The boy looked up at him. His face was smudged with dirt, his eyes wide and far older than they should have been.
"I don't know," the boy whispered. "They called me the spark."
Raphael furrowed his brow. The wind stirred the ashes around them, and in the silence, the weight of that name hung heavily.
"The spark un?" he repeated slowly. "That's not a name… that's a title."
The boy looked confused, suddenly the boy said. "They were chasing me. If those four had caught up to me,I would have died".
Raphael narrowed his eyes. The four he fought — corrupted beyond recognition. He had seen the ruin in their eyes, the hollow echo of what they used to be. The same fate that nearly took him.
He looked at the boy again. Something in the child's presence tugged at something buried deep within Raphael's memory—something from before the Fall. Before the lies. Before he was cast down.
"How did you get yourself in this situation little one?"Raphael asked?
The little boy opened his mouth and started to explain how he had once lived with his family and friends. How his hometown flourished,was filled with fertile land and how his town was at a perfect peace.
"My father had 20,000 farm livestock,I would eat and eat until am satisfied. My..."
"Little one get to the point" Raphael said
"Ok"
It was my birthday on that faithful day,a wonderful and spectacular....
"Aghhh" Raphael sighed.
"OK OK ,That day was my birthday,it was a day of enjoyment,i was so full that day,I think my dad and my uncles even got themselves drunk, not until I was kidnapped by some group of men when I went out to feed the poultry birds".
"I didn't know where we were going to until we arrived at a gathering place,where I saw lot of my age mates chained or locked up.
"We were later forced to work in a circus house where rich men came and placed bet on the children they caught and made us fight each other to the death".
Raphael thought to himself "this little one is tougher than he seems".
"I was even lucky to survive yesterday after stabbing ....."
How old are you ? Cut by the Fallen
"Am probably 10 or 11 years old. Back then when I was kidnapped,I was celebrating my 6th year birthday as at that time."
Raphael listened, arms folded, his wounded shoulder forgotten. The boy's voice was soft—raw—but steady. Too steady for someone his age. "Alright go on"
"I was lucky to survive yesterday," the boy continued. "After I stabbed the other boy in the arena, they thought I'd earned a break. They left me with the master of the Arena on the balcony. Thought I was too tired or too broken to try anything."
He gave a dry, bitter smile that didn't belong on a child's face.
"Funny enough… I pushed him off the balcony and killed him, he is the reason why my only friend was killed. Anyways I tied a few clothes together, climbed down, hit the ground hard, and just ran. Didn't stop,although I think I alerted the guards, they saw me."
He glanced over his shoulder, as if expecting shadows to emerge from the darkened woods.
"I knew what happens to kids who run. If they catch you, they don't bring you back. They sell you. To the meat men. To be thrown into a pot and stirred with bones."
His hands trembled now, and he clenched them into fists to hide it. "I didn't want to die like that. Not like that."
Raphael was silent for a long moment.
He thought of the Pit—how the fires were never warm, only hungry and suffering. He remembered how they tried to grind down his essence, make him nothing. And now this boy—this child—was surviving a different hell, one made by men. Or worse, by something darker still.
Raphael was silent for a long moment.
"What was the name of the circus?" Raphael asked, voice low.
The boy hesitated. "They didn't have one. People just called it The Gutter Ring. Or The House of Ash. That's what I heard the guards say sometimes."
Raphael exhaled sharply through his nose. That name was new to him.
The boy looked up. "You know it?"
"I don't but I think I have an idea of the kind of filth that fuels it. Souls traded like coins. Blood as entertainment. I am sure this is also the doings of my fellow Fallen. Have they began to corrupt the inhabitants of this place"
"I guess its high time I leave this place. He knelt so they were eye to eye. "Listen to me, boy. What you did… surviving that place… that takes more strength than most warriors ever find."
The boy blinked, his lip trembling just slightly.
Raphael placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Your soul…" Raphael murmured. "It doesn't feel like the others. It's too... bright."
"You said they called you the spark?"
The boy nodded.
"Then maybe it's time someone struck back and lit the fire."
The forest rustled faintly in the wind, and far off—too far for human ears—Raphael heard something move.
"They'll send others," he said grimly. " I don't think they will let you off that easily after taking out their leader and they must not like it when their property escapes."
He stood, tall and imposing, his wings dragging faintly behind him.
"You're not going back there."
The boy looked up, cautious but curious. "What happens now?"
Raphael's eyes glowed faintly in the twilight.
"Now?" he said. "We hunt."