....
Rain hit harder when you had no home,
it soaked deeper,
through skin, through bone,
through that thin layer between loneliness and rage.
Kayden Walker sat under the rusted fire escape behind the orphanage, legs tucked into his chest, shirt clinging to his skin like a cold second layer. The other kids were inside, their laughter and shouts muffled by brick walls. Warm. Safe. Living their lives in bright colors while he sat in grayscale. He wasn't invited.
He never was.
Too quiet, too dark, too something that made other kids look away when he walked past.
The rain had long stopped trying to wash him clean. Now it just listened, each drop a witness to his solitude.
A voice sliced through the alley's shadows, sharp, familiar.
"Hey, ratboy."
Kayden didn't look.
He knew that voice like he knew the taste of stale bread and rejection.
Ricky.
Ten years old,
mean because meanness was armor against weakness,
leader of the "lucky kids,"
the ones with parents pending,
adoptable,
wanted.
Ricky approached with two others, sneakers splashing through puddles, all of them wearing grins that said they had something to prove.
"You deaf now?" Ricky said, flicking the hood off Kayden's head, water droplets scattering like broken glass, "I said—get your stank ass outta our spot."
Kayden looked up, face empty as a winter sky,
"It's not your spot."
Ricky's smile twitched, a crack in his façade.
That was the thing about Kayden.
He never yelled, never begged,
he just looked at you,
like he was calculating the exact pressure points needed to dismantle your skeleton, piece by precise piece.
"Think you're tough?" Ricky's voice carried a tremor he tried to hide, "Just 'cause you know how to read big words and punch air?"
Kayden stood.
Didn't speak.
Didn't posture.
Just rose like a shadow pulling itself out of the earth, water streaming off his clothes in dark rivulets.
The smaller boy on Ricky's left flinched, took half a step back. Ricky stepped forward anyway. Pushed Kayden. Not hard—just enough to say I can.
Kayden took it.
Then moved.
One step. Left foot.
He didn't punch first.
He dodged first.
Ricky's fist came fast and wide, a clumsy haymaker thrown by someone who learned fighting from movies. Kayden ducked under it, stepped inside, and drove his head into Ricky's nose with a crack that echoed off the alley walls like breaking ice.
Ricky collapsed.
Didn't scream—just made this soft, wet gasp as blood mixed with rain between his fingers.
The other two ran, sneakers squeaking on wet pavement.
Kayden didn't chase.
Didn't smirk.
He sat back down, same spot, same hunch, rain creeping back into his sleeves like cold fingers.
Inside, the TV played some cartoon where animals talked about friendship and everyone lived happily ever after.
Kayden listened to it through the brick, each word a reminder of things he couldn't have.
An hour later, the matron found him there. She didn't ask what happened.
She didn't need to.
"You'll never get adopted if you keep doing this," she said, arms crossed, umbrella hanging unused at her side like she wanted to share his punishment.
Kayden didn't reply.
She sighed, the sound heavy with years of watching broken children try to put themselves back together,
"You're not like them. But you're not helping yourself either."
"I don't need help," Kayden said quietly, each word precise as a knife.
She knelt down, looked at him long, her eyes carrying the weight of too many similar conversations.
"Why not?"
He stared out at the wet world,
the smoke-colored sky,
the streetlights flickering like broken promises in the gathering dark.
"Because no one's coming."
He was nine when he learned how to break a nose, hands guided by YouTube videos watched in secret.
He was ten when he broke his first rib, the sound haunting his dreams for weeks after.
By eleven, Kayden Walker didn't smile anymore.
But he never forgot the rain.
It was the only thing that stayed.
The last thing Kayden remembered was closing his laptop, the screen's blue light dying in his dark room.
Then the world screamed.
Now—
He stood in the middle of a Seoul that wasn't Seoul anymore.
The buildings were wrong. Too tall. Too clean. Their surfaces shimmered like wet obsidian, threaded with electric veins that pulsed with impossible light. The streets hummed beneath his feet, as if something vast and mechanical was breathing under the pavement.
Above, the sky tore itself apart in terrible silence.
It looked like someone had taken a box cutter to reality—thin lines of light slicing across the blue, revealing a black void underneath that shouldn't exist. Glitches ran like cracks in a mirror. Clouds bent at angles that made his eyes hurt. The sun flickered like a dying bulb.
And people—
There were millions of them.
All standing still.
No footsteps. No traffic. Just bodies filling the wide roads, shoulder to shoulder, confusion and terror rippling through the crowd like a virus. Some still in pajamas. Some in suits worth more than his life. A little girl clutched her backpack, eyes wild with uncomprehending fear. An old man kept tapping the air, muscle memory searching for technology that no longer existed.
A low murmur began to ripple through the crowd.
"What is this?"
"This a prank?"
"Is this North Korea?"
"Where's my phone—why isn't it working?"
"Please—what's going on?"
Someone behind him started hyperventilating, breath coming in sharp gasps. A woman fell to her knees, sobbing. Kayden watched it all with dead eyes.
He didn't say a word.
Didn't move.
Didn't blink.
He'd seen this before.
Just... never real.
Then it came.
A soundless ping—deep in his skull. Like a tuning fork struck against bone. Everyone around him flinched as one.
A massive red countdown materialized in the sky.
29:59
29:58
29:57
"What the hell is that?" someone cried, voice cracking
"It's counting down—what's it counting to?"
"I'm gonna puke—oh god, I'm gonna puke—"
"Is this a terrorist attack?"
Kayden didn't look up.
He didn't need to.
He already knew.
"The Drop," he muttered.
His voice was quiet. Flat. A whisper carved from frost. The girl next to him turned, mascara running down her cheeks.
"What did you say?"
He ignored her.
Too late now.
He took a breath.
Rolled his neck.
And waited for the first one to arrive.
At twenty-six minutes and thirteen seconds, the sky cracked open like an egg made of light.
A red screen the size of a stadium flickered into existence—flat, jagged, glitching with static that hurt to look at. It didn't display an image. It became one.
A figure stepped through.
Faceless. Featureless.
No eyes. No mouth. No color. Just a human-shaped silhouette in a black suit that shimmered like smoke given edges—its tie fluttering in nonexistent wind, its body glitching like corrupted data.
Kayden's blood turned to ice.
He'd seen that form.
Not in dreams. Not on screens.
In trials.
"The Seventh," he whispered,
"INFINITE."