A young boy awoke from a deep slumber, his eyes fluttering lightly before suddenly opening completely. It was a pair of gray eyes, completely devoid of any form of color and disturbingly clean.

Flickering around, the eyes looked around for a few moments before the boy finally sat up with a deep sigh, containing nothing but exhaustion and sadness despite having just woken up for the day.

As he sat up, his smooth silver hair could be seen, though it was messy and tangled currently. In fact, his whole body was in bad condition, as bruises decorated his skin all over his body, along with several scrapes and even a few cuts. Several of his wounds were swollen and painful, but he didn’t seem to react to the pain.

He went to remove his bed covers, wincing in pain as bruises all over his body became irritated from the movements.

But still, he managed and got the cover off, showing that his left shin was broken. The bone had a makeshift splint, made solely of a metal rod and a bunch of wraps holding the bone and the rod in place together. It wouldn’t be a very effective splint, but it didn’t matter.

Across the rest of his body were similar bruises to his chest and face, and it was clear that he was in immense pain every time he moved. Yet he pushed himself through it somehow and got out of bed using two makeshift crutches that his mother had made for him.

He then went to the bathroom and sat down in the water which his mother had prepared for him after taking off his clothes.

Feeling the hot water, it allowed his body to relax a little bit, and some of the dirtiness of his body washed away as he simply relaxed for a few minutes.

Time passed and he began to feel sleepy again, drifting in and out of consciousness intermittently.

“Gray! Breakfast is ready!” Finally, he heard his mother call for him, taking him out of this state and causing him to get out of the water.

The boy, whose name was Gray, slowly dried himself off and put on some clothes, which were made of scrappy materials and were essentially beginning to fall apart. They were a pale tan in color, as simple as could be. And on them, he put a single bronze star.

This bronze star represented his rank and strength, and he was at the very bottom. He had been born with a condition that made his bones weaker and his muscles more likely to tear, meaning he could die very easily. Even just raising his heart rate too high could kill him. He had fought this condition his entire life, just recently managing to barely reach an average standard for strength.

However, that had all fallen apart after the death of his sister, whom he cared for more than anyone in the world. Her death was nothing short of the worst thing that had ever happened to him, and everything about him fell apart after she left, like a tower losing its bottom floor supports.

Everyone around him saw him crumbling after losing her support, and instead of helping him, all they ever did was make everything worse.

Each and every day, even before her death, he had been beaten up, mocked, and humiliated. However, after her death, they went even further, breaking bones, leaving cuts, and mocking him for being unable to protect his sister.

Each time this happened, a surge of anger took over his mind and he went berserk, attacking the one who had insulted her crazily, like a rabid beast. And the others loved to use this as an excuse to beat him even further. The rate at which his life went downhill after her death couldn’t even be described. All he could do now was to recover, forced by his mother to stay inside the house.

She knew that if he went outside again, he would likely get himself killed. But she couldn’t really stop him either, as she was mostly away during the day at her job. After all, she had to earn money to keep supporting them both.

Gray’s father had been out of the picture since he was no more than two years old, and they had heard news that he had died just a couple years later, nothing more than a drunkard who had gotten into a bar fight.

With his sister gone and Gray himself incapable of earning money due to his condition, his mother was forced to take the burden of both of them on her own. If there wasn’t a monthly allowance given to poor children by the city, they would’ve already lost the house and been stranded on the streets. This rule was in place since children were incapable of making money, and it was to encourage them to get stronger.

It was a crutch to just keep them alive long enough to see if they were worth keeping alive. Gray had seen through this long ago, but he didn’t really care since it was the only reason he was still alive in the first place.

Since it had kept him alive, he held no right to complain.

But ultimately, it wouldn’t be long before he died at this point, even without the beatings and mockery by the others. His body was literally failing him one piece at a time. It wasn’t just his leg that was broken: he also had several broken ribs.

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As he went out to eat, he felt like every step would kill him. It was even harder to use his crutches since his entire body was weak, with his arms being unable to properly bear his weight and feeling like they were going to tear just from using them to stand.

As he got to the dining room, his mother looked at him with pity. However, she quickly hid her emotions and looked back to the food she was cooking, which was just some simple vegetables and eggs. This was all they could afford, and it was all they ate every day.

As he sat down, Gray let out a grunt of pain. He seemed to fall back into the chair as he leaned his crutches against the table.

