--The Child--

He knew he was being taken somewhere, but he honestly didn’t care anymore.

He had been taken from his mother earlier on this day and while he couldn’t fully understand that he had been sold, he knew that he had a new master.

The big man dragged him towards the other scary man, who the child could see was smiling while brandishing his left hand, which was glowing red with a mark in the form of a crude, jagged K.

The child involuntarily shivered and started struggling. The mark left him with an instinctive fear of what was to come but the moment he tried to shake himself out of the grasp of Jonan’s hand, it tightened around his wrist and he heard a sharp snap.

The child felt a wave of pain rushing from his wrist to the rest of body, causing him to groan loudly and fall onto the ground, his broken wrist still in the grasp of the thuggish man.

“Shit.” Jonan said.

Khrom’s veins bulged in his forehead as he glared at the man.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!?!?! You don’t fucking break the kid before we even sell him you shit!!!”

Jonan winced as he solemnly said “sorry sir.”

The child let out a yelp as he was hauled to his feet by Jonan and dragged towards Khrom, who still had his brand up.

Jonan raised the child and placed him right in front of Khrom. The child shivered and tried to run away again, only to be held in place yet again by Jonan.

Khrom, with a smile back on his face, placed his hand on the child’s right shoulder.

It made breaking his wrist feel like a walk in the park.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

A scorching wave of pain shot out violently from his shoulder to the rest of his body, burning, tearing, shredding, crushing and ripping everything along the way, tainting his entire world red.

The boy collapsed, his mind unable to bear the burden of being rewritten to obey whoever holds the mark.

--The slavers--

Jonan sighed.

“The kid’s pretty sharp. Most adult slaves don’t realise what’s going to happen to them when you bring them over to me, let alone a tiny boy who’s never left a cage before.”

Khrom stared at Jonan.

“Did you really have to break his wrist?”

“The kid’s surprisingly strong. He almost made me lose my grip even though he was supposed to never have been allowed to go outside before!” Jonan replied.

“Really? That might be even better then. Chances are the boy’s got a strong bloodline, and you know what that means right?”

Jonan sniggered, “more money.”

The child was then dragged to the holding cells next to the stage where he was unceremoniously dumped into a basin of freezing water, waking him up immediately.

Jonan told one of the slaves in charge of the cells to wash him and shave his hair off.

--The Child-- A few minutes later

He rubbed the back of his now bare head as he was being led up the stairs to the stage by one of the city owned slaves.

There was now an angry red brand with the letter K burned onto his right shoulder.

The slave in front of him opened up a trapdoor and pushed him on the stage. The child stumbled but managed to stay upright as hundreds of eyes locked on to him.

“Now we are presenting a young child found by Khrom Wex earlier on this day, who is said to have an incredibly high mana channeling affinity and a strong bloodline granting him abnormal strength! Starting bid is 50 bronze coins!” A tall, blond and slightly plump man was in charge of the bidding.

“55!”

“60!”

“65!”

“80!”

“Going once! Going twice! Going-”

“One silver coin!”

The crowd oohed and aahed as prices went up.

The child was looking around from his high spot on the stage, trying to ignore the fact that hundreds of people were staring at him like he was a delicious delicacy.

All of a sudden, he caught a blur with his eye travelling through the crowd unnoticed. He focused, and unknowingly, his eyes sharpened and the pupils slowly began difforming until he finally caught a glimpse of the person going through the crowd.

It was a tall, thickset man with a scar stretching diagonally from his hairline to the edge of his bottom lip and an evil gaze made worse by a demented smile that stretched unnaturally as he turned towards the child.

Meanwhile, the bidding was still going on.

“2 silver coins and 10 bronze coins!”

“2 silver coins and-!”

“1 gold coin.”

“Going once! Going twice! Going thrice! SOLD!”

The crowd went silent. The child looked at the person who was now his new master, and sure enough it was the man he had spotted before.

As the child was about to be escorted back down to the holding cells, the man suddenly appeared right in front of him, and growled at him.

“Come with me.”