The train exhaled behind him, a long breath of iron and wind, then vanished into the tunnel like a secret being swallowed.
He didn't look back.
His footsteps met the pavement with slow, steady beats—just enough rhythm to pretend he wasn't thinking.
It was a short walk home. But long enough to dread arriving.
The edge of the city flickered in static light—digital signs that blinked too fast, alley shadows where streetlights should've been. A woman laughed too loudly behind a closed window. A baby cried from a floor above. The world went on.
His didn't.
There was no elevator. Just a stairwell that creaked like it wanted to confess something. He climbed to the third floor, past chipped paint and rusted numbers that barely clung to the wall.
His key turned in the lock with a familiar stubbornness. As he stepped into the room q familiar site greeted him.
A small table, a single bed, a portable stove in the corner. A shelf of books. Some figurines. A half-finished model kit.
No fridge. No couch. No silence, either—only the kind that buzzed behind your thoughts.
He placed his bag gently beside the door.
Then moved into routine.
He cooked every day—not out of love, but because there was no other choice. A small electric stove, one working burner, two pots.
He washed rice by hand, cut vegetables slowly, and watched steam curl as if it might say something.
The smell was comforting. Just enough to remind him he was real.
Dinner was eaten standing beside the window. He didn't turn the lights on. The city was bright enough.
After, he washed everything. Carefully. Quietly.
Most nights he'd read—dog-eared paperbacks from secondhand stalls—or rewatch old anime on his cracked tablet. The stories gave structure. Escape. Someone else's pain to hold.
But tonight wasn't most nights.
Tonight, his bag felt heavier.
He crouched beside it, hand hovering just a second too long, then unzipped it. Notebooks spilled out. Identical. Ordinary.
He picked one.
Every notebook had a name section at the front.
He never filled them.
Except for one.
He opened it.
The page didn't greet him. It judged.
There, written in quiet, unflinching strokes:
Norian Veyar.
He stared at it.
The name wasn't ugly. That wasn't the problem.
It was lonely. Like a name spoken only once and never meant to be repeated.
He had been born on a cloudy morning seventeen years ago.
His father lost everything that day—his company, his standing, the quiet pride he once wore like a jacket. When he came to the hospital, he looked like a man who'd forgotten what hope was shaped like.
When asked for the name, his mother looked at him.
He answered too quickly.
"I like it,"
He said.
"It's strong."
She hadn't argued. She was too tired.
She didn't know the meaning.
Veyar—from a forgotten dialect. A word that meant fated to ruin. A soul woven with bad stars.
As a child, he was quiet. Unremarkable. But strange things clung to him like static.
Light misfortunes, at first.
A teacher who suddenly fell ill. A neighbor's dog who turned violent for no reason. Friends who stopped talking to him, moved schools, got injured. He didn't cause it. But it followed.
Still, people didn't notice. Not really. Life is strange. Accidents happen. Misfortune can be explained.
Then, his sister was born.
And for two years, the world was still.
The air felt different. His parents smiled more. They held hands again. His mother sang while cooking. His father ruffled his hair without flinching.
And his sister—she looked at him like he was someone.
Not a shadow.
Not a warning.
Just a brother.
He let himself believe it would last.
But the quiet doesn't stay forever.
After two years, the cracks returned.
Slowly.
Softly.
A light in the hallway kept flickering. A neighbor's child nearly drowned in the bath after visiting. His homeroom teacher suffered a breakdown.
Nothing too large. Not yet.
But it was different this time.
His parents noticed.
Because they lived with him.
Because they watched.
Because they kept seeing what no one else did.
What others could excuse, they couldn't.
A pattern too precise to be random.
The small wrongness became undeniable.
Then it grew.
People around him got hurt—more often. More deeply. Not by his hand, never that. But by something... close. And always while he remained untouched.
His father began to unravel.
At first, it was stress.
Then whispers to himself.
Then sudden outbursts at shadows that weren't there.
And his mother—she stopped singing.
She began locking her door at night.
She didn't call him by name.
She didn't call him anything.
They never said it aloud, what they feared.
But fear doesn't need words to be loud.
And after what happened to his sister… the way she fell, the way the doctors said it was a miracle she lived—his parents couldn't look at him the same.
He became other.
Not a son.
Not a boy.
Something else.
It hadn't happened all at once.
That was the worst part.
It was slow.
So slow it felt like drowning in air.
The name stared back at him from the paper.
Norian Veyar.
And tonight, like every time before, he closed the notebook slowly, like it might bite him if he moved too fast.
Because what was the point of writing answers, when your very name reads like a verdict?
*****
✢═─༻༺═✢═─༻༺═✢
✶ Dimension Walker ✶
✧ The Veiled Paragon ✧
⊱ Eternal_Void_ ⊰
✢═─༻༺═✢═─༻༺═✢
*****
He mentioned it once, offhandedly—almost like a joke—that even if he didn't do the homework, his teacher wouldn't say anything.
