The slums breathed in restless sleep.
The stillness from earlier trembled now, almost imperceptibly, as if the ruins themselves held their breath, sensing the shift before it arrived.
Moments before the Church of Dreams was due to descend, a ripple of wrongness swept the cracked streets. It was not the heavy, floral rot of the Church's approach. This presence was different—sharp, alive, and cold as the shadow between two flames.
At the main entrance to the slums, between a shattered stone arch and a broken iron gate, a figure materialized without sound.
A man.
He wore a long black coat that swallowed the light, the hood drawn low over his face. His boots made no noise on the gravel. For a heartbeat, he stood there, unmoving, the dying sunset glinting off the subtle silver embroidery that crawled along his sleeves—runes of old, sharp with meaning.
Then, like smoke pierced by wind, his shape shimmered—and in a blink, he was gone.
In his place stood a commoner: rough-spun shirt, patched trousers, weathered boots. His eyes, however, remained the same. Piercing. Ancient. Tired.
He walked deeper into the slums witThe man had a purpose.
He was not here for the Church. He did not kneel to their dreams or their nightmares. His gaze swept the narrow alleys, the bruised buildings, the faces of the forgotten. He was searching—for something, or someone.
Hidden talents. Sparks buried under ash.
He moved like a ghost among the ragged children and weary souls. His hands flickered once, forming a subtle pattern in the air—an old technique, lost to most: the Sight of Inner Flame. Through it, he glimpsed more than flesh and bone. He saw potential. Threads of fate woven too tightly, hearts burning too bright for this broken place.
Most shivered and turned away from him. Some hissed insults, clutching at their meager possessions.
Then he saw him.
The boy.
Riku.
Even in stillness, the boy's spirit crackled—fierce, ragged, stubbornly alive. It wasn't refined, not yet. But it was there, a sharp ember smoldering against the suffocating The man studied him longer than the others.
He found a few more scattered embers, other children whose eyes still carried fragments of something unbroken. Quietly, he approached them, one by one, voice calm and low.
"Will you walk with me? Will you become my disciple?"
The answers came back sharp, bitter, almost unanimous.
"No."
"Get away, freak."
"We're waiting for the Dreamers."
Even the bravest among them spat at the ground near his feet. They had been fed stories, promises—visions of bliss under the Church's smoke-veiled lanterns. They couldn't see the man's offer for what it was: freedom, raw and jagged.
Their fear made them blind.
All but one.
When he came to Riku, the boy didn't shy away. Didn't spit. Didn't smile either. His gaze was steady. Measured.
"I'll only decide," Riku said quietly, "after we trade a few blows."
The man's lips curved upward—not in mockery, but something close to respect.
He hadn't even asked the boy's name. It didn't matter yet. "Very well," the man said, his voice like the first rumble of an oncoming storm. "Boy, let's fight. In the deepest part of the slums, where no eyes will interrupt."
Riku nodded once.
No bravado. No wasted words.
They met in the ruins of an old marketplace where the sky barely reached, choked by leaning towers and torn awnings. The air was thick with old dust and silence.
Riku moved first.
Fast.
Not like a street brawler—something sharper, more deliberate. He had learned to survive in the cracks of a dying world. His fists came swift and sure, his body coiled like a spring.
The man didn't move.
Not until the last moment.
Then, a whisper of motion—faster than thought—and a palm touched Riku's head.
Not even a strike. Just a touch.Pain exploded through Riku's body—not sharp, but total, like every part of him had suddenly forgotten how to stand, how to fight, how to be. His legs buckled. The last thing he saw before darkness swallowed him was the man's hood falling back slightly, revealing hair the color of burnt silver and a gaze that burned straight through the soul.
He awoke to a dim light.
The man sat beside him on a broken bench, arms crossed, eyes watching the sky through a gap in the ruins.
"You have strength," the man said softly, not looking down. "But more importantly... you have stubbornness. That's rarer."
Riku sat up slowly, his head aching where the man had touched him.
"I still haven't answered," Riku rasped.
The man turned, his face in half-shadow. For the first time, his voice warmed—barely.
"You already have."
Riku stared at him for a long moment. Then he exhaled, something between a sigh and a laugh.
"Fine," he muttered. The man's smile broke across his face—not the hollow kind born from habit, but a fierce, gleaming thing, raw with pride.
The way a smith might grin when, after endless failures, he draws from the forge a blade that sings to his hand.
"You'll need a new name," he said, voice low, carrying the weight of old traditions and distant mountains. "A name that will bind the first stone of your true self."
He stood, the folds of his coat whispering against the dust, and extended his hand—not as a master to a servant, but as one soul offering to lift another from the abyss.
"From this moment," he declared, "you shall be called Pretz."
The name hung between them, sharp and unfamiliar, like a sword newly drawn from its scabbard.
For a breath, Riku—no, Pretz—felt it thrum against his bones. Alien, yet right.
The ashes of who he had been stirred, and something bright and fierce awoke in their place.
Not a nameless stray.
Not a piece of debris the world had forgotten.
But something made, something chosen.
With a grunt that was half defiance, half acceptance, Pretz reached out and clasped his master's hand.
In that simple grip, a bond was forged—one that neither slum, nor church, nor death itself could easily break.be your disciple."
But at the same time riku thought for a moment why pretz.it reminds me of pretzels.oh waiit is this man going to deceive me and eat me? Nah this couldn't happen