I woke up to the smell of rot. I immediately covered my nose. It was horrible.
The kind that clings to your nose even after you leave. Mixed in were sour piss, damp rust, and something sharp and metallic—blood, maybe.
It was too hard to identify but it was clear, it smelled horrible.
My eyes opened to a cracked tin roof overhead, the ceiling bent like someone had punched it in from above. Light leaked through in thin beams, barely touching the dirt floor.
'I guess there wouldn't be problem of light' in this broken room, that can't even be called a shed properly.
Dirt. Trash. Shards of plastic and bone. Something squished when I moved. I didn't want to know what.
My body didn't feel right. Too small. Too light. My limbs were stiff, weak. My fingers were thin like wires. I touched my face—round, smooth. No beard. No scars. I wasn't me anymore.
I was a kid. Seven, maybe eight. Dressed in filthy, torn rags that barely passed for a shirt and shorts. My ribs poked through my skin like scaffolding.
A memory surfaced. My name. Then nothing.
Nothing except hunger.
The pain in my gut overrode everything else. It wasn't the polite kind of hunger that growls and goes quiet. It was loud, gnawing, fire-in-the-stomach hunger. The kind that makes you dizzy and angry at the same time.
I stood—barely. My knees buckled, but I caught myself on the wall.
I slowly got up. I felt a sharp pain going through my body, it felt like I haven't eaten in ages.
I slowly mustered up courage and got up. Cause if I didn't, I would rot here like trash.
And I am not a trash. I am Kurai Blackwood.
My "room," if you could call it that, was a collapsed shack made of scrap metal,bones, and weathered cloth.
The walls didn't reach the ceiling. There was no door, just a hanging old clothe, that was so transparent that it could get teared by even slightest pressure.
I stepped out.
The slum stretched in all directions. Shacks crammed together like tumors.
Dirty alleys full of rusted metal and piles of discarded things. People moved, but not fast. They dragged themselves across the dust like shadows.
Hollow eyes, missing teeth, skin hanging loose off bone. No one talked. No one looked up. They were too busy not dying.
I didn't know this world, but it felt like I'd always lived here.
And above it all, the sky—gray, cloudless, and wide. I couldn't tell if it was morning or evening. Everything was bathed in ash-colored light.
I started walking.
A beast shrieked somewhere far away. I froze.
It was a sound that didn't belong to anything human. High-pitched. Hungry. It echoed through the metal slums like a scream down a tunnel.
People ducked when they heard it. One old man curled up behind a rusted barrel and didn't move again.
It felt like they hadn't had much will to live.
Monsters. I knew that word. It wasn't a fantasy thing here. They were real.
Beasts, mutants, freaks, ghosts—whatever you called them, they owned the world now. They roamed wild outside the cities.
Some slipped in through cracks in the walls. Others just grew here, from the filth.
And we—humans—were food. Or pests. Or just background noise.
I didn't see one yet, but I didn't want to.
Of course this was the state of slums. Where failed to awaken people and thier children live live.
Through there were also people with extremely poor talent here, they were the superior people of slums.
Because 100 people without beast taming powers are still worser than that 1 person that has them.
As far the deeper part of City? it was completely safe and hygienic. At least for most part.
As for Central part, I Or the original owner, neither have ever seen it. Only heared whispers and myths.
I kept going, stepping over shattered tiles, broken crates, and things I didn't name. Thankfully I wore a broken pair of shoes, too big to be my own size.
But at least protected my feet from sharp objects.
I continued to walk, My nose led me. It felt almost instinctive for me. I sniffed for anything edible. Anything that didn't smell like rot or death.
Behind a broken cart, I found a soggy cloth. Under it, a small piece of bread.
Stale. Cracked. Covered in dust. But it was bread.
'it must be expired. Someone from inner part of city must have thrown it in trash'
But I didn't cared.
I immediately dropped to my knees, grabbed it with shaking hands, and bit in. It crunched. Dry. Like chewing a brick. I didn't care. I chewed anyway, jaw aching with the effort. It scratched my throat on the way down.
I forced myself to slow down. I didn't know when I'd eat again. Every crumb counted.
Someone walked past. A boy, maybe ten, with one arm and no shoes. He saw the bread in my hand and stopped.
We stared at each other. I looked at him as fiercely I can. I didn't let go of the food.
He didn't beg. Just looked. Eyes sunken, face unreadable. Then he walked on. Probably cause he felt he couldn't be my opponent with only one a.
That was the rule here.You found food, you ate it, or it get snatched. It all depended on whether you can scare away the snatchers.
I stood up again, chewing the last bit of crust.
The hunger eased, just a little. Not gone, but dulled. Enough to think straight.
Where the hell was I?
I glanced around for signs. Nothing printed. Just scratched symbols on walls, coded numbers, or names of gangs.
In one direction, I saw a tower of concrete, leaning like it might fall. In another, a line of people waiting near a hole in the ground that steamed.
That was probably where they boiled something foul and called it soup.
I didn't want to go there yet. I needed to understand the rules of this world first.
I leaned back against a bent lamppost, letting my eyes travel across the landscape.
No security. No police. No tech—at least not here. The richer zones, wherever they were, probably had protection. But here? The slums were on their own.
Beasts came and went. People vanished. Some streets looked like they'd been chewed up by giant claws. Others were oddly clean—too clean, like something had eaten everything, even the trash.
And somehow, I'd landed in the middle of it. A child's body. A forgotten corner of a broken world.
But I wasn't dead yet.
I dusted off my hands, looked down at my bare feet, and kept walking.
No plan. No map.
Just the fire in my stomach, and the sense that if I stopped, this place would swallow me whole.
—