Fate Outlaw Prologue – The Fall of Raphael Arzenon
The cries of a newborn filled the dimly lit chamber. Emile Arzenon cradled the tiny child in her arms, gazing upon him with trembling joy.
"He isn't just a baby," she whispered, brushing a strand of hair from her face. "I will name him Raphael… for he will be the healer who mends this broken world. Raphael—the name means healer, and he will grow to bring hope.
"Across from her, Charles Arzenon stood unmoving, his eyes sharp and cold.
"Depends on his worth," Charles replied flatly. "If he truly is my son, he will have inherited my talent.
"Emile smiled faintly, ignoring his detachment. "He is ours. No matter the gift, he will be—"
"What's his magic circuits level?" Charles interrupted, his tone cutting.The doctor shifted uneasily.
"I'm afraid… he was born with a disabling condition. His magic circuits measure only between 5 and 8. At best… he will never rise above mediocrity in magecraft."
Charles's face twisted with fury. "You're telling me my firstborn is a fucking disappointment?"
Emile's arms wrapped protectively around Raphael. "No… he can still become someone important in his own way. Our dear Raphael is a treasure, not a—"
"Shut up, woman!" Charles's rage exploded. "That newborn isn't our son. He isn't worthy of the Arzenon name!"
Before Emile could stop him, Charles snatched the crying infant from her arms. Raphael's wails grew desperate.
"Mommy! Mommy!" the newborn cried in broken gasps.
Charles's fist struck the baby's tiny face. Raphael screamed in pain, his cries echoing in the chamber. Charles struck him again—harder—blood marking the child's temple, the fragile brain within jarred in agony. Emile fell to her knees, sobbing.
"Charles, please!" she pleaded. "He's just a baby… please don't hurt him!"
But Charles's hand went to the hilt of a knife.
"Too late," he growled. "This little worm can cry in hell."
The steel flashed, plunging into the newborn's chest. Raphael's cries weakened to a faint whimper; a single tear slid down his cheek as his fading eyes sought his mother.
"…Mommy…" the fragile voice broke in final desperation.
Emile crawled forward, screaming, but Charles opened the window without pause. From three hundred feet above the city street, he hurled the naked, bleeding child into the void.
"No! My baby! My baby! Please bring him back!" Emile's voice shredded her throat with each cry.
Charles's eyes remained cold. "We didn't need that failure."
Her mind fractured under the unbearable reality, her screams echoing into the night.
Chapter 1: The Fated Outlaw
Raphael Arzenon was born where no one bothers to look — in the shadowed veins between mage towers, where warmth never lingered and mana never flowed. In the slums under Aethernus' marble spires, he learned to swallow hunger, fear, and loneliness like bitter wine. The only voice that ever cracked that silence belonged to a ghost like him — Omega Heinriel.
Hey, Raph. Omega's grin gleamed under a dying streetlamp, breath rising in white wisps into the frostbitten night. "Promise me, yeah? One day we'll leave all this behind. Just you and me — somewhere the mages can't touch us."
Raphael stared past broken rooftops at a sky too big for gutters and alleyways. Somewhere, we don't bow to circuits and bloodlines.
Omega barked a laugh, muffled by the fog of his breath. Yeah. Somewhere, we don't kneel to anyone.
For a while, that promise was enough — a fragile dream Raphael tucked into his chest like a dying ember.
Then Skia appeared — dawn in a boy's life carved from dusk and filth. She was just a girl. No circuits singing under her skin, no ancient crest etched into her veins. Just a laugh that defied the cold and a dream bigger than all the marble towers combined.
Have you ever seen the ocean? she asked once, feet dangling above a bottomless chasm where the city's guts lay rotting.
Raphael shook his head. Doesn't feel real.
She flicked his forehead, bright eyes dancing. Dummy. When we run, I'll show you. Blue forever. Loud enough to drown out this dead place.
But cities like Aethernus always take back what they hate.
One dawn, Raphael found her in the gutter, eyes wide and empty under a sky that never noticed her living — or dying.
He knelt in the blood-soaked filth, her cold hand cupped in his trembling fingers.
"I'm sorry," he rasped to a corpse that never deserved to be one. "I swear, Skia… I'll tear this world down until no one ever dies for being born wrong."
Eleven years later, that vow still burned in the hollow between Raphael's ribs. Now Sixteen — all sharp bones, pale skin, and eyes that glared holes through marbled stone — he haunted the corridors of Aethernus Mage Academy, a ghost the highborn sneered at.
"Five circuits," they whispered behind embroidered sleeves. "What's trash like him doing breathing our air?"
In the lecture hall, Akane Tohsaka hovered behind him, books pressed tight to her chest. Her lips trembled around words she never released.
"Ra… Raphael—"
He never turned. If he turned, he might see hope in her eyes — and hope was a poison he couldn't risk. He walked on, the echo of her half-born syllables trailing him like a ghost.
