I'm Ethan—currently 18 years old. My life is nothing more than pain and suffering but because life seems to have rolled me the worst dice possible. And yet… here I am. Still breathing. Still kicking. This is my story, or at least, the part of it before the world truly broke open.
I was born into what you'd call a silver-spoon household. My family was wealthy—second-generation kind of rich. There was my dad, my mom, my older brother, and eventually, me. But the moment I came into the world, it was like someone flipped the switch on our good luck. Deals crumbled. Wealth vanished. Our once-mighty estate was now a cautionary tale in the local newspapers.
Now, I'm not saying I am the bad luck charm, but let's just say if karma were a person, it would've had me on speed dial.
My brother, the golden child, was adored. My parents practically carved a shrine for him in our living room. Me? I wasn't unloved—I was just…invisible. I don't think I spent more than six collective months with my parents. Instead, I was passed around like a parcel between nannies and tutors.
But there were two people who didn't treat me like I was some afterthought.
Tom Rivers and Sasha Dragoon.
Tom, our family butler, was sixty going on legendary. He had the grace of a monk, the strength of a tiger, and the calm of a windless sea. With his white hair and perfectly trimmed beard, he looked forty-five on a bad day. A martial arts genius who could turn a tea ceremony into a lesson on discipline and war.
Sasha was his adopted granddaughter. She was found abandoned at an orphanage, her only identity a tag reading "Dragoon." Tom named her Sasha and raised her as his own. She was my age and strong—like, "could punch through drywall at five" strong. Together, they were my world. If childhood had highlights, it was them.
But then came the avalanche.
When I was seven, my parents died in a car crash. Tragic, but weirdly… not entirely surprising. By then, life had already started to fall apart.
At eight, my uncle—dad's brother—swooped in to take custody of me and my brother. The legal system, bless its paperwork-loving soul, handed over our inheritance to him until we turned eighteen. Spoiler alert: we never saw that money again.
My uncle and aunt hated my father and saw us as living, breathing reminders of him. They abused us, emotionally and physically. My brother, always the favorite, blamed me for it. "Bad luck kid," he used to mutter, like I was a crack in his perfect life.
At fourteen and i am elven, my brother he was diagnosed with heart rupture. His treatment costs skyrocketed. What did our dear guardians do? They took what was left of our inheritance and vanished into thin air.
I wish I could say I was shocked. But by then, I had learned not to expect happy endings.
Tom tried to step in. He gave me everything he had—his home, his savings. He even enrolled me and my brother in a decent school. He was more than a butler. He was the closest thing I ever had to a father.
And then Sasha went missing.
It was like losing the sun and the moon in one night. Tom left to find her, promising he'd come back and entrusted me and my brother to his friend. I clung to that promise like a life raft.
But life wasn't done taking.
At thirteen, my brother and Tom's friend conspired together—yes, seriously—to sell me to a research lab that experimented on kids. Superhuman experiments. Underground. Illegal. And absolutely hellish.
That's where I met Rick and Alia.
Rick Joy lived up to his name. Brown hair, brown eyes, a smile so sunny it could melt steel. He had a way of making even a dungeon feel like summer camp.
Alia was different. Silver hair. Golden eyes. A rare genetic condition made her unique, but her ability to read emotions? That was her real power. She could sense people's feelings as clearly as hearing someone's voice. In that cruel place, she was our shield—warning us of angry researchers, helping us dodge the worst.
Rick was obsessed with her. Claimed it was love. Alia, who could read his emotions, knew it wasn't. She distanced herself.
And that's when Rick betrayed us.
At fifteen, we planned an escape. It almost worked. But Rick sold us out. Alia and I were recaptured. The experiments got worse—unspeakable, even. Our bodies and minds were torn apart.
At sixteen, the lab was finally raided. Police came; researchers were arrested. We were free.
But at what cost?
Alia was dying. Bedridden, with maybe one or two to live and glaring disability on top of that.
That was also when I found out my brother had died. Heart failure. Just like that. No grand moment, no last words. Just gone—like most people in my life.
You'd think that would've broken me. Maybe it did. But the truth is, when you've already lost everything, grief feels more like a hollow echo than a hurricane.
So here I am. Eighteen. Still alive, somehow. Recovering—if you can call it that—in a hospital bed. My muscles barely work. My mind's like a room with broken light bulbs. But the experiments didn't kill me, and neither did the guilt. That counts for something, right?
That's when it happened.
The walls trembled. My heartbeat synced with something massive—something ancient.
And in the middle of that sterile room, space seemed to breathe.
I stood—not physically, but somewhere deeper. Beyond the bounds of flesh and bone.
I stood before Estrade—the living consciousness of the world itself.
And it... it knew my name.