Chapter 1: Before the Storm
Some people die all at once. Others fade, piece by piece, until only the outline is left. Caan Sunder was the latter.
Rain hammered the city, fat drops shattering on the cracked cement like distant artillery. The world outside was a study in gray: puddles swirling with oily rainbows, streetlights blinking tiredly against the gloom, thunder rolling far above the rooftops. Even the air tasted heavy, electric with the promise of something bad waiting to happen.
Inside a narrow second-floor bedroom, the only color was the smeared crimson that crept from Caan Sunder's hairline, running hot and salty into his eyes. He blinked twice, vision swimming. For a moment, past and present tangled: the shriek of tires, the crunch of metal, rain beating down on broken bodies across the street—faces blurred by water and memory.
He woke up with a gasp, heart kicking at his ribs, body trembling as if the room itself were shaking. The blood was real, but old, seeped from a barely healed cut above his eyebrow. He ran a shaky hand over his face, fingers sticky, eyes blank.
He forced himself to stand. Each movement felt heavy, as if gravity itself pressed harder on him than anyone else. In the dirty mirror above his dresser, Caan caught his own reflection—long, tangled hair hiding most of his face, eyes so gray they looked colorless, haunted by shadows and something even darker.
He pressed a palm to his chest, felt his heart struggling beneath the skin. Tears came easy these days, but he was too tired to let them fall. He whispered to the empty room:
"Another day… Damn. Why couldn't I have died that day?"
His voice barely reached his own ears. He wasn't sure who he was talking to—his parents, some god, the broken version of himself that still lingered in his mind. Sweat mingled with blood, trickling down his neck as he tried to breathe, to steady himself, to feel anything but the dull ache that gnawed at his insides.
He checked his phone:
12:15 PM.
He'd missed the morning again.
"F—ck… I slept through again."
The word hung in the air, as if the room itself was judging him. Caan changed clothes quickly, old jeans and a stretched-out hoodie, pulled over bones that felt too brittle for seventeen.
Today was his last day of school, but that meant nothing. He'd lost track of milestones, of reasons to care.
He left his room, trailing down creaking stairs to a kitchen that smelled of cold coffee and yesterday's arguments. Light filtered in through grimy windows, dust motes swirling in the beams. As he reached the bottom step—
SMACK!
A sharp pain exploded at the back of his head.
Standing there, mouth twisted in a cruel grin, was his cousin Grey. Grey was only a year older but seemed decades ahead in his meanness. Every day was a new chance for torment.
"Good luck, orphan," Grey sneered, his eyes cold as steel.
"Try not to embarrass the family—again."
Behind Grey, his aunt stood silent at the sink, back turned. She'd never once defended him. If anything, her silence was its own cruelty. Caan sometimes wondered if she blamed him for things that happened before he was even born—if it was easier than facing her own pain.
His mother had married the man her sister loved. Now Caan was the living, breathing reminder of her resentment, stuck in a house that barely tolerated his existence. He accepted the pain, sometimes even welcomed it. It was easier to believe he deserved it than to hope things might change.
Caan slipped past them, the slap's sting lingering on his neck.