One rain-slicked night, Raphael sat across a chessboard from Araya Angelica — thirty flawless circuits spiraled under her skin like silver serpents. She moved her bishop with surgical grace, pale fingers gleaming under flickering lamplight.
"You know why you'll never win, Arzenon?" Angelica asked, voice dripping honeyed contempt.
Raphael's jaw clenched. "Enlighten me."
She leaned in, eyes glinting like cold starlight. "Magic is blood. Magic is bone. You're just rot pretending to be marble. Do you think scraps of Projection and Reinforcement will ever lift you above the gutter?"
She nudged her queen forward — checkmate. "You're sculpting stone with a plastic knife. Crawl back to the gutter you crawled from."
His fist slammed down, rattling the pieces — but the marble board didn't care. Angelica's smile cut deeper than any blade. He ran then — out of the hall, down forgotten stairwells that smelled of mold and rust and secrets.
In the deepest archive — buried under dust older than dynasties — he found the iron door. Heavy. Cold. Sealed by a lock that hummed with promises of freedom and ruin.
He pressed his forehead to it. Closed his eyes. Somewhere far away, a ghost named Skia laughed at an ocean he'd never seen.
"Skia… Omega…" His voice cracked like dry bone. "I'll break every chain. I'll kill every lie. I'll tear this cage apart — even if I have to drown this world in its own blood."
In the dark, Raphael Arzenon's heart beat louder than any mage's circuits ever could.
Most nights, Raphael Arzenon survived on half-rotten scraps stolen from the back corridors of the Academy kitchens. A crust of stale bread slipped into his coat pocket when no one was looking. A cracked thermos of cold soup, smuggled out by a sympathetic scullery boy bribed with a scrap of low-tier spellwork. Enough to dull the gnawing ache in his belly — never enough to silence the deeper hunger that burned behind his ribs.
By day, Raphael moved like a ghost through the gilded lecture halls. He slipped coded notes under marble desks to Kevin Sai— the only other stray hound skulking the alleys behind mage towers. Kevin's grin in those moments was worth more than food: feral, defiant, a spark in the gloom. Kevin, the thief of forbidden pages. Kevin, the brother, the system forgot.
Between them passed scraps of grimoires banned by the Towers, half-burned pages filled with runes older than the modern magecraft they were allowed to touch. In those scraps, Raphael built his arsenal — a quiet war of stolen secrets and sleepless nights. Beneath the chandeliers and perfumed apprentices, he was nothing: a starving mutt with five worthless circuits and a dead girl's ghost in his throat.
When the weight of it all pressed too heavy on his ribs, Raphael slipped away to the hidden garden — an overgrown corner behind a crumbling stone wall where moss devoured old gravestones and vines tangled the cracked marble like veins. Beneath an unmarked slab, he'd buried what little he could save of Skia: a frayed ribbon, her tin hairpin, a scrap of paper where she'd once scribbled a dream of seeing the ocean.
Tonight, the rain found him there — cold needles driving through his coat as he knelt in the mud, palm pressed to the stone. His voice caught, cracked raw by hunger and cold.
"Hey, Skia," he murmured. "Still waiting on that ocean. Haven't seen it yet. But I will. I swear I will. I'll break this cage you hated — burn these towers down to the last brick. I'll make sure no one ever dies for being born wrong again."
In the hush that followed, thunder rolling overhead, Raphael imagined he heard it — that reckless laugh, bright as dawn in the dead of night. For a moment, he felt her there — warmth against the rain, a phantom hand on his shoulder.
And then it was gone — stolen by the wind.
They found him that night, the heirs of marble towers and centuries of circuits. Rich boys in tailored robes that had never seen mud, the stink of blood, or hunger. They cornered him behind the lecture hall — laughter sharp as knives.
"Trash shouldn't pretend to be mage," one spat, kicking Raphael in the gut so hard he folded like paper. Boots slammed into his ribs. Fists cracked against his jaw. When they left him sprawled on the marble floor, spit and blood dripping from his split lip, he lay there a moment, staring at the vaulted ceiling that hid the stars.
Something inside him refused to die. The same stubborn ember that Skia left behind.
He dragged himself up — vision swimming, every breath a knife — and staggered down corridors no professor patrolled. Down cracked stairwells older than the towers they upheld. Down into the bowels of the Academy, where the marble gave way to cold stone and iron older than their bloodlines.
At the bottom, he found it — an ancient iron door hidden behind broken shelves and dust-choked archives. Its surface was a skin of runes that crawled under his touch, pulsing faintly when his palm pressed to the rusted metal. A heartbeat, a whisper — older than the circuits that spat on him every day.
He flinched as the glyphs climbed his arm — cold fire threading his veins, singing secrets into bones too young for such burdens. Pain flared — exquisite, electric. Behind his eyes, memory split wide: Skia on a rusted pipe, legs swinging, grin reckless under the moon.
"When we see the ocean, Raph, let's never come back. Promise?"
He clenched his jaw, breath ragged. "I promise."
A cough — sharp, echoing off stone. Kevin Sai stepped out of the shadows, pale and hollow-eyed. His voice was a hiss, raw with fear.