Beginning to eat, he fell into a strange trance, the pain causing him to begin losing consciousness. But he snapped out of it as he began to cough, causing a sharp pain to radiate from his broken ribs.

As he coughed, he felt like he was dying, spitting up a mouthful of blood and going pale. His heart felt like it was going to tear itself apart from how hard it was beating, and he couldn’t even move after he was done coughing. He just sat there, his head in his arms, feeling like he was dying.

His mother couldn’t even bear to face him, tears rolling down her face. They both knew he would die within a couple days, but there was nothing either of them could do. They had no money whatsoever for treatment, and neither of them had any ability in medicine.

“When will this end?” His voice was weak and raspy, sounding like he had ground up his throat with a rock.

Hearing him, his mother choked, her head falling as tears continued to fall. “I don’t know. Just… try to keep going. Please. I can’t lose you too.”

She was literally begging him, feeling useless. She felt as if she couldn’t even care for her family properly, as if she was a failure of a mother.

He knew how she felt. After all, it was exactly how he felt about the death of his sister. He felt powerless to stop it, powerless to the forces he couldn’t meddle with, powerless to those who could walk all over him every day and not even notice.

“I’m going back to bed. I can’t eat any more.” Saying this, he stood up and limped back to his bedroom, laying back down in his bed. His thoughts consisted of what they always did recently.

‘What if I was stronger. What if I could’ve done something? What if we weren’t poor?’ Questions like these flashed through his mind as he thought about the whole situation. Just at the peak of his life, when he had finally made something of himself, everything came tumbling down so quickly that he couldn’t even stop it.

And yet he didn’t even have the courage to accept his fate, feeling like there was still something to be done. And so he pushed himself and forced himself to stay alive, just for a little longer.

With these thoughts, he drifted to sleep, shivering in his sleep as nightmares haunted him.

…

Later, he was awakened to a massive booming sound that was so loud it nearly blew out his eardrums, shaking the entire house.

He sat up rapidly, covering his ears as the sound rippled through his body, making it feel like it was going to fall apart.

After the pain from the sound faded, he was reminded of his broken rib as he spat out another mouthful of blood.

He quickly tried to stand up, taking his crutches and hobbling as well as he could outside, nearly falling several times.

And just as he was getting to his door, another boom sounded, leading him to grunt in pain as he was unable to cover his ears.

Opening the door and stepping outside, he was assaulted by an endless booming of lightning as everywhere he looked, bright flashes went across the sky.

The two booms he had just heard were within a few tens of feet of his house, and had struck the other houses, causing minimal destruction but still massive sounds.

Looking around, he was astonished by the level of destruction as he stumbled out, completely unable to understand what was happening.

All at once, this massive storm had come out of nowhere. People were in the streets running for their lives as spiderwebs of lightning spread through the entire sky. The heavy and thick clouds made it dark as night, while the lightning was blindingly bright.

All at once, just as Gray was staring at the horrifyingly massive webs of lightning, a downpour started as a wave of water fell so quickly and with so much power that he was knocked over in a second, dropping his crutches and almost passing out.

As he brought his head back up, another bolt of lightning struck just in front of him, throwing him backwards violently. The lightning then spread through the ground and even went through him, shocking his whole body and causing massive amounts of damage.

The bolt had been so bright that it had blinded him temporarily, and he couldn’t see anything except the constant flashes in the sky. He couldn’t even hear anything, as his eardrums had burst from the sound.

He tried to look around, his eyes, nose, and ears bleeding. A lot of his flesh had been mangled, and blood was dripping all over his body. All he could do was see the flashing of the sky and feel the pulsing of the air. All he could do was lay there, breathing. And even that was extremely difficult, blood trickling down from his mouth constantly.

But all of a sudden, everything vanished. Flashing stopped, the pulsing subsided, and everything went still. Everyone around was still seeking shelter, but Gray felt a sudden frizzy feeling in the air, as if his hair was standing all over his body and even inside it.

All at once, he saw silent flashes in the sky as the lightning gathered, gathered, and gathered, collecting into a single lightning bolt which seemed to be guided towards something by some godly power.

And then, all at once, the largest lightning bolt to have fallen in this momentary storm came crashing down upon his body, turning nearly rainbow in color as it did so.

And that was the last thing Gray remembered.