Kael grew up in a world where the law did not exist and morality was only a distant echo of better times. His home was not a house, but a neighborhood of narrow streets and walls eaten away by damp and hopelessness. Here, violence was not a possibility, but a daily certainty. The ghetto was ruled by mafias and gangs, men and women with scars on their skin and souls, whose only rule was to survive at any cost.
From an early age, Kael learned that confidence was a luxury and weakness a death sentence. He watched as gangs recruited children barely older than him, offering them a family in exchange for their absolute loyalty. Some accepted, others tried to resist and disappeared into the gloom of the alleys.
Kael, however, was different. He didn't want to serve anyone, but he couldn't afford to live completely on the sidelines either. He quickly understood that the best way to survive was to move among the shadows, to learn from everyone without belonging to anyone. He watched the thieves and learned to slip through without being seen. He listened to the conversations of the dealers and memorized routes, hideouts and names. He watched the fights on street corners and learned which moves meant life or death.
His thin body and dirty face made him seem harmless, a forgotten presence in a world of predators. But his mind was sharp. He knew when to speak, when to be silent and, above all, when to run.
Hunger remained his most faithful shadow. He stole what he could, sometimes successfully, sometimes with painful consequences. He remembered every blow, every scar, every night without food. But he also remembered the nights when he managed to outwit his pursuers, the times when he found a piece of bread or a coin on the ground. In those moments, fleeting as they were, he felt that the world had not completely defeated him.
Still, he never lost that strange feeling that he didn't belong there. In his dreams, the voice that whispered his name kept calling him, showing glimpses of a world he did not understand but felt as his own. A golden throne, a burning light in the darkness, a promise buried in time.
The neighborhood molded him, hardened him, but never managed to break him. While other children succumbed to the fate imposed by the streets, Kael clung to an unshakable certainty: he would not be another victim. He did not know how or when, but he would escape from that home of shadows and find his true place in the world.