The walls of the poorly made wooden house cracked as Revan leaned against it. People in dirt-covered clothing—which he also wore—were engaging in their daily lives; they were doing hard labour to make very little money to survive. He narrowed his eyes to the concrete walls separating the slum dwellers from the city folk. Stationed on top and around it were protectors wearing white armour over their clothing of the same colour along with a white sash around their waist. One of them noticed that he was staring at them so he quickly turned away.

The only thing that was different between the people in the slums and city was simply a mark. Those who had it were allowed to enter and exit freely. Those without it were left here to suffer.

Bruised children that were missing teeth came towards him, holding out their hand as they pleaded for spare food. His jaw tightened, he could feel the weight of his heart rate increasing, but he remained silent until they left. It was all he had for today, he could not give it away. The wind gently blew his long messy black hair forward.

Just as he was about to head back home, he saw a few friends of his walking down the road. They were led by the reckless Golias, something bad was bound to happen with him incharge. He, along with Charles—a close friend of Golias—were carrying metal poles.

Golias was a boy only two years older than him—he was sixteen. Yet he was immature and always picked fights with the local gang. Even then, every one of his plans always managed to succeed with only a few mistakes.

He followed the group without their knowledge of it. Getting involved with them was not something he had in mind for today, but he could not just leave them to get in trouble. They were still young and lacked the numbers to go against the gang. He needed to talk Golias out of this.

He turned his attention to the two thugs with skull tattoos and masks. The crowd avoided getting anywhere near their way; you usually would not want to cross their paths unless of course, you were looking for trouble.

The leader between the two appeared to be the one bearing cut scars and holding a small piece of diamond. The imbecile was playing around with the rich rock like it was a toy, throwing it in the air like it was a ball. His friend smirked as he eyed down a woman.

They took a turn into the empty alleyway—probably to avoid too much attention. Golias and his small group followed the scumbags. Reckless idiots. Revan could not let them get into too much trouble so he followed them just in case.

“We’ve been ambus—!”

He was too late, as a fight had already broken out. Golias had knocked out the weaker one with his metal pipe. Charles however, could not deal fully with the leader, who took a clean blow on his head, but only went down on his knees.

“Shit,” Charles muttered.

Revan heard the sound of a gun in front of him as it flew by his head. Charles had a bullet hole on his upper torso; he desperately tried to cover the wound where the blood was leaking out. He eventually fell to the floor due to the bloodloss.

“Sorry for being weak… Golias.”

The leader fired another shot into the center of the dying child’s chest causing Charles’ breathing to slowly decrease until ultimately it had completely stopped. His eyes remained open to haunt his friends who were all still alive. The other two could not process this well, but Golias…

“You murderer! You don’t deserve to breathe!”

Golias smashed his pipe repeatedly on the killer. Blood and teeth scattered everywhere, but he did not stop. Even when the thug lost his last breath, his friend did not stop. Revan could hear the crowd gossiping in the background. Even with the sound of a bullet was not enough for these people to run?

“What happened to Charles?” Vanessa’s face was expressionless. The long hair redhead could not process the idea that her friend just died. Her reaction to certain events tended to be slow when things that mattered to her were taken away. She looked down upon the corpse of her friend, to which she responded with a loud wail.

At that time, Golias had stopped beating the dead skull. His shaking hands were covered in blood and his breathing was rapid. He checked the pulse of Charles to

“He’s… gone. There was nothing I could do, but avenge him.”

“You shouldn’t have picked this fight in the first place! Now he’s dead!” she ranted while wiping off the tears off her face..

“You wouldn’t understand what I’m trying to accomplish here.”

He turned his back on them. Role, the fatter kid cowered behind Vanessa, who looked worried for Golias rather than angry. Revan heard their conversations by hiding behind a dumpster—he did not want them to see him at this time, so he watched them as the crowd also did.

Unfortunately for them, four adult men wearing skull masks and carrying metal bats passed by Revan. These ones look tougher and stronger than the two before, probably even well trained. They had come to learn what caused the commotion. It was their territory after all. One of them in particular looked as if he had his fair share of battles—he was covered in scars all over his body.

He looked at the three with a devilish smile and shouted, “Grab ‘em boys!”

