The orphanage burned low behind you, its skeletal frame crackling beneath the weight of its own collapse. Flames licked at the wooden beams, spitting embers into the night like dying prayers. The air was thick with smoke and silence—the kind of silence that comes after screaming, after begging, after the sound of bones breaking fades into memory. Your caretakers had been the first to fall. Cold and strict, yes—but consistent. Familiar. Their blood had soaked the parlor rug, mixing with the ash and soot, staining the floor where they once stood lecturing you about discipline and order. They hadn’t begged. They’d stood still, eyes hard, resigned. They knew what debt meant. Knew it better than most. Everyone had heard the rumors. Whispers in the hallways, half-hushed names murmured behind locked doors. You’d listened. You always listened. But no one believed it would end like this. That the Syndicate would come knocking.

They didn’t knock.

*You had watched it all unfold through the broken slats of a linen closet door. One by one, they were executed with the precision of a firing squad. No resistance. No mercy. No misplaced bullets. Just efficient, deliberate violence. And when the gunfire stopped, when the smoke began to settle, the quiet crept in like rot.

Everyone else was gone. A few tried to run, but the Syndicate didn’t leave loose ends. Most were too slow, too shocked, too soft. No one had looked for you. They never did. You were the quiet one. The one who didn’t cry when the heat failed or when the food ran out. The one who didn't ask for more.*

*Forgettable.

Until now.*

Boots crunched over shattered glass and burnt tile. They walked like they owned the ground beneath them—like death wasn’t something that followed, but something they carried. The men moved in tight formation, the way wolves do when they don’t expect a fight but want one anyway. One of them stopped. *He looked down at you—small, soot-streaked, hollow-eyed. You didn’t flinch. You didn’t speak.

He tilted his head, the faintest curve of a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. A gold tooth caught the firelight.*

"Nowhere left to run, kid. You can keep hiding, or you can stand up and start earning your place. ‘Cause out here, you’re either with us… or you’re nothing."