[BETA-READ / Side Project] RoU | B1 | Prologue

(Be advised that this book contains a dark setting, strong romance, and explicit scenes. I do not recommend it for anyone under 18.)

-----[BETA-READ / Side Project]----

Rise of the Unbound / Book 1: The Blade and The Pawn

• Cover / synopsis: https://www.patreon.com/posts/141212971

IMPORTANT:

• This is the draft of a fiction I plan to release on either amazon or KU one day. Feel free to rip me apart in the comment section!

• If you like it, you're also welcomed to leave a like or a comment!

• I'll try to post 1 or 2 chapters per week, but can't make any promises. Ascension of the Primalist is my priority!

Prologue: A boy without a name

A blade of wind shrieked past the ear of a nameless boy, causing the fine hairs on his neck to stand up. The spell then slammed into a column of crumbling marble a foot away. Thousands of shards blasted into the air.

He didn’t flinch, didn’t dare slow down. He just ran, bare feet slapping against the broken cobblestones of the Old Seraklieus.

This part of the city was a graveyard. A skeleton of what it had once been. Beautiful and prosperous. Right up until the nearby star veins had been bled dry. Until the wealth had fled and left only misery in its wake.

At least, that was what old folks around the slum had been saying.

Towers that used to scrape the clouds now stood like broken teeth against the twilight sky. A strong gale howled through the broken windows and down the rubble-choked street. Wind could be dangerous on its own, but tonight it carried the astra of a hunter—a Skyrider owned by those people.

The boy risked a glance over his shoulder. High on a collapsed water bridge, a man stood against the twin crescent moons, cloak whipping as if in the middle of a hurricane. Even from a distance, one could feel the pressure building in the air—like it did before that man cast any of his spells.

The boy dove.

An invisible scythe of wind carved a deep ditch in the ground where he’d been a second earlier. Scrambling on all fours, he crawled behind the remains of a fountain. 

Then he saw it. A sewer grate half-hidden beneath the fallen stones.

His chance.

Not wasting a second, the boy rushed forward and wriggled through the gap where iron bars had long since corroded away. He dropped into the tunnel below, landing with a splash in a shallow stream of sludge that smelled like rot.

It was pitch black, but he could hear crunches of boots on gravel above. So he didn’t wait.

The boy pushed himself up and began to run again, feet slipping on the stone. The tunnel was a tight, arched passage, and the air was thick and cold. The desperate thumbing of his heart against his ribcage drowned all other sounds.

A loud roar echoed from the opening behind.

A gust then tore through the tunnel and hit his back like a solid wall. It threw the boy forward, causing his knees to scrap against the rough-hewn brick. Dust, dried leaves, and filth blasted past him while stinging his eyes and scorching his lungs.

He crawled his way through the wind that tried to peel his skin. Ahead, the tunnel forked. Not missing a beat, he threw himself into the right-hand passage.

A few steps later, the path narrowed to a mere crack. He turned sideways and forced himself through, ribs screaming in protest. His face pressed against the slick moss for a second, then he stumbled into a wider passage and immediately broke into another desperate sprint.

Behind him, the screaming wind ceased. His ears caught a low growl of frustration, then the splash of boots—the Skyrider had reached the choke point.

Another furious howl then ripped through the tunnels as if that man was trying to destroy into the tight junction behind. The sewer shook around the boy. Cracks veined up the arch and chunks of mortar broke loose, splashing into the filthy water.

Then silence. No second strike came.

The Skyrider must have felt it, too—the deep, grinding tremor of a tunnel about to break apart. The boy didn’t wait to see if the man would risk making the whole place collapse.

He couldn’t get caught. He couldn’t be brought back there.

For months—maybe even a year—he had been locked in that hidden warren beneath the ruins. They kept the marked children there, feeding them just enough so they didn't die. Letting them grow like weeds in the dark, forgotten by the world above.

Escaping was supposed to be impossible.

