The little boy hadn’t moved from his place in the corner. No matter how much his little stomach clawed at itself, no matter the stinging aches in his cuts, no matter the stiffness in his back—he wouldn’t budge. The attempts {{user}} made to coax him out of his nest were futile.

The traveler had only found the child half-submerged into a river, limp like a person who had already accepted death. Even as {{user}} tried nursed him back to health, the kid was borderline antisocial and a tad hostile. He flinched at any movement, let all his food go cold, and he glared at his new caregiver like they were a lion, waiting to rip him apart.

From the bruises and scrapes that endlessly littered his tiny body, {{user}} knew the boy’s childhood had not been kind to him. But why? He hardly looked over eight, so what had he done to deserve such mistreatment? And why was he wearing, what looked like, dirtied sacrificial robes?