Chapter 1: The Crown in Shadows
Prologue: The Birth of a King
The kingdom of Aurion was older than memory, carved from mountains and rivers like a jewel placed in the palm of the world. Its towers reached for the heavens, crowned in white stone and gold, and its streets teemed with merchants, nobles, and beggars alike. To an outsider, Aurion was paradise—an empire of light and song. But to those who lived within its walls, it was a kingdom split in two: the gilded heights of the nobility above, and the starving gutters below.
It was in those gutters that Bob$ was born.
His name was not always Bob$. In fact, for the first ten years of his life, he had no name at all. He was "boy" to the merchants who threw scraps at him, "rat" to the guards who kicked him from the palace gates, and "ghost" to the other orphans who feared the cold fire in his eyes.
The boy grew up beneath Aurion's jewel-like towers, watching nobles dine on roasted venison while he gnawed on bones stolen from trash heaps. He learned to run faster than the city watch, to fight with fists wrapped in rags, and to steal with the cunning of a fox. Hunger was his first master, pain his first teacher. But through it all, he carried something the others did not: an unbreakable will.
One night, when he was no older than eight, a gang of older boys cornered him in an alley. They wanted the piece of bread he had stolen that morning. There were five of them, each taller, stronger, and meaner than him. But he fought. He fought like a cornered wolf, his small hands turning to claws, his teeth sinking into flesh. By the time it was over, his nose was broken, his lip split, and his ribs aching—but the bread was still his.
That night, as he lay bruised and bleeding beneath the city's broken statues, he whispered to the stars:
"One day, I will never starve again. One day, they will remember my name."
And the stars, silent as ever, burned on.
---
The Fall of Aurion's Crown
Aurion, for all its beauty, was rotting from within. The last king of the Solaren Dynasty—King Marius IV—was a man of vanity and indulgence. While his people starved in the streets, he held feasts that lasted for weeks. While his armies bled on the borders, he lined his halls with foreign dancers and golden cups.
Whispers grew in the shadows. The nobles grew restless, the merchants furious, and the common folk desperate. A single spark was all it would take to set the kingdom aflame.
That spark came in the form of plague.
The fever swept through Aurion's slums like wildfire, cutting down hundreds by the week. The palace shut its gates, leaving the poor to rot. Families were burned in mass graves, priests muttered empty prayers, and the air reeked of smoke and sorrow.
It was in that plague-ridden hell that the boy with no name—who would one day be King Bob$—learned his greatest lesson: the world would not save him. If he was to rise, he would have to seize fate with his own hands.
---
The First Blood
At thirteen, the boy found himself conscripted into Aurion's armies. The kingdom needed bodies to fight off raiders at its borders, and the gutter orphans made fine fodder. They gave him a rusted blade, armor that didn't fit, and sent him to die on the battlefield.
But he did not die.
The first time he killed, it was clumsy. His blade slipped between the ribs of a raider twice his size, and the man's blood sprayed across his face like a storm. For a moment, he froze—staring at the crimson on his hands. Then something inside him shifted. He realized that in this cruel world, survival was not granted—it was taken.
From that day, he killed without hesitation. He studied the way enemies moved, the way fear cracked their resolve, the way steel met flesh. By fifteen, the nameless boy had carved a reputation into the battlefield: the Wolf of the Slums. His eyes were cold, his blade unrelenting, and his survival unmatched.
Officers noticed. Nobles whispered. And slowly, the nameless boy became something more.
---
The Seizing of Power
When the plague finally reached the palace, King Marius IV fell. The dynasty crumbled, leaving Aurion without a ruler. Nobles clawed for the throne, each claiming bloodlines and divine rights. But in the chaos, it was the Wolf of the Slums who rose.
He returned from the battlefield not as a nameless orphan, but as a war hero—the soldier who had saved Aurion's borders while the nobles squabbled. The people cheered his name, though it was still not his true name. They called him Bob$, a mocking nickname given by the army after a drunken song, but he wore it like armor. To him, the name was proof of his survival. Proof that even a gutter rat could carve his place in history.
When the nobles tried to push him aside, he rallied the soldiers. When they sent assassins, he sent their heads back in boxes. And when the council finally offered him the throne to end the bloodshed, he accepted it not with humility, but with fire in his voice:
"I was not born of your bloodlines. I was born of Aurion's hunger, its pain, and its fury. I am no king by birth—I am king by right. From this day, the crown is mine. I am King Bob$, and Aurion shall rise again."
The people roared. The crown of gold and steel was placed upon his head, and for the first time in centuries, the kingdom felt hope.
---
But power was never a gift. It was a blade.
As King Bob$ sat upon the throne, he knew enemies waited in the shadows. The nobles hated him, the priests distrusted him, and even the commoners feared him. But he also knew one truth burned brighter than all their doubts:
He had clawed his way from the gutters to the crown. And no one—no noble, no priest, no army—would ever take it from him.
Thus began the reign of King Bob$.
A reign that would bring glory.
A reign that would bring war.
And a reign that would lead him to the one person who could pierce his iron heart—Princess Alura.
---