Chapter 1 – The Boy They Called Reaper
The town had no name worth remembering, just another cluster of crooked roofs and smoke-stained chimneys in a land where misery grew thicker than the fog. Yet on this day, the fog parted, and with it came a boy.
He was sixteen, perhaps seventeen, though the weight on his shoulders made him look older. His clothes were torn rags, clinging to him like the last scraps of dignity he hadn't yet lost. His hair hung wild and tangled, black as soot, hiding most of his face. But when he looked up—when his coal-dark eyes fixed on you—it felt like staring into a grave that had already chosen your name.
People whispered before he even set foot in the square. They had heard the stories.
Reaper.
Angel of Death.
Curse-born child.
Unlucky misery followed wherever he walked. If a farmer's crops rotted, if a child grew ill, if a horse broke its leg, someone always swore they had seen the boy with the dark eyes lingering nearby. His given name had been lost, like ash scattered on the wind. The only name the world left him was the one that kept mothers clutching their children when he passed: Reaper.
He did not speak to the townsfolk, nor did they dare speak to him. He walked with his head low, shoulders hunched as if bracing against an invisible storm. But inside him, another storm raged.
His chest tightened. His breaths came quick and shallow. His hands trembled.
He knew the feeling.
Anxiety. Panic. Fear without a shape or reason. In the world he had been born into, they called it madness, demon-sickness, or the Devil's whisper. In our world, centuries later, they would call it something else—ADHD, trauma, anxiety disorder. But back then, all it meant was this: when the boy shook, the world shook with him.
A child pointed at him.
A dog barked.
Somewhere, a window cracked.
The air grew tense, brittle, as if the town itself was holding its breath.
Reaper clenched his fists, dug his nails into his palms until blood welled up. Not here. Not again. Please, not again.
But the feeling surged higher, a black tide crashing through his chest. His vision blurred. His ears filled with a rushing roar. And before he could fight it, before he could stop it—
—an accident struck.
A cart rolling down the slope lost its wheel. The wooden spokes shattered with a gunshot crack. Barrels tumbled into the square, one bursting open with a spill of ale. People screamed and scrambled. A woman fell, barely pulling her child out of the way before a barrel crushed the cobblestones where they had stood.
The boy froze in the middle of the chaos, horror etched across his pale face. He hadn't touched the cart. He hadn't moved. Yet every terrified eye in the square turned to him.
The whispers began again.
Low. Sharp. Poisonous.
Reaper.
Death's child.
Bad omen.
He wanted to shout, It isn't me! He wanted to run. He wanted to vanish. But his throat locked shut. All he could do was stand there, trembling, a living curse no one wanted but no one could ignore.
And so his legend grew.
The boy who walked with disaster.
The boy who carried death in his shadow.
The boy they called Reaper.