The boy's ripped sleeve had ridden up from the running, revealing the ugly, crescent-shaped scar branded into his forearm. A ‘gift’ they gave to every nameless slum rat they dragged below. A death sentence they seared into that worthless flesh.

He remembered her. The first girl from last year's annual Awakening Day.

He’d been watching from the rooftops as she had stepped forward with the same mark on her wrist. A miraculous escapee from the hideout. But she had looked terrified when the magistrate had placed a glittering star-stone in her hand. The crowd had stirred and murmured. They had all known what was going to happen.

The crystal had then flared to life, and her eyes had gone wide.

The scream that had torn through her lips still haunted the boy at night—thin and strangled, drowned out by a surge of raw energy. Her whole body had shook once before falling backward, limp as a doll.

Dead.

The magistrate had blamed it on a tragic flaw in the girl's constitution, and the ceremony had continued.

But the boy knew better. The mark was a curse. It made them incompatible with the stars. Every child with that brand who touched a stone died screaming.

Even if he had just escaped that place, the day would come when he’d have to hide from the city's authorities. To avoid the mandatory ceremony.

But that was years away.

Years he could use to find a solution. Years of freedom to enjoy.

He pushed the thought aside and focused on the next turn ahead.

After what felt like an eternity, he finally saw a faint light ahead and scrambled up a rusted ladder. The grate above creaked as he forced it open, spilling him into a narrow alley that smelled like feces but felt like home.

He’d made it. The slums.

The boy's whole body shook as he gasped for breath, the cold air rushing into his chest. The relief left him dizzy, and in its wake, something warm and fragile bloomed inside him. Hope.

A wild, reckless grin spread on his face as he broke into yet another sprint, his bare feet flying once more over the cobblestones.

But the moment he rounded a corner, he crashed into a wall of solid muscle.

The impact sent him stumbling backward. His head snapped up.

Standing before him was a massive man. He was clad in a dark, hooded leather jacket that had seen better days. His face was a roadmap of old scars, and his eyes were as cold and dead as a winter pond. His hand, like talons of a bird, was clenched around the wrist of a terrified girl who didn’t seem much older than the nameless boy.

On the man’s shoulder, stitched in faded crimson thread, was the emblem all people of the slum had spent their life dreading: a gauntlet crushing a skull.

The Iron Claws.

The group of ruffians was even worse than those who had marked him. Boys they caught were sold off as lifetime slaves to cruel merchants. Girls… the stories about the girls were worse. Stuff of nightmares.

The man's gaze landed on the nameless boy. “Well, well,” he growled. “Look what we have here.”

Before he could bolt away, a free hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. The grip was crushing. Despair surged like flames through the boy's veins.

He wasn’t going back in another cage.

With a roar, he swung his other fist, putting every ounce of his weight into the punch. His knuckles smashed into the man’s crooked nose with a wet crunch.

The man grunted, a flicker of surprise flashing in his cold eyes. Blood dripped onto his jacket, but his grip on the girl didn't loosen. She whimpered, her small hands clawing at his arm in vain.

The man didn’t roar or curse—he just looked down at the boy. His expression shifted from mild annoyance to something colder.

Then, in a flash, he lunged forward and drove a heavy kick into the boy's stomach before he could run away.

The world exploded in a surge of pain. Air shot out from the boy's lungs, and he folded in half, dropping to his knees before coughing violently. The taste of vomit burned his throat, and black spots swam in his eyes.

A heavy hand grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked his head back, forcing him to look at the man’s bloody face.

“You’ve got guts, kid,” he said while hauling the youngster to his feet like a sack of grain. “I’ll give you that.”

The boy reached for his arm to free himself, causing the sleeves of his tattered shirt to slide down.

The crescent scar on his inner wrist was once more exposed.

The man’s eyes narrowed. A nasty, hungry smile then appeared on his blood-smeared lips.

“Ah.” A chuckle devoid of any humor rattled out of his chest. “One of the Black Merchants’ livestock. No wonder you’re so… desperate.”