His men darted to Golias at full speed. Their intent was malicious judging by how savage their movement was. Revan’s friends tried to escape, but Role, the slowest of the three, was easily caught and battered by two of them. They did not show any signs of going easy on them.

Role’s screams resounded throughout the entire area, enough to frighten the crowd away. Golias did not try to retreat. Instead he charged straight at the leader and swung his pipe at the man’s neck. The skull leader had blocked it easily with his bat and then he smashed the boy’s face with enough force to break his nose. Vanessa, despite being the fastest of all of his friends was easily captured; she stopped as she noticed her friends got caught, leading to the last thug clutching her. She could not fight at all and could barely struggle to break his grip on her.

“Oi boys! Don’t kill ‘em. Boss ’ll probably need the fresh meat for something at least,” the leader ordered the rest to pick up the three to carry back to their base. “He’ll probably want to know what happened to his personal favourite.”

Revan, still hiding behind the dumpster, watched as the thugs abducted his friends. There was nothing he could do, but pretend he was not one of them. One of them batted an eye at him, but he shrugged him off as a bystander.

As soon as they were not in sight, Revan slammed his hand on the wall behind him—it hurt, but the pain of doing nothing hurt more. Why am I so weak?” he asked himself. It would not have mattered either way, yet he wished it would.

Revan walked through the refreshing forest near his home—that was in the blood territory rather than the skull territory, which was considered the worst of the four. It would always be his go to place to cope with his miserable life.

Yet he could not forget this time. Charles was dead and the others were next. But here he was enjoying the fresh air, free from the skulls. He felt like shit. There really was nothing he could do, the marked only cared for themselves so they were no help and the people obeyed them.

Was he in the wrong though? A fight with no chance of winning? What else is there to do, but run? What could he possibly gain by staying and fighting? He could have grabbed the gun and crossed the line of taking a life for his friends? They may do much worse things to them when they were caught so why would they not deserve to die? He just needed to pull the trigger?

“Shut up!!” he shouted as he slammed his fists on a tree.

I feel better now. That guilt affected me more than I needed. Charles is dead, but that doesn’t mean I can’t get revenge for him. He would’ve wanted us to take back this town from the skulls. And I’ll do exactly that. Somehow…

He suddenly noticed something strange next to him. A gigantic tree that covered a large area in shade was right in front of him. He did not notice such a thing before, how could one miss something so big?

“Was that tree always there?”

It was at this moment that something unusually happened. An eyeball popped out from within the tree. He could not believe it. He could not even process what was going on at this very moment. It looked too real to doubt.

Before he could even think of running, the eye marked him on his forehead before he could get away. The mark was a symbol of a grey gear. He could not tell why, but after that, he felt too sickly to remain standing. His eyes had closed as he lost too much of his consciousness to keep him awake.

He awoke. As he did, he met eyes with a boy—younger than him— with crimson short hair. He remained silent for a second to think of a question to ask him.

“What are you doing?”

The crimson-haired kid did not answer, he only shifted his view to the large tree nearby. Revan stood up as we watched the boy take out a sketchbook to draw something. Revan did not notice this before, it had turned to noon, which meant to him that he had been sleeping for a while.

“Must’ve been asleep for a few hours. Wait! Where’s the eye that was on the tree branch!?” Revan shouted, remembering what happened before he was rendered unconscious. To his surprise, the crimson haired boy turned towards him in an instant.

“You can see it as well?” He questioned.

“The eyeballs? I saw them and then it did something to me. Do you know what it is?” Revan asked the boy. He was focused on the answer of the crimson haired boy who looked at him nervously.

He hesitated at first, but finally opened his mouth, “They’re called Guardians. A being in your head that gives you superpowers in exchange for your name. And I think our lives are about to change for the better.”

Revan looked at the boy to see if he was joking, but the determination on his face said otherwise. He was sceptical about what he had just said, but all of that doubt was destroyed in an instant.

Yeah, the redhead is right, said a tired voice in his head. The moment he heard that, he blinked repeatedly to see if it was a dream, but it was one he could not wake up from. A dream called reality. Something you can never escape from no matter how hard you try. Reality however took a great turn for Revan.

“Teach me more.”