He wasn't exaggerating.
Every time his notebook came up in class, the teacher flinched. Not obviously. Just a slight pause. A twitch of the corner of the mouth. A flicker in the eyes, like they were seeing something they didn't want to.
His classmates were no better. They treated him like he carried some invisible plague. Some tried to ignore him so hard it became physical. Leaning away. Stiffened backs. Half-glances with clenched jaws.
He didn't want to do the homework that night. But he did it anyway.
And afterward, to lift his soured mood, he plugged in his earphones. The world faded into soft melodies and the familiar comfort of novels. A habit. An escape. He didn't remember when he fell asleep.
The next morning came like all others.
Early rise. Cooked a quick breakfast. No elevator—there never was. He trudged down the stairs, heading out. Work first, then school. The same path.
The same routines. And on certain nights, late shifts at the convenience store, three times a week. He avoided the bullies when he could, slipping into class quietly, head down, eyes on the floor. It worked—until it didn't.
A voice cut through the air, low and venom-laced.
"Hey, you sneaky bastard. You've gotten good at avoiding me, huh?"
He froze.
"C'mon. Let's have a talk. My knuckles are itching for a conversation."
Laughter followed—four voices, fake and shrill. Around him, the others either stared blankly or turned away, choosing not to exist in this moment.
They approached—no, he approached first. The red-haired, black-eyed boy. The others followed like hyenas.
Once, they had all bullied him. But after strange things started happening—missteps, accidents, random misfortunes—they began to keep their distance.
All of them except him. The red-haired boy never suffered the same fate. Untouched. Unafraid. The others still lingered, not to strike, but to laugh. To spectate.
They dragged Norian to the back of the school. A forgotten corner where the wind didn't reach and eyes didn't wander.
His body reacted before his mind could catch up—fingers clenched, legs stiffened, breath quickened. Heart pounding too loud. Too fast. A flush of heat, then cold. The old rhythm of fear.
But deeper now. Deeper, because he knew what was coming. His stomach coiled tight. His chest felt hollow, like his ribs were caving in on something too fragile to protect itself.
He didn't fight back. He never did.
The red-haired boy struck. A punch in the ribs. A kick when he curled into himself like a dying flame. They laughed—high and cruel.
No visible wounds this time. Just pain—radiating, burning, raw. It throbbed in time with the beat of shame and the rise of something black in his throat.
He hated pain.
They gave him nothing but.
After a while, they left, still laughing, still full of themselves. The red-haired boy rubbed his knuckles as if polishing a job well done.
Norian lay there. Curled. Silent. His face was blank, but his eyes stung. Tears spilled, steady and soundless. His lips trembled. He bit down on them, hard, to hold it in—but it came anyway.
That horrible shaking. That broken soundless cry that only the body understands. The kind that comes when you're tired of holding everything together with nothing but skin and will.
He hated himself more than he hated them.
He didn't know how long he stayed there. But by the time he rose, the sun had begun to sink. The light was soft, too soft for how heavy he felt.
His face was stained, his lips bleeding. He didn't care. He didn't want to care.
He walked toward the station. Same route. Same plaza. People passed him, busy with their own lives. No one looked closely.
No one noticed the quiet storm in the boy with dirtied sleeves and faint traces of blood.
He arrived. Bought a ticket. Got on the train. A few glanced, but didn't really see him. They never did. Who would bother for someone who didn't scream?
At home, he didn't stop by the shop. He wasn't hungry.
He threw his bag, stripped off his clothes, and stepped into the shower. The water didn't burn, but it didn't comfort either. It just… existed.
He changed. Made his bed. Plugged in his earphones like always. Music helped.
Not tonight.
The silence underneath the music felt heavier than usual. It pressed into his ribs. Into his throat. His vision blurred again.
Tears came back, uninvited. Again. And again. His mouth tasted wrong. Bitter. Rotten. He bit his lip, harder than before, until he tasted copper.
He didn't want to make a sound.
Eventually, exhaustion won. He didn't know when he fell asleep.
***
The alarm rang.
He blinked, eyes sore and dry. He turned it off.
He didn't move.
Just shifted slightly, searching for something more bearable in the stiffness of the sheets.
And then…
He noticed it.
On his left arm, faint yet unmistakable—glowing numbers, burned into the skin like light itself.
A timer. Horizontal. Unmoving.
05:32:45
The seconds ticked down slowly.
His heart didn't race. His breath didn't hitch.
Instead, something quiet crept over him. Like a shadow stepping into the room.
He stared. Eyes blank. Soul tired.
Today… was his eighteenth birthday.
This day would either break him.
Or birth something else entirely.
Something the world wasn't ready for.
-To Be Continued