The muddy ground was cold against Ain's knees as he helped Nasuha home that night. The shadows of the slum swallowed them whole — broken huts leaned on each other for warmth, carrying the weight of secrets no god cared to hear.
At the doorway of a frail shack, a woman burst out, her face lined by years of hunger and grief. The moment she saw her daughter, she froze — eyes wide, throat tight — before her cry broke through the brittle silence.
"Nasuha! Suha—my child!"
She pulled Nasuha into her arms, clutching her like something about to vanish with the wind. Ain stood awkwardly at the threshold, fists clenched so tight his knuckles cracked. He wanted to cover his ears but couldn't look away.
Nasuha's voice cracked through the mother's questions.
"They… they took me inside, Mother. They shut my mouth. They—"
The words dissolved in sobs. Her body sagged in her mother's lap like a torn cloth. The old woman rocked her gently, murmuring prayers that fell dead against the rotting walls.
Ain stepped back. The sound of it twisted his insides. He could still see the gleam in the soldiers' eyes. He could still feel the mud on his knees when they dragged her away. He had done nothing. And that failure burned deeper than any wound.
Outside, the night swallowed his anger. A thin mist carried the scent of burnt wood and old tears. In the distance, dogs barked at the barricade wall — a wall that divided light from darkness, magic from the Null, the living from the forgotten.
***
Later that night, Ain sat alone on the dirt floor of his own shack. A stale piece of bread lay on a cracked wooden plate before him — he didn't touch it. His legs were drawn tight to his chest, his back against the wall where rain had eaten the bamboo thin.
I have to end this.
His whisper was so soft it almost dissolved into the hiss of the cold wind. His eyes drifted to a pile of scrap in the corner: broken tools, rusted nails, scraps of wood — and half-buried under them, an old leather-bound notebook.
He crawled toward it. The spine was brittle, the pages swollen from years of damp air. He blew off the dust, coughed, and flipped it open.
Scrawled on the first page was a name — his name. But not his. The real Ain. The boy this body belonged to, before Rian Rahman's last breath had stitched their fates together.
"For the Null. For freedom. I must find the answer."
Ain's breath caught. He flipped through the pages with trembling fingers. Diagrams sketched in crude ink. Notes blending rough thoughts and scraps of science that made his old mind itch.
"Magic is breath. The air we draw feeds the lungs. The lungs create current, electricity inside the blood. The brain shapes this into physical force. They call it mana."
He could see it — synapses firing, bioelectric charges, like tiny sparks traveling through nerves. In his old life, this would be a lecture in a clean lab. Here, it was black magic wrapped in superstition.
"The Null cannot make this 'breath current.' Their lungs are dead to it. They call us broken. Born to sweep floors, scrub feet, and die nameless."
Ain's fingers dug into the paper. He turned to a page filled with crude sketches of city lights, power conduits — or what passed for them.
"All lights and heaters are filled daily by magic handlers. Their mana fuels every stone lamp and gate."
He shut his eyes. Sihir, magic — it was nothing but raw power. Bioelectricity. The only difference was the source. If he could not make it with lungs, he would make it with iron and fire. If they breathed mana, he would forge lungs of steel.
On the last page, the boy Ain's final plea:
"If I die, whoever finds this… continue. The Null must have their own power. If our lungs are dead, then build lungs from metal."
Ain pressed the notebook to his forehead. A spark flared in his chest. He could see it: steam pipes, spinning turbines, wires that hummed with defiance. Light that no mage could tax. Fire that no noble could snuff out.
***
At dawn, the mist still clung to the alleys like a dying ghost. Ain stood at the edge of the slum, feet half-buried in mud, staring into the wild line where broken huts gave way to the dense, whispering woods.
Beyond those trees lay monsters. Fanged beasts with scales harder than cheap swords. Vines that moved like serpents in the dark. The forest was a graveyard for Null who strayed too far — but to Ain, it was fuel.
If I am to build iron lungs, I need a heart to feed them.
He pictured it: scraps of metal, driftwood, old turbines he could cobble together into a crude generator. But for that, he needed more than broken huts. He needed the forest's secrets.
He turned back. The village still slept in silence, curled around its misery like dogs in the cold. Somewhere, Nasuha was curled in her mother's arms. Somewhere, mothers prayed their daughters would not be next.
This ends here, he promised the darkness.
***
He scavenged the next day — broken knives, rusted nails, old rope. He whittled branches into stakes, sharpened stones into blades. He tested the weight in his palm — primitive, but better than bare hands. In the corner, the notebook lay open under the light of a sputtering flame. He copied diagrams onto scraps of cloth, redrawing pipes, levers, and rough sketches of a steam core.
In the back room, his mother's cough cracked the quiet. From the next hut, he could hear Nasuha's restless dreams — nightmares that left her whispering his name in a voice that could break iron.
Ain pressed his palm to the dirt. I will give you warmth. I will give you light. And I will give you a world where no one rips that light away.
***
When dawn broke again, the sky was an open wound. He strapped a ragged bag over his shoulder — bread crusts, his crude blades, and the notebook that carried a dead boy's dream.
At the edge of the village, the forest loomed — Bukit Taring, the Tooth Ridge. Stories said its shadows were alive, its soil fed on bones. But Ain did not flinch.
He turned once. Behind him, the Null village crouched like a dying animal. Smoke curled from broken chimneys. Somewhere inside, mothers braided their daughters' hair and told them to keep their heads down.
Ain faced the trees. He whispered to the wind.
I will build the steel lungs. I will strike the match that sets this mud on fire.
And step by step, he crossed the threshold — into the dark belly of monsters, carrying only firelight and the promise of revolution in his hands.