As Valar was sprinting between the dark alleyways of his hometown in the dead of night, he thought back on his ′masterful plan′.

  Now with a new perspective on the nightlife of Lyndale, which could apparently be compared to a warzone, he had to admit that maybe escaping the orphanage during the middle of the night hadn’t been his brightest idea.

  As Valar jumped, narrowly dodging a thrown wooden chair, he allowed himself a small grin. This is definitely the farthest I’ve gotten without getting caught!

  He was fast realizing that he needed some space from the chaos around him, as while the people fighting on the street were all awakened… he was not.

  The boy turned left on the next intersection and dove, just barely managing to avoid a table that crashed loudly down the road where he had just run. That was a close call.

  The almost scarily thin teenager had already tried escaping the Lyndale Orphanage For Unawakened Children three times. The city guard had of course caught the unawakened child with relative ease each time, but his resolve had only increased with each and every failure.

  The only reason Valar hadn’t been caught this time was the ongoing tavern brawl. These incidents were by no means rare, but the brawl happening directly outside the alleyway Valar was hiding in was larger than most, distracting the guard nicely.

  If the thirteen-year-old boy understood correctly, some monumental idiot had insulted a drunken silver ranked adventurer and practically signed his own death warrant. Who would even be so stupid? Angering someone at silver rank when you’ve just barely awakened… The warrior could kill the iron ranker in seconds, if not less!

  Based on the noise echoing in the dark alley, maybe the silver ranker had done just that. The flashing lights Valar could see were clearly spells, which meant that some mages had joined in on the fun—the fun being a drunken bloodbath.

  Valar looked at his hands through his overgrown scruffy black hair and steadied his breathing. This would be the best chance he would ever get.

  The guards were distracted by the brawl, so he could slink off into the sewers unnoticed. Valar was sure the city guard had probably been already alerted of an orphanage escapee, but he still had a couple minutes. The teen balled his fists, got up and started running like his life depended on it. There would be no return to that twisted prison, dead or alive.

  As Valar blazed past the dark alleyways of Lyndale, he had a chance to look around the moonlit city for perhaps the first time in his life. The stone houses were by no means pretty without daylight, as the customary mint green tinted paint decorating most of the buildings was hard to see in the dim light of the city’s oil lamps. Still, this was more of the city than Valar had ever seen, as the orphanage’s walls had restricted his sight for almost his whole life. He had briefly glimpsed the nearby buildings on his other escape attempts—as short as they were—but this was the first time Valar had a real chance to look around.

  The city was impressive even during the night. The main streets were all illuminated by the oil lamps’ gentle light, the walled off city taking on a calm appearance despite the chaos on the streets. Every single tavern Valar passed was packed full with all kinds of rowdy people, spending their nights in merriment. Those taverngoers were his reason for picking the weekend for his escape, as he hoped that the guard presence would be lower in the back alleys of the city.

  So far, he seemed to be right, although the teen spotted a few roaming units patrolling the dimly lit streets. He had of course given them a wide berth, not ready to test his luck against the trained militia.

  Valar knew that he would soon reach the sewer entrance. It was essentially his last chance of escape from the city, every other idea already struck down with prior attempts or just plain common sense. All other exits from the city were tightly guarded, and everyone would be checked at the gates. He would be blocked and escorted to the orphanage straight away, so a normal city exit wasn’t an option. He had played around with the idea of finding a hole in the wall or smuggling himself out too, but the boy simply didn’t have enough information to go on. That left the sewers…

  Even the idea of entering the city sewers in order to exit was absolutely disgusting. Every single ounce of filth the city with a population of one hundred thousand produced went straight to the sewers, where it flowed toward the purification plant outside the city. Valar had heard that the plant employed almost twenty mages to burn and purify the waste that entered the plant. Hiring that many mages was ridiculously expensive, as even bronze rank mages were somewhat rare in a city like Lyndale. The plant had multiple silver rankers on payroll. That meant that the city really needed to purify the waste, and that there was a lot of it…

  The teen dressed in ragged clothes supplied by the orphanage turned right to the alley he had been aiming for and finally spotted his only chance at escape. He stopped in his tracks, staring at the looming sewer entrance in front of him.

  "This is it, huh?"

