The melancholic breeze of autumn blew throughout the bustling city, while the brush of the heavens painted the mortal canvas of a gray sky. Raindrops dripped off the wet paint and slowly fell onto the concrete sidewalks. Most took out an umbrella while going through the hustle and bustle of their average day, some however, liked to embrace this feeling. A solitary life is a scary one, as it could easily get addictive.

Kezner gently grazed his fingers against the blinds to check the weather outside, it was perfect weather, well in his books it was. The heavy drops of rain crashed on the mortal lands in order to quench its thirst for life. Grabbing his old pair of shoes and a gray hoodie that matched his dust-gray hair, he prepared to go outside.

Leaving his decently sized apartment, Kezner had decided on visiting his favorite place during weather like this. It was a quiet secluded spot in the local park, whether it was fate or not, it was one of the places in the city where the Black Flame Incident didn’t affect it. Whether he enjoyed it for its seclusion or its reminder, he didn’t know.

When reaching the sidewalk, Kezner’s pace adjusted to the surrounding bustle, moving right along the sidewalk traffic, walking by all the open shops and happy faces, Kezner felt satisfied that he lived in such a lovely neighborhood.

It was during this time when Kezner fell out of his daze, he couldn’t help but sigh in guilt, the streets weren’t bustling, there were no cars, or people for that matter. Most of the buildings were still under reconstruction in this area, barely anyone lived here. But sometimes, if he just focused on the silence of the splattering raindrops, he could see a city of what once was and not what is. His fault.

The lives reaped by a single flame, a flame that had been lit, but who was truly to blame in that situation, how could he have known, what could he have done?! “It wasn’t my fault, it truly wasn’t!” But it was.

His footsteps quickened with each thought, his breathing deepened as he recalled it, those flames... but he quickly stopped, he let it go. He couldn’t keep living like this. One of these days he might not, but only under the condition that he didn’t live. Stopping these thoughts from trailing on, Kezner tried distracting himself by looking at the surrounding scenery.

When arriving at the local park, he noticed that the trees started to shed their fiery coats. You could sense the newly approaching autumn in the air, you could feel it in the leaves and smell it in the rain. The only thing that Kezner disliked about the rain during autumn was that the leaves weren’t crunchy when stepped on, and only got stuck to the bottom of his shoes.

Stepping onto the muddy grass, it dawned on him that he made a mistake, he was wearing sneakers and he was about to walk in thick mud that would easily dry, “Shit.” was his only thought as his mind went blank. “I’ll buy new ones later, is that sale still going on...?”

Deciding to valiantly continue on this muddy trail, knowing full well that these sneakers could only be used for another day or two before being thrown away anyways. He already stepped on the mud, he would just use them for work tomorrow and after that cut his losses. Ordering things online took overnight to ship, it was no big deal to have a new pair of sneakers ready by tomorrow morning if he ordered it tonight.

A strong gust of wind blew as it ruffled his gray hair, although very rare, wasn’t too outlandish compared to others with hair of varying colors. If anything, he had some of the most distasteful hair on the entire planet, it was currently in style to be born with brightly colored hair, such as red, orange, yellow, and green. Honestly, he quite liked his hair and its color, it was part of him, his identity, his ability, his past, so he felt like he was destined to stick with the color gray.

His heavy steps dragged on the soft mud, where he finally made it out of the muddy death trap, and found his favorite spot, on a boulder. This boulder was the tallest and most secluded boulder in the entire park, best of all, there was a massive tree growing on the boulder, giving lots of shade and leaving an area of the boulder almost completely dry.

Obviously today it wouldn’t be as dry since this massive tree also started to shed its red and orange leaves, but when did a little rain hurt? Kezner loved the rain, it was peace within the madness, the stillness within the movement, the quiet within the loud, it was his past within the future.

The boulder was ingrained within the ground, so it was more like a slope where at one side you can walk up while the other side was about 10ft tall. The tree that was growing in the boulder gave it an even more grand appearance, especially with this rainy and foggy weather.

The towering feeling was honestly one of the best parts about it, but the best feeling was when you climbed up the tree that managed to greet the gods. For a moment, just a single moment, if you stayed silent and closed your eyes, if you stayed within the peace and stillness, you would be able to breathe the air of the heavens, all for just a single moment.

Deciding to take a nap rather than sit around and brood about his life for a few hours, Kezner climbed the gigantic tree. He was simply tired and bored of his regular consistent schedule, he wanted to shake up what he did a little. Little did he know that this little “spice” in his life would quite literally change everything.

The roots of the tree had melded into the boulder as if they were the same entity, living together in harmony, as if man hadn’t touched its novelty. With his strength, climbing a tree this tall was an easy task, he had always wanted to do it but was too lazy to try, but now felt like the perfect time to do so. When reaching a long and thick branch that could hold three times his size, he just laid down on it, unafraid of falling.

Staring up to the rolling gray clouds that dropped the tears of heaven on to himself, Kezner raised his arm, trying to reach the free clouds in envy. If life was unfair to everyone, then wouldn’t it technically be fair? The thing is, life was only unfair to those who needed fairness the most, to those who relied on it for survival.

And with that, his vision slowly darkened as he continued staring at the never ending gray clouds, the gray clouds that had ascended, the gray clouds that were enslaved to their freedom. Not even the loudest thunders or the brightest lightning would wake him up from his nap, trust me, it tried.

The nap only lasted about two hours, not long considering the day was still very young, only about 1pm. Waking up well rested and with a little more energy, the bags from sleep deprivation seemed to go away. Looking down the tree, he noticed that someone was underneath, a young woman with lilac-colored hair in a ponytail. He felt as if that hair color was familiar and he saw it somewhere recently, he just couldn’t put his finger on it.

