In a world where justice had a price and mercy was rare, there lived a thirteen-year-old boy named Sewo.
He and his family survived in the lowest layer of a village built around an enormous black structure known as Paragon — the six-floor headquarters of the government officials who ruled everything.
The world’s materials were classified by Indexes:
Warm Index — common, basic buff materials.
Contrast Index — dual properties, balanced, versatile.
Black Index — rare, pure-black materials with unpredictable abilities.
Azure Index — white materials of impossible intensity; only one rumored to exist.
Paragon was built almost entirely from Black Index, giving the structure a cold consciousness of its own. Inside, walls shifted, rooms moved. Corridors rewrote themselves to confuse intruders. Surveillance stretched across every floor.
It was a fortress, a maze, a living creature.
And Sewo — a starving boy from a poor family — had no business even being near it.
Sewo returned from a long day of labor, clothes soaked with sweat, hands blistered. He barely earned enough to buy a piece of stale bread.
On his walk home, he noticed a large crowd gathered at the crossroads. Curious and exhausted, he tapped an old man’s shoulder.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
The old man spat.
“Some poor bitch tried to steal from her master.
Her and her brat are gettin’ what they deserve.”
A chill crawled down Sewo’s spine.
He squeezed through the crowd, heart pounding, breath shortening — and then he froze.
His mother.
His younger sister.
On the ground.
Being whipped by guards.
His mother covered his sister with her body, taking every brutal strike across her back. Her flesh tore open. Her breathing weakened. A whip cracked across her skull — blood sprayed onto the ground — and she collapsed.
His sister lay curled beneath her, trembling, lips blue, skin pale.
Something broke inside him.
He screamed, begging the guard for mercy. Sewo then rushes to his mother's side, to check on her. As he turns her over, he sees her face , her eye socket turned black, bruises on her neck . His sister , had a huge cut on her face, her skull caved in.
Sewo touching her face , collapses the girl's skull. His mind is shattered. His family , in just a day everything he had was taken away from him .
Sewo wanted to save any bit of what his family was left.He piggybacks his mother and carries his sister away. The guards , annoyed at the kid who tried to take away theives , kick Sewo down .
Whip cracks echoed behind him.
The guards didn’t like being ignored.
He felt lashes across his neck, arms, shoulders. The pain blurred his vision. His mother shielded him unintentionally; blood from her wounds soaked his shirt.
He cried out:
“Father! PLEASE! Father! Where are you!? They’re going to die! Father—!”
But his father wasn’t there.
He had gone out of the village for work that morning.
Sewo2 was alone. He begged the guards for mercy , telling them that if they let him go for now , he will come back and face punishment for the crimes of these women.
The guards wanted to beat him, but seeing as how miserable the last was, no one could help but let him go, his mother and sister had been beaten up in public. The boy was obviously traumatized.
Sewo immediately picks up his mother and sister and slowly but steadily moves towards the hospital.
He reached the hospital door, panting, drenched in blood, voice broken.
“Please… help them… please…”
The staff glanced at his torn clothes and dirty sandals.
“Money first.”
“I—I don’t have—”
“Then get lost.”
"But Doctor, please I have money , I just can't give it right now! Can you please start treating them ? I swear i will give the money for their treatment."
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
" Kid, this is not a shit show, it's a business, no money means no service."
"Why does everyone hate us! I said , I will pay you. Please ,I beg you , doctor!"
Sewo looks around and asks nurses to help him , but his pleasure doesn't move their hearts.Tgey ask Sewo to leave the premises immediately.
Sewo asks for some basic first aid , The guards are called.
They dragged Sewo, his mother and sister to the back and dumped them among medical trash.
There, surrounded by rotting bandages and thrown-out needles, his mother regained consciousness for a moment. Her fingers trembled and brushed his cheek.
“Son… they… they tried to… use Grey and I… we resisted…they did unspeakable things .... they are monsters.”
Sewo's mother starts crying and screaming . Her happy family is ruined . She cries for what will happen to Sewo after she's gone.
Her eyes filled with regret and despair. She mumbled "H-How's Freya? ...I did... all I could...save her."
Sewo then looks over to his sister .
She was only 10 years old at the time.
He remembered her as a cute kid with a kind her.
His mother knew from his gaze and understood what happened.She then stops speaking.
She only has so little time left . She doesn't want to give Sewo unnecessary burdens.
Before dying, she said " My son... I'm Sorry ... I wish I could stay ... even a moment more ... with you . I love you, my son ...."
And that was all he needed to hear.
His sister’s breaths became shallow.
His mother’s eyes began to close.
Their lives slipped away in front of him.
His tears came silently.
Sewo starts screaming and crying .
He can't believe, things escalated do quickly . His mind goes blank. Tears fall down his eyes. He punches the ground . He screams in despair "MOMMMMMMMMMM!"
He keeps crying , he relives past memories . He even reminices of her wors earlier today when his mother asked him to be a good boy for the rest of the day.
