The nameless boy

As time flowed endlessly in his fractured limbo, Kai no longer felt the need to groan in pain, his voice silenced by the sheer repetition of it all. He had learned to ignore the agony, pushing it to the recesses of his mind like a distant echo, numbing himself to the frostbite's relentless bite as it flared and faded in ceaseless waves. He waited there, suspended between worlds, for death to claim him fully or for someone—anyone—to come help, a faint spark of hope flickering amid the despair that threatened to engulf him.

During this interminable ordeal, he had come to a profound conclusion, forged in the crucible of his suffering: this world did not deserve him. With all the pain he had gone through—the abandonment, the struggles in the slums, the cataclysmic Rumbling, and now this torturous half-existence—it did not have the right to end him, to snuff out his life like an insignificant flame. This thing that had corrupted the world, twisting reality into a nightmare of monsters and curses, ignited nothing but pure, seething hate within him. He wanted it gone, eradicated somehow, its influence shattered beyond repair. He harbored an unbreakable resolve to find who—or what—had made this happen and make them pay, inflicting upon them a torment that mirrored his own. If it was one of the gods, some divine entity pulling the strings from afar, he would take them on still, defying the heavens with the fury of a boy who had lost everything and gained only rage in return.

In the endless void of the ice, time had blurred into nothingness for Kai, his body a prisoner in its frozen grip, senses dulled to a faint, echoing hum. He couldn't move, couldn't scream, couldn't even summon the will to fight the encroaching dark. Then, like a distant thunder rolling closer, a noise pierced the silence—growing louder, insistent, until it rattled through his numb form. At first, terror gripped him: a beast, surely, come to claim what the cold hadn't finished. But no—voices. Human voices, muffled but real. "Over here! There's someone down here, guys—there's a body! Maybe we can get something from it."

The sounds intensified: scraping, shouting, then a command—"Move away, guys!"—followed by a deafening boom that shook the glacier walls. Relief flooded Kai's frozen mind as hands gripped him, pulling his rigid body from the crevasse. He was out, saved, but still trapped in paralysis—no words, no movement, just the faint awareness of being carried, the world a blur of motion and murmurs.

The commander barked orders: "Take him to the tent, unfreeze the body, and search it for anything useful. Later, we can burn all the other bodies together." A subordinate muttered "Yes, sir" and hauled Kai into a heated shelter, where machines whirred and warmth seeped in like a slow thaw. Hours passed in that haze—maybe two, maybe more—until sensation returned in prickling waves. Kai's limbs ached as blood flowed again; he dragged himself to a corner, huddling near a heater, scared and disoriented, the world sharpening into focus.

Then, the flap opened. A soldier stepped in to check, only to freeze at the sight of the boy—alive, sitting there. A scream tore from his throat, raw with fear and shock. Footsteps pounded outside, and the captain burst in, eyes wide. "Holy shit, what—or who—is that?"

The soldier stammered, "I don't know, sir. I think it's the body we pulled out. How is he alive?"

Kai lifted his head weakly, heart racing as he met their stares. The tent felt smaller now, charged with questions he wasn't sure he could answer. His voice, hoarse from the ordeal, finally broke free: "P-please... help me. I'm Kai. I was... lost in the storm. Beasts chased me down there." But even as he spoke, fragments of memory stirred—shadows in the ice, whispers that weren't just wind. These men had pulled him from death, but what secrets had the freeze etched into him? And were those beasts truly gone, or lurking just beyond the camp's flickering lights?

The captain knelt, suspicion etching his features. "Alive after that? Kid, you've got some explaining to do. Men, get him warm and fed—but watch him close."

The captain's eyes narrowed as he studied the boy more closely, the flickering lantern light casting long shadows across the tent. Something about Kai's survival nagged at him—not just luck, but perhaps an affinity for the cold itself, what the old tales called the Ice Attribute. Folks born with it could endure freezes that would kill others, bending frost to their will or simply ignoring its bite. "Might be," he muttered to himself, then turned to the boy. "What's your name, lad?"

Kai opened his mouth, but the words lodged in his throat like shards of ice, refusing to form. Panic flickered in his eyes as he tried again, only silence escaping. The curse—he'd felt its grip before, but now it bound him tight.

The captain frowned, waving a hand dismissively. "Never mind. We'll talk later." Unaware of the invisible chains wrapping the boy's tongue, he pondered the mystery: a survivor with no clear story, pulled from the depths like some relic from the ancients. Who was he? A runaway? A spy? Or something touched by the wastes' darker magics? Shaking off the thought, the captain stepped out into the biting wind, barking orders to his men as they fortified the camp against the encroaching night. "Double the watches! And keep those fires high—no tellin' what followed this one out of the pit."

As dusk deepened into a starless void, the camp settled into an uneasy quiet, broken only by the crackle of flames and distant howls that might've been wind or worse. Kai was escorted—none too gently—to the captain's chamber, a sturdier tent at the camp's heart, lined with maps of the frozen expanse and scavenged trinkets glinting in the low light. The captain sat on a crate, sharpening his blade with rhythmic scrapes, his gaze lifting as the boy was pushed inside.

"Alright, kid. Start from the top. What's your name?"

Kai hesitated, the curse tightening like a noose. "I... I'm unable to speak my name."

The captain's brow furrowed. "What do you mean? Spit it out."

"Since the thing happened," Kai replied, his voice trembling, "I haven't been able to say it. The words just... won't come."

Realization dawned on the captain's face, piecing together the boy's unnatural survival and this new oddity. Curses were real enough in these lands—twisted gifts from forgotten gods or botched rituals. "I see. So that's your curse, then?"

Kai nodded slowly. "That's what that man said, before I got frozen."

The captain leaned forward, blade forgotten. "What man?"

Kai's mind groped through the haze of memory, faces and voices blurring like snow in a gale. The man's features eluded him, swallowed by time and trauma. "It was a long time ago," he admitted, frustration etching his young face. "I can't remember his name. It's all... foggy."

"How long ago?" the captain pressed, his tone sharpening. A timeline could reveal much—whether this was fresh trouble or an echo from some ancient feud.

But Kai shook his head, uncertainty weighing heavy. "I'm not sure. Days? Weeks? It felt like eternity in the ice. Time just... stopped." Deep down, though, fragments teased at the edges of his recall: a cloaked figure in a storm-swept village, words of warning about shadows that hungered for the cursed. And now, with these scavengers, was he safer—or had he dragged that darkness right to their doorstep? The captain eyed him thoughtfully, the silence stretching as he weighed trust against caution.