01 - Beginning

The wind whistled through the wet grass and swayed the large oak tree that shadowed the small grave.

I knelt at the base of the tree, the flowers I brought were now long forgotten.

Father knelt next to me, his face stoic as ever.

The grave was engraved with the names of my mother and sister.

They had both died to the brone infection over a year ago.

Father hasn't been the same since they died, he once smiled and laughed and now our family was grey and dull.

He had dipped into pure depraved grief when Mother died and nearly drank himself into a early grave.

It was the first time I had ever seen Father cry.

The top of the oak tree swayed gently in the wind, birds chirped in the air and the soft smell of dew hung in the air like a blanket.

Father and I rose and I brushed off the few strands of grass of my knees.

Father poured out a small cup of orange juice for sister and a cup of sake for Mother.

We both bowed and then left the cemetery.

-

Our house was a small wooden building in the slums of the Makoko district. It was just large enough for me and Father and yet it still felt empty and bare.

The photos of our family had been mostly taken down in the two rooms that the house had.

I had my space on the roof.

It was hard to clamber up there, through twisting clothes lines and wooden spikes.

But once you got up, it was a clear area covered with a cloth rug I had stolen from a merchant years ago.

You could hear the sounds of the streets from below and the scuttling of people in the neighbouring slums.

I collapsed onto the floor and pulled my diary from underneath a crooked floorboard.

Every since Mother died, I had been keeping a diary.

I flipped it open and began writing about the day's events.

I would normally wake up and then eat the leftover food from dinner, then I would visit the closest Protector.

Protectors were just the fancy name for the crime lords in the area, the one that watched over this small sliver of the slums was called Gyuno

He had a reputation for his goodwill.

We had lucked out and he only requested food and money from his 'subjects'. The city I lived in had dozens of Protectors.

They were untouchable by the police as they made sure that crime would not become too serious and in turn the police would stay out of their major operations.

They would make sure that slave-trade and high-end drugs could not enter the city and left the police to deal with the occasional murder and drug bust.

Sometimes the police would stumble upon a stolen Echo from a noble clan.

Echo's were these engraved runic spheres that allowed the user to cast magic, the rumour stated that the King had taken these spheres from a ancient ruin.

Magic.

The dream of every slum boy, unfortunately, the King only gifted them to noble families and their direct children.

The other nobles had to deal with smaller and weaker versions of Echos called Calls.

Echos allowed to 'project' magic, so you could have ranged attacks.

Calls only allowed for the strengthening of various body parts. Each Echo and Call aligned with a certain element: Fire, Wind, Water or Air.

Sometimes one might find a Echo aligned with a "High Element": Gravity, Magma, Shadow or Ice.

But those would be gifted to the royal family only.

I scribbled the days events upon the diary and then fell into bed.