Nijel Rooke wanted more out of life than whatever he currently had.
Nothing special about it, for he lived in the Gutter: the neighborhood notorious for being the worst place in all of Sanctuary.
Out here, everybody wished for more—for something better.
Not because of greed or ambition, but simply desperation.
What set Nijel apart from them, however, was that instead of wallowing in self-pity for being born in such a rotten place, he turned it into a constant reminder for why he wanted to climb out of it.
So, when his classmates got rowdy behind his back, distracting him from his studies for the upcoming midterm exams, Nijel tried with all his heart to keep his focus locked onto his textbook and notes.
Nijel's brother was breaking his back day and night in running his small fast-food restaurant just so Nijel could get into a decent college and earn the degree that'd land him a good enough job to move them out to a better part of their district.
Not taking his academics seriously despite all that would be worse than spitting on his brother's face.
But as the disturbance behind him only got louder, Nijel tightened his fist around his ballpoint pen then hammered it hard upon the dented desk.
'I tried,' Nijel told himself with his jaw clenched. 'But they don't want me to keep trying.'
The abrupt bang silenced the entire class at once, all eyes from around the stuffed room turning toward him with a mix of annoyance and confusion.
"My thanks, dear friends." Nijel glanced over his shoulder with a vein pulsing in his forehead. "Now keep me thankful or you'll be very sorry."
When none of them barked back, he returned his eyes to his books—
"How so?" asked Kenith Grant with his scarred brow raised. "By sludging us like how your brother sludged your old man?" He exhaled sharply. "Come make me sorry, Rookie—let's see you try it."
The chubby kid with glasses beside him snorted and said, "Yeah, let's see you do it."
Some lines you can't let anyone cross.
Mocking him was one thing—but calling his brother a killer?
Too damn far.
Flipping a coin in his head, Nijel Rooke calmly set his pen down and closed the book on top of it. 'No peace without war, I guess.'
Nijel pushed off his desk to get onto his feet, then without a second guess, marched to the back of the class, eyeing the tallest among the group of five boys and girls.
"Sit your ass back down, Rookie," Kenith told him with an irked look. "Before it gets too sore—"
Nijel grabbed the nearest desk by its thin rusted frame and hurled it to his tallest classmate's head.
Eyes going wide, Kenith Grant quickly raised his arms up high and crouched to cover. "Gone mad, you rateater!"
His friends stepped aside to make space for their fight after the desk cracked against his forearms with a groan and clattered onto the classroom floor.
It didn't do much more than that—wasn't supposed to.
As by the time his decoy went down, Nijel was upon Kenith like a crow to a corpse.
A jab pounded the taller boy's ribs, before a short right swung for his chin.
Kenith cocked his head back just in time, deploying his longer reach to catch Nijel with a punch to the side of his jaw.
Someone sucked in air, a lot more hooted.
Rattled by the stinging hit below his cheekbone, Nijel's knees went weak. He kept his head low to avoid another one of those.
Letting his body drop even further, he slammed his shoulder against Kenith's stomach, pushing him against the back wall of the classroom.
Grunting as some air went out of him, Kenith coiled his reddened arm around Nijel's neck under his armpit, elbowing his spine with the other.
"Who do you think you are, you little shit!" Kenith huffed as he elbowed again, then a third time, mauling Nijel like a bear.
With a pained grimace, Nijel tried escaping the headlock, but Kenith was built not only taller than him but far stronger as well.
And the taller boy was now using all his strength to choke out Nijel, while continuing to strike his midback sharply with elbow after elbow.
Thoughts numbing as he lost his last breath, the stains on the floor tiles blurred to Nijel's eyes; the whooping of Kenith's friends sounded muffled as his beatdown continued.
'Not yet,' Nijel tried telling himself. 'Keep fighting.'
Maybe he heard, maybe not.
But at the verge of blacking out, Nijel planted both his wobbling feet as firmly as he could, as close to Kenith as he could, and wrapped both his arms around the taller boy's thigh to lift him off the floor in a final struggle to free himself from his choking grip—
"Nope," Kenith said, leaning further back into the wall, shifting his weight in the opposite direction. "Not letting you off that easily, Rookie."
Nijel's failed escape sent him down onto one knee, his weightless arms hanging loose to the sides.
"We're done," Kenith Grant declared, his friends cheering his victory with their flip phones out and recording the whole mess. "Now say sorry, boy. Speak up!"
When Nijel didn't, Kenith's attacks continued, and his chokehold only tightened further. "Go on, Rookie—show me how you beg."
'We're done…' Nijel's heart hammered as he almost blacked out, Kenith seemingly wanting to beat him past unconsciousness. '…only when I've won.'
Abruptly, memories flashed before Nijel's bleary eyes—the ones he'd rather forget.
Tears in an unlit room. Cold rage.
A bloody knife, a bleeding body.
Just then, hidden in depths unknown, Nijel Rooke felt a familiar power surging within him.
A power shackled in his soul for far too long, he realized, simply waiting to be unleashed.
And now, at death's door, Nijel let it loose.
"Huh?" Kenith Grant's elbow stopped mid-strike as his back leaned away from the wall. "What the—"
Air hissing through his gritted teeth, Nijel Rooke climbed onto both his feet, lifting his taller classmate off the floor by his waist as easily as he'd picked up the rusty desk.
At once, Kenith's arm loosened from around Nijel's neck as his feet kicked up into the air, turning him upside-down beside Nijel's torso.
The cheering had gone silent, as well as all other noise inside, as if Nijel had choked out the classroom itself.