  The entrance wasn’t a normal sewer grate used commonly throughout the city. Those were meant for only the entering waste, so squeezing through the grates of one would have proven impossible for the boy, even if he was as thin as a ghost. No, this was a standing entrance at the bottom of a stone staircase. The doorway was blocked by a reinforced wooden door, so getting through would’ve normally been impossible for an unawakened child. Valar had chosen this specific entrance for a reason, however.

  Some days ago

  In a situation that seemed to repeat itself almost daily, Valar was hiding from the other children of the orphanage. It had started with some of the other boys bullying him for his food after the matron left the dining hall, like always, and had ended with Valar running away with scraps, like always… This time he had actually managed to keep a piece of cornbread—a much higher bounty than what he usually ended up with.

  Valar’s furious chewing was interrupted by voices just on the other side of the smooth stone wall he was leaning against. They sounded different from the usual passerbys, that was for sure. Guards, I think.

  “The idiots patrolling the eastern district found a broken down sewer maintenance door! Can you believe it?” One of the guards laughed. “I mean, who the fuck would want to go break in there? I’m betting the sorry fuck thought it was a vault or something. Must’ve felt bad when he only found shit and rats down there!”

  Most of the guard unit joined in on the laughter but one of them—Valar guessed female by the voice—was more worried: “Shouldn’t we at least try to investigate who could have caused that? The sewers are one of the few ways someone could sneak in or out of the city.”

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  The whole group of guards only continued their laughter after their female colleague’s question.

  “Look, lassy. We are paid to patrol the city and prevent any crimes from happening on these streets. Frankly, at least I’m way too underpaid to start crawling in that waste to find any criminals”, a deep voiced man responded to the woman, his tone condescending. “Reyna, you’re free to go wade in waste, but the city will probably fix the breach in a week or so anyway. I can even take your guard shift tomorrow if you go in there for 10 minutes!”

  The guards’ laughing voices disappeared when they had walked further away from the wall, but Valar had heard enough.

  There was a chance that he could get free. Even if it was infinitesimally small, he just had to try it. Any chance to get out of the orphanage was worth everything to Valar.

  He wouldn’t stay in the orphanage for even a minute more than absolutely necessary. Not when they wouldn’t help him with his sickness. More like a curse, really…

  As Valar looked down the staircase, seeing the moonlit hallway filled with filth that was the sewers for the first time, he seriously doubted his own thoughts from a week ago. Sure, the orphanage didn’t feed him enough nor protect him from the relentless bullying of the other kids, but at least he didn’t need to spend his time practically swimming in sewage. Well, except when I last tried escaping. That was bad…

  The head matron had made him clean every single toilet of the whole orphanage. Of course that was only after he had been whipped as ‘discipline’, adding to the already extensive network of scars on his back. Yeah, there’s no way I’m going back there. I’d rather go down to the abyss and dine with the demons than meet that hag of a woman again. Besides, Valar’s choice seemed to be already made for him, as he started hearing approaching voices call for him.

  “Hey kid, just stop hiding and we won’t rough you up before escorting you back to the orphanage!” a clearly tired and increasingly angry female voice echoed down the neighboring street. “I swear to all the angeli above, this is the fourth time we’ve had to catch you! Everybody at the guard is fucking tired of this-”

  Valar didn’t wait for the woman to turn the corner and steeled himself for the suffering to come.

  Better days ahead…

  He rushed down to the sewers, not even sure if he believed himself, and tried to not breathe in through his nose when he entered the hallway. It did not help.

  As soon as he dove through the reinforced door, he hid behind it and snuck a glance through a crack in the door. The rancid smell of the city sewer system assaulted Valar’s senses, but he tried his best to ignore it. I need to focus and stay quiet. The smell was really bad, but he would be fine. Just don’t retch… Just. don’t. retch.

  Valar had fled from sight at a good time. A patrolling guard entered his vision only seconds after his entrance to the sewers. The muscular dark skinned woman walked with a torch in hand, holding her other hand against the handle of her baton. It was the kind of weapon that Valar was intimately familiar with and by no means interested to meet again.

  The curly haired guard looked around, her torchlit eyes sharp as an eagle's. Valar withdrew his gaze from the alley he had run from as swiftly as he could. He had heard that some warriors could sense when they were being looked at, and he wasn’t interested in getting spotted anytime soon.

