Beyond The Rules

You came back, but no longer believed rescue was ever luck.

He didn't remember being taken.

He only remembered the smell—smoke, oil, something bitter—and the sound of unfamiliar footsteps.

The alley he woke up in was wet. Not from rain, but from something sticky and foul that seeped through the cracks of old crates. A rat ran past his hand. He didn't flinch.

He didn't know where he was. He only knew that for the first time, no one called him "feral."

They called him "boy."

And then they sold him.

**

The woman who handed over the money didn't look cruel. She wore thin gold-rimmed glasses and had neat gloves. But she never looked at him. Not once.

Instead, she inspected a clipboard and said:

"Six months. No marks. No noise. That's the deal."

And just like that, he was traded. Not like an object.

Objects get receipts.

He didn't.

**

He lived in a small, locked room. It smelled of lavender and bleach.

Every night, a different man would knock and speak through the door—tests, questions, numbers, readings.

Every morning, the woman in glasses asked him what he remembered. She smiled when he lied.

She never asked about his name.

And so, he stopped asking, too.

**

One day, the knock on the door was heavier.

The woman wasn't alone.

A man stood beside her—tall, sharp-suited, his presence suffocating without saying a word.

Elric didn't need to be told who he was.

He had imagined this moment so many ways. In most of them, he ran into his mother's arms.

In one, she had already forgotten him.

In another, she had sold him.

What he didn't expect—was to be offered a deal.

**

"You come with me now," Mr. Zane said quietly.

"No questions. No noise. And you don't speak of where you've been."

Elric said nothing.

Not because he didn't want to speak,

But because he no longer believed that being rescued meant being saved.

He followed.

But he wasn't whole.

Part of him had been left behind—

something still locked behind that door:

quiet, conditioned, and unfinished.

[Chapter Prologue]

Some trades are done in silence.

Some children come back—but not all of them return.