“She must really be into art if she’s painting in the rain.” She was holding a paintbrush and a palette while standing in front of a canvas. In all honesty, Kezner never understood the thought process of the artsy types, but he held nothing against them. Artists and entertainers were as important to any civilization as the businessmen and politicians.

Kezner was quite curious as to what the young woman who appeared to be his age was painting. Curiosity was exhibited by almost every semi-intelligent creature to exist, it was a blessing that allowed creatures to mentally improve and adapt, but it could be a curse that could get the creature killed.

Not wanting to stay up at the tree any longer, Kezner was planning on going down, but he didn’t want to startle the person down there. If he jumped down at that angle, he might accidentally fall on her, possibly accidentally injuring her if she wasn’t strong enough. That was the quick option, but he could also just climb down, which he eventually did.

Slowly climbing down, he didn’t make a sound as to not bother her, he was just being considerate. On top of that, for all he knew, she was probably some heir to an affluent Family or Clan, there was no need to get on her bad side. Maybe the gods wanted to spit on him while he had dirt in his eyes, but just as he had taken the final step, his foot made a loud squishing sound from the mud on the bottom of his sneakers.

This had startled the young woman out of her daze, as she frowned and jumped back to see who was trying to speak up on her. “Who are you and what are you doing here?!”, her yelling’s tone had a heavy amount of arrogance and disdain. It was this tone that pissed him off, he didn’t know what it was about it, but it released an instinctual anger towards her.

“It doesn’t matter who I am, I was here before you, so I should be asking what you’re doing here.” Kezner’s monotone voice wasn’t enough to be as overbearing as her, but it wasn’t quiet enough to lose ground. He wouldn’t go out of his way to start a fight but he wouldn’t back out of one either.

“How… dare you?! Hmph, you probably don’t know who I am, so I’ll give you a chance to grovel and beg for forgiveness, so don’t mess it up.” Arlean put her paintbrush and palette down as he crossed her arms in front of her chest with a smirk on her face, expecting Kezner to finally realize who she was...

Sadly for her, Kezner still couldn’t tell who she was, even with all of the hints, so he just decided to ask, “Honestly, I don’t even know who you are, you don’t have to be so smug if someone as poor me as can’t tell how ‘high and mighty’ you are.”

Arlean’s face darkened, as she realized that she was being insulted with someone equivalent to a commoner’s status, so she raised her palm to face him, with that, lilac-colored lightning coiled around her arm as it built up in her palm. “Then when you’re six feet under, remember you were killed by Arlean Ocano.”

In all honesty, Kezner felt second-hand cringe but didn’t show it, “What is this, a web novel made by a 17 year old?! You couldn’t come up with a better one-liner?!”

Realizing that she was building up an attack that could be launched in any second, he finally let loose his ability, as his hands bent into a claw shape to hold his gray flames. Like a budding flower, Kezner pressed his wrists together as his hands kept hurling flames at her.

The gray flames had no heat and didn’t burn anything, but it offset Arlean’s attack. So in a defensive perspective it did great, in an offensive perspective it was atrocious.

“What are these weak flames, heh, your genes are so garbage! Your parents must have killed themselves when they realized how shit their child came out to be.” Little did Arlean know that she not only hit, but trampled upon one of Kezner’s sore spots as with this one statement alone, all of the Natural Energy in the park had gone missing and turned into a vacuum.

The originally neutral feeling gray flames had slowly turned darker until it reached an unnatural pitch black color. This was a temperature he hadn’t felt in years, a color he didn’t dare see for years, the unlit flame had appeared once again.

Due to the flames only offsetting the released lightning, the residual gray flames could only land to the side, but since they had turned into darker flames they melted straight through the boulder like it was lava rather than specks of a flame. That was more than enough to emphasize the destructive property of these black flames.

When Arlean saw this, she almost lost her grip as she realized she had poked a sleeping bear. The only reason she acted so arrogantly in front of Kezner was because she didn’t sense the Natural Energy coming off of him, so either he was stronger than her or he couldn’t cultivate. She presumed it was the latter since she was able to read off his lifespan and tell he was about her age, and being one of the top talents on the planet, she had never met anyone that was marginally stronger than her around her age.

Oh how wrong she was, as she now tried to get out of the situation with excuses, she knew that her Family couldn’t come to the rescue ever since they threw her to fend for herself in the slums for the next half year. “Wait, we can talk about this, there’s no need to kill each other over a few words!”

Though she tried to end the situation, Kezner wasn’t having any of it, those who were treading on a forbidden path would be treading on death. She could have insulted him and called it a day, it might have caused a fight but at least lives wouldn’t be involved. She didn’t know what exactly she had done to trigger Kezner but she understood that she couldn’t get out of this unscathed without any help.

Just as Kezner was about Kezner was about to fire another ray of flames at her, he sensed two new signals of the siphoning of Natural Energy from behind him, one from his left and the other from his right. He kept his hands aiming at Arlean as to hold her hostage in case these two mysterious figures came to help her.

“What kind of monster did the Young Lady offend this time?! She’s gonna have hell to pay to the Family Head!” The two bodyguards aimed their palms at Kezner as blue lightning wrapped around their arms and a ball of lightning formed at their palms.

---Elsewhere---

Vomiting her breakfast, Sabine could only crawl to her desk to get her holo-watch. Reaching for it, she caught sight of a tinge of blood mixed in with what had just come of her mouth, but that didn’t matter right now, she had a job to do. In a raspy and broken voice she could barely send out the words, “Zeklon II, Zeklon System, Destiny Energy shift… unprecedented… help...”