  As Valar was leaning against the door, the woman’s brisk steps becoming weaker as she continued her patrol, a familiar feeling surfaced in his chest. Valar’s pupils dilated and his breathing became ragged as a scorching pain radiated out near his heart.

  Happy thoughts... It’ll go away soon like always. This pain was common, as he had suffered from it as long as he could remember. A searing, soul-deep pain that made him want to scream his lungs out. Hot coals burning in his chest, somehow deeper than even his own heart. It felt atrocious.

  Luckily, the pain never lasted for a long time, usually abating after only a few seconds. Although it has appeared more often lately… First thing when I get to another city, I’m going to find a competent healer.

  The burning pain was gone as fast as it appeared, Valar breathing a sigh of relief when he could move again. He stood there, leaning against the door for multiple minutes, just breathing. Without even realizing, tears had started to flow from his eyes. His hands trembled as he just tried his best to center himself against the memory of the pain. Better days ahead… There is a cure or some other help, I just know it. Because if there isn’t…

  The teenager shook himself, trying to rid himself of the bad thoughts. They didn’t help him, and neither would just standing around waiting to get caught. The orphanage hadn’t tried to help him, so he would have to find the cure himself.

  Valar started walking in the damp sewer, taking support from the wall to his right. He knew that he needed to go right, the nearest wall being that way. Hopefully he would find a suitable exit there, because honestly he didn’t have lots of options if this one failed.

  All his earlier escape attempts, save the first one, had gone wrong when he tried to navigate the complex city streets of Lyndale. The orphanage children basically never tried to escape, but those who tried always got caught at some dead end alleyway, their knowledge of the city failing them.

  Most just waited for a possible adoption or their awakening, but the difference was that they had actual hope to get adopted in the first place. Every single family that had visited the orphanage in the past had immediately dismissed Valar when they had heard about his ‘illness’. Nobody wanted a broken child, suffering from years of abuse and tormented by frequent attacks of burning pain.

  The head matron didn’t like that, considering Valar a burden on the whole establishment. In recent years, he had received less food, worse bedding and had been treated like shit on the side of the road. That’s when he had started his escape attempts—out of both options and patience.

  As Valar turned right on the next corner, he allowed himself a small chuckle. The first attempt had been laughable. The pain surfaced right when I climbed the wall… At least I improved with each attempt.

  He didn’t want to reminisce over the following days after his first try at escape, as they had not been fun to say the least. With how this attempt is going, I think this will be the last too. If only the smell wasn’t so revolting!

  Getting through the sewer system of Lyndale was tough work, but the distance to the city exit wasn’t long. Walking through the pitch black tunnel wasn’t even that hard, as he was going along the main sewer instead of the smaller tunnels that went to each house. Essentially, Valar just needed to walk along the wall, avoiding every turn to the best of his ability.

  As the boy progressed slowly through the pitch black sewer that was covered in waste, he stayed vigilant. The minutes dragged on, but he didn’t let up for a single second. He was too close to freedom to falter now.

  Eventually, his patience was rewarded.

  An exit! An actual exit from this shithole! Oh… Valar’s growing grin turned around to a frown, making his young face seem much older than his meager years. The exit was there, sure, but it was blocked. It was covered by a silhouette that signified that his days were fast approaching their end.

  The world of Aldun had many wonders, but at the cost of containing horrors that no common man wanted to meet. The plains outside the safety of city walls had beasts that could awaken just like humans. Beasts that gained strength above their station in life, able to kill even awakened humans with relative ease.

  One of those beasts stood in his way, its beady red eyes staring straight at him, promising death. Valar had found his first and last fight of his life. I guess it’s the end of the road for me. I wouldn’t have been mad if I could’ve lasted a bit longer, but I guess it’s nicer to die fighting than rot away in that prison.

  He chuckled to himself, shaking his head and balling his fists, ready to fight for his life... And most likely lose.

  “You’re one big son of a bitch aren’t you?” Valar yelled, his eyes wide from the sight before him. The beast he looked at shouldn’t have been eye level with him, its much smaller unawakened cousin a normal sight within the orphanage. Disgusting, gangly, squeaky bastards…

  He was about to be sent to the afterlife by a fucking sewer rat.