The orphanage dining hall smelled of overcooked beans and recycled water, but it was warm—and in Sector 7, warmth was a luxury.
Kael sat at the end of the long metal table, quietly chewing the tasteless stew in front of him. Around him, the other orphans whispered, stole glances, and shifted uncomfortably. It was always like this. Not because he was a bully—he never spoke unless spoken to—but because he was different.
They knew it. He knew it.
Across the table, a tall boy with uneven teeth leaned in and muttered, "Bet he's got a Mutation. Like the ones from the Wastes."
Kael didn't react.
Another boy snickered. "Maybe he's some UGA experiment that got dumped here."
"Yeah, no family, no past. Creepy, right?"
The whispers weren't cruel so much as curious. But curiosity had teeth in Sector 7. Kael finished his food and stood without a word. The room fell silent for a beat before returning to its usual dull chatter.
He dropped off his tray, then made his way toward the dorm wing. The walls were a patchwork of old tech and scrap metal, held together by generations of orphan hands and whatever Sister Mae could scavenge.
As Kael reached the hallway, he paused. At the far end stood a small display terminal, half-lit and flickering. His name blinked on-screen in dull green letters:
→ VIRE, KAEL – ID# X-0001-UNRANKED ←
Beneath it, a message:MANDATORY EVALUATION COMPLETE. CLASSIFICATION: UNRANKED. ABILITY SIGNATURE: NULL.
Kael stared at it for a moment.
Every child in the UGA system underwent Genetic Ability Screening at age ten. The machine scanned your DNA, your bloodline, your latent energy patterns—and assigned you a Rank. Most people got something between D and B. A few rare elites were born into A or S-tier families.
But Kael? His scan had returned nothing.
No elemental affinity. No psychic markers. No enhancement gene clusters.
Just a blank slate.
"Still looking at that thing?"
Kael turned to see Sister Mae approaching, her gray hair tied back, her robe stained from the kitchen. She stood with hands on her hips, sharp eyes softening as she looked at him.
"You need to stop staring at that screen like it owes you something," she said.
"I'm not waiting for it to change," Kael replied. "I just want to understand."
She sighed and walked up beside him, glancing at the terminal.
"Sometimes," she said gently, "understanding comes too late. And sometimes it doesn't come at all. But that doesn't make you broken, Kael."
He said nothing.
She touched his shoulder. "You're strong. Too strong, maybe. But that strength's real. It doesn't need a label to be true."
Kael looked at her. "Then why does everyone else care so much about ranks?"
"Because the world forgot how to see anything else."
Mae's gaze lingered on the terminal one last time before she walked off down the hallway. Kael remained behind, staring at his own reflection in the flickering screen.
No rank. No signature. No past.
Just Kael Vire.
Later that night, Kael stood in the training courtyard behind the orphanage. The area was nothing more than a patch of cracked concrete, some sandbags, and a few steel poles meant for drills. He shadowboxed in silence, every movement sharp, calculated, efficient. His breath came steady, his form tight.
He didn't know how he'd learned to fight. There were no teachers, no guides. Just instinct.
One-two. Step. Pivot. Elbow. Duck. Strike.
It was like his body remembered something his mind had forgotten.
With a final spinning kick, he slammed his foot into a rusted training dummy. The metal crumpled with a harsh clang, bending backward with a shriek of bolts.
He froze.
The dummy was reinforced—meant to withstand blunt strikes from B-rankers. And yet it had folded like paper.
Kael knelt down, touched the warped steel. No pain in his foot. No bruising.
He looked at his hands. They were trembling—not with fear, but with something else.
Recognition.
Something inside him was waking up.
Far above, hidden in the hollow of a fallen comms tower, a second observer adjusted their lens.
"Vire, Kael. Unranked. No recorded ability," the operative murmured. "Yet power output exceeds C-rank baseline. Possibly higher. Subject displays anomalous efficiency in biomechanical movement. Recommend immediate reevaluation."
They keyed a command into their console.
Sending alert to Regis Institute: "Irregular detected – Priority Tag Initiated."
Then they, too, vanished into the night.