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Prologue – What Was Taken

  They were happy once.

  Not untouchable, but safe. A family that smiled over dinner. A father who ran a rising tech firm. A mother who braided her daughters' hair each morning. And twin girls who never stopped laughing as they followed their big brother through the garden, demanding piggyback rides and bedtime stories.

  He had everything.He had them.

  Until envy noticed.

  It began after a deal. One too successful. One that undercut the wrong people in a boardroom far above their pay grade. The next day, his father's company was shut down under mysterious charges. Two days later, their home burned to the ground.

  They found bodies in the wreckage. His mother. His father. Charred remains of children in a locked bedroom.

  Only he survived.

  And the elites had already prepared the narrative.

  They framed him.

  Planted evidence. Forged testimonies. Leaked footage of fabricated outbursts. Branded him unstable, dangerous—a killer.

  He was dragged from the ashes by men in white coats, not black uniforms.

  No trial. No lawyers. Just a signature. And then padded walls, flickering lights, and restraints that never loosened.

  For three years, he was a test subject.

  Drugged. Shocked. Tortured. A "case study in inherited violence."

  They said it was treatment.

  They fed him lies and needles until his body forgot warmth and his mind forgot silence.

  But he never forgot them.

  


  "Protect your sisters."That was the last thing his father ever said to him.

  And for years, that was all that mattered.

  He held on to that sentence like a blade between his teeth.He survived the beatings, the pills, the darkness—not for revenge. Not at first.But because he knew: his sisters were alive.

  He escaped.

  At 18, he vanished into the cracks of the system. He didn’t know where to start—only that he had to find them. His sisters were out there. He’d held on to that belief with every broken bone and sleepless night.

  He knew the truth.

  He remembered carrying them through the fire—coughing, burning, stumbling into the night with their tiny bodies in his arms. He saved them. He got them out.

  But while he lay strapped to a hospital bed, they were taken.

  In the chaos that followed, while he was gagged and sedated, they vanished. Stolen by the same men who framed him.

  It wasn't until after he escaped—after he followed trails soaked in lies and silence—that he found out what really happened.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  They were sold. Passed between hands like property, swallowed by the black market.

  After a month of torture, they killed themselves.

  He didn’t scream. He didn’t cry.

  He just stopped being human.

  He escaped.

  At 18, he vanished. Became a shadow in the systems that once owned him.Five years of silence followed. Five years of murder.

  He hunted them. Every shareholder. Every handler. Every buyer. Every name on every file.

  They died choking on their own blood. They died realizing who he was. They died too quickly.

  And when he reached the final one—the man who orchestrated it all—he didn’t hesitate.

  


  "You’re not even human."

  "You made me this way."

  The knife slid clean across the man's throat.

  Sirens. Spotlights. Orders screamed through megaphones.

  He stepped out of the tower and dropped the blade. Didn’t run. Didn’t fight.

  The first bullet hit his shoulder.The second pierced his chest.The rest blurred into silence.

  He fell backward, onto cold stone.

  He thought there would be peace. But there was nothing.

  No light. No warmth. Only a voice.

  


  "Wake up."

  He opened his eyes to a cracked ceiling.

  The air was dry and thin, biting his lungs with every breath. Sweat clung to his skin. Sheets stuck to his back. The scent of rust, old blood, and mold filled his nose.

  He blinked slowly, dazed, scanning the room—simple, crumbling, unfamiliar.

  Then came the name. A whisper, not spoken but remembered. Not his.

  Kaito Tenshin.

  Then it hit him: he was alive.

  Alive... but wrong.

  This wasn’t a hospital.

  He sat up slowly, arms trembling under the weight of a body that wasn’t his.Too small. Too starved.

  Then the memories hit. Not his. Someone else's. A name surfaced first—this body’s name: Kaito Tenshin.

  A desert farm. A dead mother. A father who worked himself raw. Two little sisters.

  His throat tightened.

  He swung his legs off the worn cot and stood. The room swayed. He steadied himself on the wall, gritting his teeth.

  Then came the noise—metal on wood. Voices outside. Screams.

  He rushed to the door.

  A man in armor stood over a bleeding corpse.

  Another dragged two girls out of a side room—crying, kicking, screaming.

  Twins.

  His heart stopped.

  Not again.

  


  "Protect your sisters."

  The blade came from the kitchen. Rusted. Dull.

  Didn’t matter.

  He moved without thinking. Without feeling.

  The first man raised a sword—too slow. He slammed the rusted blade into his neck, jagged metal grinding through bone until the man collapsed, gurgling.

  The second reached for the twins. Kaito was already behind him. He wrapped his arm around the man’s throat, yanked him backward, and drove the knife into his spine. Once. Twice. A third time just to be sure.

  The last tried to run.

  He grabbed a chair leg, splintered it on the floor, and hurled the shard into the man’s back. The thug fell, crawling, crying. Kaito walked over and stomped on the back of his neck until it cracked.

  Breathing hard. Hands red. Vision fogged with something old and broken.

  And then he looked up.

  The girls ran to him.

  They didn’t care about the blood. They held him.

  And he broke.

  


  "I’m sorry...""I’m sorry I couldn’t save you...""I was too late...""I’m so sorry..."

  He didn’t know if they understood. He didn’t care.

  He held them until his hands stopped shaking. Until the pain returned. Until his mind caught up with his body.

  This wasn’t a dream.This wasn’t peace.This was something else.

  And far beneath the floorboards, something stirred.

  


  [SYSTEM BOOT SEQUENCE INITIATED] Calibrating neural patterns… syncing foreign soul… verifying trauma imprint…

  A voice followed. A Girl. Soft. Cheerful. Completely wrong for the moment.

  


  "Hiiii! Oh wow, you're a mess! Let's fix that, yeah?"

  


  [DEATHCRAFT SYSTEM ONLINE] Fuel: living bodies. Output: cursed artifacts.

  He blinked.

  He wasn’t alone in his head anymore.

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