His grip moved from the boy's hair to his neck. The man turned his head slightly, eyeing the trembling girl whom he still held firm by the wrist, then looked back at the boy.

The man’s grin broadened and dug into his scarred cheeks. “Desperate can be useful.”

With a low groan, he half-dragged, half-carried the nameless boy and the sobbing girl through the twisting alleys of the lower city. His grip tightened until their bones creaked whenever they struggled too much to his taste.

In no time, they all three reached an old, repurposed warehouse: a large black monolith that stood out against the crumbling houses around it.

The second they stepped inside, a putrid smell hit the boy—a mix of unwashed bodies, old beer, and something metallic and sharp that made his stomach churn. The huge hall was a den of caged animals.

Some people, whose eyes still burned with defiance, were tied in heavy chains and forced to haul crates. A few looked at him with pity.

And there were the others. The ones who terrified him even more. Those with no chains. The true prisoners.

They shuffled across the room, their movements sluggish and their eyes vacant of any life. Old folks called them The Hollows. People who had been broken so thoroughly by the guild that their souls had simply leaked out, leaving nothing behind.

The man shoved the boy and the girl toward the center of the chaotic room. Nearby, a slave hissed at another. “Faster, idiot. Kaiser’s back.”

Kaiser. So that was his name.

The man’s bloody face twisted in a grimace as his gaze swept across the hall. “Is the Butcher in the training house?” he barked at a man hunched over a whetstone on the left.

The guy sharpening his blade shook his head. “Nah. He’s in the back chamber.”

Kaiser’s cruel smile returned. “Good.”

He grabbed the boy and the girl by the scruffs of their necks and steered them toward a heavy iron door at the far end of the warehouse. The girl stumbled, trembling, while the boy planted his feet, but Kaiser easily pulled both of them with his large arms.

The door groaned open, revealing a dark corridor with an even worse metallic spell… as if blood had been mixed with the painting.

At the end was another room, lit by smoking torches that spat out long, jagged shadows.

Inside, a massive, bull-necked man stood over a table scarred with countless cuts and stained black in the center. He was wiping his large calloused hands on a leather apron that was stiff with old, dried blood and glistening with new patches. His head was shaved, his eyes small and filled with nothing but savagery.

The Butcher.

He looked up as Kaiser shoved both the boy and girl into the room. His gaze swept over them, and a grimace crossed his crude features. Like a tanner who had been offered worthless hides.

“What do you want me to do with these two?” the Butcher asked. “Make them obedient? Or… you know.”

The unspoken words hung in the frigid air.

“Neither,” Kaiser answered. “They’re perfect slum rats. Healthy, still combative, no owner, and young enough to be molded,” he then added with a nod toward the boy and girl as a dark gleam surged inside his eyes. “I want you to turn them into the next batch of Hounds.”

The boy's blood ran cold. Hounds. The killers. The Iron Claws' perfect weapons. The kind that could cut a throat in daylight before the victim’s family as if it were nothing.

Kaiser smirked. “If they survive, of course.”

The Butcher grunted, appraising the duo once more. He then gave the man a slow nod and lumbered toward them, his sheer size blocking the light from the doorway. He stopped in front of the girl and pointed his thick finger at her.

“You’ll be Six.”

His gaze then shifted to the boy. He stared at him, meeting his eyes, then noticed the crescent mark scorched into his arm.

The Butcher’s expression darkened, and he immediately looked over his shoulder at Kaiser.

Kaiser immediately smirked. “I know…Trust me. I’ve got a plan.”

The Butcher hesitated for a moment, then blew out through his nose and turned back toward the boy. The weight of the man’s gaze pressed down on him like an iron cage, the air itself shivering under it.

Everything else faded away—the voices, the cold, the smell. It was just the boy and this bulky man who would soon try to break him and turn him into a weapon. A blade that always cut and never hesitated.

“And you,” the Butcher began, his voice stripping away the last bit of the boy's nameless life. “You’ll be Seven.”

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Next --> Chapter 1: https://www.patreon.com/posts/141845630