered.
The bell rang again.
And the world listened.