Where The Story Began

The outskirts was a graveyard of forgotten lives.

Crumbling building stretched for miles,their skeletal remains jutting out against the smog-choked sky. Rusted vehicles sat abandoned on cracked roads, their glass shattered, their frames hollowed by time and scavengers. Neon signs flickered weakly, advertising businesses that had died long before their lights did. This was the place where the world's unwanted were left to rot—a wasteland on the fringes of noctis, the city of the gods.

Beyond the outskirts, the skyline of Noctis gleamed like a promise no one here could ever reach. Towering spires, floating highways, and streets paved with artificial sunlight. The home of the Lifted, the ones chosen by Searing Providence, the ones who wielded power like it was their birthright. The rest? The Non-Gifted? They were exiled to places like this. Out of sight. Out of mind.

The government had drawn the lines long ago. The world had accepted them.

Most of it, anyway.

A lone figure stood against the backdrop of the burning outskirts. His black hair, unkempt and wild, barely brushed his shoulders, strands clinging to his skin from sweat and ash. His complexion was unnaturally pale, like embers long gone cold, blending with the dust and smoke that filled the air. His sharp features were carved by hardship—hollow cheeks, darkened eyes that had seen too much.

He looked like a ghost, a remnant of a world already lost. But in his gaze, beneath the exhaustion, there was something else—he didn't walk he drifted like something that had already died but refuse to stay buried.like someone who had already been swallowed by the world's decay but somehow remained .His eyes-dark,hallow devoid of light-held none of the restless fire that most survivors carried.Becuase he wasn't a survivor,not really

He had no purpose,no hope ,no reason for breathing.

But he did

Not out of will.Not out of defiance.But because the world had expected him to disappear,and he was too spiteful to give the satisfaction.

He was nothing.And yet,he was still there.A stain on existence.A mistake the world had failed to erase

And that was enough.

He leaned against a rusted railing on the edge of a high-rise skeleton—an abandoned building that had never been finished. The wind howled through the hollow floors, rattling loose metal sheets and kicking up dust.

Below, the streets stretched out in all directions, a labyrinth of decay, leading to nothing but more of the same. And beyond that, past the ruined districts and the security barriers, stood Providence—the city of the Lifted.

The place where power decided who mattered.

A place he would never be allowed to enter.

A monster's scream tore through the night.

He exhaled slowly, watching as a black shape moved in the distance, tearing through the alleyways. A Hollow One—one of them. The cursed remnants of those who had failed to Ascend.

The city pretended they didn't exist, but the Outskirts knew better. They were the price of the Lifted's power. The discarded. The ruined.