Before power.
Before thrones, bloodlines, and hidden legacies.
Before the world trembled at the sound of his name.
There was only hunger.
Only cold.
And a boy named Elias, clinging to life in the ruins of a forgotten city.
The streets were narrow veins of filth and decay, crumbling under the weight of time and neglect.
The sky above was always gray, heavy with the stink of smoke and despair.
Hope had no place here — it had been stripped from the stones long ago, washed away by endless rain and human cruelty.
Among the refuse of the world, two figures moved: small, dirty, half-starved.
One had hair that might once have been silver, now matted and stained by mud and soot.
The other had tangled black hair, and a spirit somehow less dimmed despite the misery that pressed in from every side.
Elias and Levi —
two nameless, unwanted children.
They had no family.
No home.
No past worth remembering.
No future to dream about.
Only each other — and the relentless, grinding struggle to survive another day.
Each morning began the same:
the cold ache in their bones, the pang of hollow stomachs, and the knowledge that no one would feed them but themselves.
They scavenged among the refuse heaps behind butcher stalls and bakeries, fighting rats for scraps of moldy bread or gnawed bones.
When lucky, they found rotten fruits — soft, sickly sweet, but edible.
When unlucky, they found nothing at all.
It was on those nights, when the cold seeped into their very souls and the pangs of starvation drove tears from their eyes, that the city showed its true face —
merciless, vast, and utterly indifferent.
"Elias... I'm cold..."
Levi's voice, little more than a broken whisper, would tremble against the darkness.
"Me too," Elias would reply, his own voice dry and cracked.
But he would still drape his thin arm around Levi's shivering form, trying to give him warmth he didn't have.
Sometimes, they would talk to distract themselves from the gnawing pain.
"One day, we'll find a palace," Levi once said, his voice bright with childish stubbornness. "We'll eat roasted meat every night. We'll sleep on soft beds!"
Elias said nothing.
He didn't have the heart to crush Levi's dreams.
But he knew better.
He had learned early that dreams were dangerous — they made the cold sharper, the hunger worse.
Better not to hope.
Better to endure.
They were not alone in their misery.
There were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of other abandoned children roaming the alleys and crumbling ruins.
But hunger and desperation left no room for kindness.
Older boys, hardened by years of savage living, formed brutal gangs.
They controlled access to food sources, stealing from the weaker and punishing disobedience with fists and knives.
Elias and Levi learned quickly to stay away — to be shadows among shadows.
One mistake could mean losing the few crumbs they had scraped together.
Or worse.
There were moments when survival seemed almost impossible.
Once, during a bitter winter, they spent three days without finding a single mouthful of food.
The hunger gnawed at their insides like fire.
Their bodies grew so weak they could barely stand.
Even speaking became an effort.
It was during those days that Elias first tasted real despair.
Not the fleeting fear of a beating, or the sharp sting of a missed meal —
but the slow, heavy realization that death was not a distant threat.
It was near.
Waiting.
Patient.
They took shelter under a collapsed archway, the stonework blackened with soot.
The rain poured down, freezing cold, turning the muddy streets into rivers of sludge.
Elias pressed his back against Levi's, feeling the boy's body shudder with feverish chills.
"Hang on," he murmured, more to himself than to his friend. "Just hang on..."
But Levi didn't answer.
He was unconscious, his face pale and slick with sweat.
For hours, Elias sat there, wide-eyed, listening to the roar of the rain and the slow, labored rasp of Levi's breathing.
He could do nothing.
He had nothing to give.
The city offered no help.
The world offered no salvation.
Only survival — if he was strong enough.
If he was ruthless enough.
And somewhere deep inside, something twisted and hardened.
A silent vow etched into the marrow of his bones:
I will never be weak again.
I will never be at the mercy of others.
Even if it meant becoming something monstrous.
Levi survived that night.
Barely.
Elias had carried him — half-starved, half-dead — to a broken-down shelter where other orphans huddled like rats.
There, they stole bits of food meant for others, enough to keep Levi breathing.
It was an ugly, shameful victory.
But it was survival.
And survival was all that mattered.
As the years passed, Elias changed.
The boy who once dreamed of warm beds and feasts vanished.
In his place grew a creature of cold calculation —
sharp-eyed, silent, and ruthlessly practical.
He learned when to beg.
When to steal.
When to fight, and when to flee.
He learned that pity was a weapon — a mask to be worn when needed, discarded when it became a liability.
He learned that trust was a currency far too expensive to trade.
Only Levi remained at his side —
the last tether to whatever humanity still smoldered within him.
But even that bond would fray with time.
Because in a world ruled by hunger and cruelty, even love became a weakness.
There was no grand moment of transformation.
No single day where Elias declared, "I am no longer a child."
It was a thousand small deaths.
A thousand compromises.
Every meal stolen from another starving mouth.
Every lie told to survive another day.
Every betrayal necessary to cling to the edge of existence.
Each one carved away a piece of who he had once been —
until there was nothing left but iron will and frozen ambition.
Years later, when he would stand among kings and monsters, commanding fear and awe with a glance, Elias would sometimes remember these early days.
The hunger.
The cold.
The broken promises of a world that offered no mercy.
And he would smile — not with joy, but with grim understanding.
Because he had learned the truth while still a child:
Mercy is a lie.
Hope is a trap.
Only strength endures.
Only strength can carve meaning into a cruel, indifferent world.
And he would become strong enough that no god, no monster, no fate could ever again drag him into the mud.