Prologue

A house in the middle of the slums

In the dilapidated house, two people sat looking at a child with worry and reluctance. The child looked back at them with curiosity.

Sounds of people coming closer to the house could be heard, as the sounds came closer, the worry on the couple's faces became more evident.

The child had fallen asleep, and the sounds which felt distant a while ago, now seemed to surround the whole house. The man opened up a floorboard and lowered the child into the space below.

The moment the floorboard was used to cover the child, the door to the house fell to the floor with a loud boom, the sound of something cutting through the air could be heard, and a loud thud just after.

Blood spread across the floor and dripped down the floorboards into the space below and onto the child's face. On that moonless night, a child surrounded by a pool of blood slept peacefully.

The next morning, one of the neighbors, who had known the couple, came to the house to ask them for something. But he was in horror to find blood spilt everywhere and a silent house with no signs of inabitation. He heard a muffled crying from below the floorboards. He lifted it and saw the child, who was soaked in blood.

He felt pity for the child and decided to take him home, but his wife sternly refused to accept the child as she believed him to be a harbinger of misfortune. The man, however reluctant to leave a child to die on his own, decided to send him to an orphanage.

The orphanage was located in a small town with a limited population and was a good distance away from the child's house.

The child, who was three years old, lived in that orphanage without much worry. However, after the child turned five, old enough to walk properly, the child was forced to go on the streets and beg.

"We don't have money to feed and clothe ungrateful children who don't do anything" was the reasoning the director gave when she forced the children to do so.

The director of the orphanage was a lazy sleazeball who did nothing but order the children about. She had a pointy nose and wrinkled skin, she also had white hair. She both looked and acted like a witch.

The children survived in that atmosphere till they turned fifteen. They wouldn't go against anything the director of the orphanage said. No, it was more like they couldn't, as the director made sure the children would not. If a child said or did anything against the director, he would get brutally beaten.

The child had bruises all over his face and body from the beatings, but the child considered himself lucky because unspeakable things were done to children who dared to go against the director.

The child had learned how to speak from one of the older children residing in the orphanage because the director thought it would make it easier to beg.

The child had no friends in the orphanage. The children didn't speak to each other, nor did they try to, because the director thought that it would make them slack off when doing work.

 Either way, it wasn't like the child was really fond of any human interaction. He always remained distant from the other kids and barely uttered a word, even if he really wanted to. This behavior was probably the result of his harsh upbringing. Some kids were brought here at an older age, while he was brought here at the young age of three.

The child would wake up before the sun came up in the morning and leave to get wood from a small forest situated a small while away from the orphanage, the forest was located at the back of the orphanage, after coming back the child would eat some pottage and leave to beg, the child would beg until the sun went down and come back to another meal of pottage.

Pottage was about the only thing that they got as a meal. They would rarely see anything other than that on their plate.

After the meal, the child would get some speaking lessons from his seniors in the orphanage. Then he would go to sleep. This was his daily routine.

The child had been riskily saving money behind the director's back, so that he would be able to buy things that could allow him to get out of the town and avoid the torturous life he had been living so far.