Prologue: A Starvation’s End

The streets of New York had never been kind to Gabriel Alvarez. Born into poverty, abandoned by a system that saw him as nothing more than a statistic, he had fought every day just to survive. But survival required food, and food required money—something he had never had enough of.

On the night his body finally gave in, he lay on the cold pavement of an alley in the Bronx, his stomach aching from days without food. His breath was shallow, his vision blurred.

"So this is it," he murmured.

As his consciousness faded, he felt something strange—a warmth, a light swallowing him whole.

Then, the pain was gone.