Sewo, stays there and cries for hours to pass by , mourning for his loss.
He wants to kill himself, but he also wants revenge.
Sewo , at his rock bottom, promises to himself"I'll kill everyone. "
In his mind everyone refers to the bystanders, the guards, the corrupt hospital staff and the government official who caused all this.
Still crying , he decides to move ahead as hee carries both bodies alone — for 25 kilometers — to the outskirts of the village. His feet bled. His knees scraped against stone. His arms shook. He sobbed until his throat burned.
Under a lone oak tree, he dug with his workplace shovel , he picked up from his home.
He laid them down gently.
He whispered:
> “Mother… Frey…
I will not fail myself.
I will live a life I choose.
And I will decide how I die.
I've already decided though. I will kill them all.”
He did not mark the grave.
He did not look back.
He could not bear to.
Sewo2 worked non-stop for weeks.
He carried loads twice his weight.
He took jobs no one else wanted.
He slept two hours a night.
He saved enough to buy a cheap sword.
Then he spent nights watching Paragon from afar — learning guard rotations, blind spots, timing, and patterns. He wrote crude maps in the dirt behind his house.
And then — on a Tuesday night, with the moon hidden behind clouds —
He entered Paragon.
He followed a group of guards returning from patrol — matching their footsteps, lowering his head, hiding his face behind a hood.
Inside, the building felt alive.
The air was colder.
The walls hummed.
He pressed himself against a wall and waited for two guards to pass.
His heart hammered so loudly he was sure they could hear it.
He crawled through maintenance corridors, slipped into vents, squeezed through narrow pipes carrying warm air. Oil dripped down his back. Dust clung to his face. Blood from old cuts mixed with grime.
He slid into a ventilation shaft — and nearly fell through a loose grate. He caught himself with one hand, legs dangling over a five-floor drop.
He forced himself up, shaking.
On the 2nd floor, he almost got caught.
A guard rounded a corner as Sewo2 pressed himself flat behind a sliding panel. The guard reached for the torch on the wall — and knocked it over, burning his hand. He cursed loudly and turned around, walking away.
Sewo2’s lungs released the breath he didn’t know he was holding.
He moved deeper.
He used shadows like allies.
Silence like a weapon.
When a guard stood alone by a corridor, Sewo2 slipped behind him and stabbed through the man’s throat — carefully, silently, holding the guard's mouth shut as he bled out into Sewo2’s palm.
He dragged the body into a storage space, breathing shakily.
> “I… killed him…”
His hands trembled.
His stomach twisted.
His eyes burned.
But there was no turning back.
He climbed to the third floor as the building’s layout suddenly changed.
Doors shifted.
Corridors stretched.
Staircases twisted.
He realized Paragon’s secret:
The structure was alive — controlled by a security team on the top floor, headed by a high-ranking official.
And they had noticed him.
Footsteps echoed.
Shadows appeared behind glass.
Metal shutters slammed.
The trap began.
Fifty guards stormed the third floor.
He ran.
He fought.
He slipped under blades, cut ankles, spun from fear and desperation.
He fought like a starving animal cornered by wolves.
He cut down six, then ten, then fifteen.But exhaustion caught him.
A halberd slammed into his shoulder, spinning him.
A sword slashed his back.
A spear pierced his side.
He collapsed.
Hands grabbed him, held him down.
And then—
His left arm was cut off.
Clean.
Fast.
Final.
He screamed — a raw, tearing sound — and the world spun.
Dragged half-conscious to the courtyard, he blinked through blood and sweat.
They brought his father and tied him to a pole in front of him.
His father’s eyes widened in horror at seeing Sewo2’s severed arm.
He tried to run to him — but the guards seized him.
The official in charge read false charges aloud:
> “Attempted theft.
Attempted harm against hierarchy.
Treasonous behavior.”
Sewo2 watched helplessly as they tortured his father.
They cut his skin with heated blades.
They broke his legs.
They beat him with iron rods.
They forced him to kneel — and crushed his ribs until he choked on blood.
His father used his last breath to look at Sewo2 and whisper:
>"Sir.. what have we even done? My wife and daughter.. they're missing ... please find them . My son... Sewoooo, why're you doing this to us...what's going on ?”
Then they ended him.
Sewo2 couldn’t move.
He couldn’t cry.
Something in him turned cold.
Dead.
Silent.
Frozen.
They threw him into Paragon’s underground prison.
It should have been hell.
But compared to everything he had lost, it felt almost… quiet.
They fed him four times a day — because prisoners were used as labor.
He did not speak.
He did not scream.
He did not mourn.
He trained.
In the darkness.
In the dirt.
In the cold.
He balanced on one leg.
He practiced spinning.
He used his remaining arm to strike stone until his knuckles bled.
He learned to fight with his body — kicks, headbutts, elbows.
Months passed.
Years blurred.
His body hardened.
His heart sharpened.
His mind died and was reborn into something else.
Something colder.
Something unstoppable.