The creepy quiet was only broken by Kenith's struggling grunts and airy curses, as he tried his hardest to break free of Nijel's grasp.
Within seconds, their situations had completely flipped—quite literally, even.
But then Nijel felt his latent power descending back to the depths of his soul.
So, he decided to end their fight right here with a decisive blow.
"Who do I think I am?" Nijel Rooke declared, leaning backward with a jump. "I'm not to be messed with, you little shit!"
When they both went down to the dirty concrete tiles, Kenith Grant slammed hard headfirst into it with a disturbing noise that was half a blunt thump and half a sharp crunch.
Nijel crashed with him but hardly felt any of the impact, getting back onto his feet within the next second.
His classmates stood around him with shocked expressions, a hint of fear in every face behind a lowering flip phone.
They looked unsure of what they had to do to him—or maybe, what he'd do to them.
But Nijel simply turned his eyes from Kenith Grant, who lay upon the stained floor with an unfocused gaze and a slackened jaw, to his friends, who stared back at Nijel with ashen faces, their ridicule silenced into distress.
"Do you see it now?" Through heavy breaths, Nijel asked of the chubby kid with glasses. "Or do I need to make you sorry as well, you pigkisser?"
Oily with nervous sweat, Gerry Wells blinked his tiny eyes rapidly, too stunned to speak any real words, before finally replying with only a miserable squeak like that of a trapped sewer rat.
When no one moved against him, Nijel turned away, stepping over Kenith to return to his desk and resume his studies for their midterm exams.
Kenith Grant was still on his back, so motionless and silent he might as well have been dead.
The back of his head was bleeding all over the floor—which wasn't the best sign of good health.
But Nijel didn't care.
'Call my brother a killer again, you damn rateater,' Chest still afire, Nijel bitterly spat down the wordless challenge to his unconscious classmate. 'I dare you.'
Something felt… different about him today.
Off, more so.
Was Nijel always like this?
This… heartless?
Without turning back to pity his dying classmate, Nijel sat behind his dented desk and reopened his book, picking his pen off the page he'd marked with it—
'Huh?' Nijel dropped it at once and turned his palm toward his face, his brows knotting in deeper and deeper confusion the more he stared at his hand. 'What the—'
"What in the Revenant's Realm is going on in my classroom!" thundered Mrs. Harper as she stomped back from her lunch break. "I leave for five minutes and there's already broken desks and… By the dead gods," she whispered with a gasp. "Why's Kenith on the floor? Is that blood!"
Maybe Nijel Rooke had taken it too far.
Not only was his classmate possibly a corpse now, but all that commotion had reached their hard-working teacher and ruined her tiny lunch break—the only twenty minutes she got to herself in her entire busy school day spent dealing with kids who refused to listen to her.
Nijel had made more than just some trouble Mrs. Harper could punish him for—he'd openly committed a crime.
And Nijel, being truly honest, didn't think of himself as heartless enough not to care about all that.
Nijel cared. Cared to not live through another bloody night; cared much more deeply than he'd admit to anyone.
He never intended for it all to go down like this—yet it had, once again.
Mikel Rooke was sacrificing his own future for his little brother's, always advising Nijel to climb out of the Gutter by keeping his head down, telling him to avoid any trouble with the Heathen crews, and to mind his own business at school.
Trouble gets expensive out here, after all—and fast. And they weren't quite so rich to afford it, even by the Gutter's standards.
Yet still… Nijel Rooke didn't care much for all the chaos he'd caused in his classroom.
Something was deeply wrong with him—something within.
Kenith Grant was bleeding on the floor from his cracked skull, Gerry Wells was showing the recording of their fight to their teacher, and Mrs. Harper was stalking closer to him with a rare fury upon her.
But Nijel was focused only on his hand.
Or rather, he cared only for the luminous smoke rising from it.
'Finally,' Nijel Rooke knew without a doubt, mesmerized by the murky fumes smoldering out of his fingers and palm with an ominous purple-black radiance. 'The answer to all my questions.'
Instead of his purposeful drive toward changing the circumstances he was born into, this was what actually separated Nijel from everyone in the Gutter: this sinister power hiding within him since he was a kid.
Surfacing only when he needed it most: to make his body stronger all those times his father belted him, his mind faster when he tricked his way out of many slimy situations involving the Heathens, and his spirit better whenever he was alone with his brother.
'Always knew it,' Nijel internalized numbly. 'But now I even have proof. I'm godsdamned cursed—possessed by a Phantom since birth.'
Otherwise, he wouldn't be heartless enough to commit a coldblooded murder and feel nothing about it, now, would he?
Mrs. Harper grabbed his shoulder from behind and all her students hushed down for the verbal and physical punishment she was about to deliver to their strange and violent classmate before calling the appropriate yet corrupt authorities to take him away.
Nijel didn't resist, pushing his smoking hand onto the table and rising. "Mrs. Harper, I'm—"
When he looked back at her, it wasn't his teacher standing over him, but Kenith Grant himself, who was fully lucid despite thick lines of blood trailing down his darkening face.
"You're not to be messed with, huh?" Kenith growled through a bloody scowl—eyes focused, jaw clenched. "That makes us godsdamned twins, Rookie."
Nijel Rooke never even saw the fist thrown at his face until it'd already clobbered his nose.
All because he was too distracted after discovering his classmate was also cursed.
Possessed by an even more malevolent Phantom, it seemed—for not just his hand, Kenith Grant's entire body was burning up with the same radiant fumes of ominous power hidden within Nijel Rooke's soul.