"Raph, this is suicide. If they catch you here — if you touch that door — they'll gut you and feed what's left to the familiars in the Tower Vaults."
Raphael didn't turn. His palm stayed pressed to the cold iron. "Then let them try. I'm done bowing. I'd rather die free than live crawling."
The runes flared brighter — rejecting him, testing him. Shivers of blue-white flame danced across the sigils, stinging his skin to the bone. Raphael gritted his teeth, reaching into his coat with shaking fingers. Scraps of parchment — torn from grimoires, stitched together with ink and blood and sleepless will. He spread them on the floor — crude runic Projection flickering to life, a dance of stolen fireflies.
He whispered Skia's name. Kevin's name. Every name, the marble towers, buried under centuries of stolen breath. And somewhere in that vow, something ancient heard him.
The first seal cracked — a shudder that rattled iron hinges, shook stone foundations. Cold wind, impossible and wrong, gusted out from the split — tasting of old secrets and broken rules.
Behind a cracked pillar, Akane Tohsaka pressed her trembling lips shut, eyes wide with something between terror and awe. She clutched a small velvet pouch to her chest — mana crystals she'd leave for him, night after night, unspoken prayers hidden in silk and secrecy.
Raphael didn't see her. Didn't hear Kevin's frantic whisper: "Raph, stop! This is madness—"
His hand stayed on the lock — nails biting skin. The final glyph sputtered out in green flame, devoured by the iron door's hunger.
Gears screamed like dying beasts. Metal shrieked. A line of blinding light split the rusted seam. Cold wind roared out — a grave's exhale.
Raphael's shoulders shook, but his eyes burned bright — the eyes of a starving mutt who would not kneel, not tonight, not ever again.
"Skia," he rasped into the yawning dark. "Wait for me by the sea. I'm coming. I swear it."
Then the door yawned wide, and the boy with nothing left but rage, a dead girl's dream, and the madness to see it through stepped into the forbidden night — and the world trembled behind him.
A vast chamber sprawled before them — its walls a skeletal library, iron shelves sagging under the weight of cracked grimoires and corroded ritual blades. A graveyard of failed revolutions. Of ambitions the Towers sealed away in dust and silence.
In the center, a pedestal rose — ancient myth-steel braced in rings of runes that crawled like fire across cold stone. Upon it lay not a relic of magecraft, but a shard of something utterly alien.
It was a crystal — translucent, smooth as water, yet fractured within by constellations that shifted when you weren't looking. Every faint pulse through its core sent ripples of light folding into impossible shapes. It didn't hum like magic. It breathed like something alive.
Kevin's breath caught, frost blooming in the stale air.
"…Raph… what the hell is that?"
Raphael stepped forward, boots whispering over the stone. The shard's glow painted his face in shifting geometries — patterns that lived and died in the space between heartbeats. His shadow bent unnaturally toward it, swallowed in the fragment's cold luminance.
"Not what," Raphael murmured, voice thin and dry. "Who."
His hand hovered over the fragment. The instinct to touch it was maddening, primal — yet his mind screamed to stop. He let a trace of Projection Magecraft spark from his fingertips, just enough to test the surface. The reaction was immediate.
The chamber's temperature plunged. The shard's constellations accelerated — twisting, collapsing, reforming into deeper and deeper infinities. Kevin stumbled back, the air snapping in brittle arcs between the shard and Raphael's skin.
"Don't!" Kevin's voice cracked. "Raph, that's not just some artifact! Whatever that thing is, it's not human magic. If you wake it—"
His words died. Fear hollowed them out.
"They'll hunt you. And not just the Towers — the whole damn Root will notice."
Raphael's gaze never left the shifting light. The draw was unbearable — as if the crystal were looking back at him.
"…Then let it."
His palm fell.
It wasn't painful. Pain would have been merciful. This was overwritten. A lattice of light and data burned into him, rewriting his nerves, his breath, his heartbeat. His Projection circuits flared — but they weren't his anymore. They were being rewritten in a language older than Earth.
Behind his eyes, the world broke open into a prism storm.
He saw it all —
— The Towers siphoning mana from the earth's marrow like veins bled dry.
— The old houses, hoarding magic like carrion.
— The Counter Force, a rusted spear aimed at anything that dared rewrite the order.
— And beyond all of it… an eye. Vast, crystalline, looking down upon the planet since before it was born.
It wasn't the Root. It wasn't even human.
Then — her voice.
Welcome, Unrecorded Variable.
You have no designation in my archives.
And yet… your structure accepts integration.
The shard cracked under his palm — not from damage, but from surrender. Light erupted, swallowing the chamber whole in white. Kevin's shout dissolved in the roar, panic spiking sharp in Raphael's peripheral thoughts.
The light didn't fade — it moved. A flood of it pierced into Raphael's chest, searing through his ribs, burrowing deep into the core of his being. He staggered, clawing at his sternum.
"R-Raph! What's happening?! Pull it out—!"
"I— can't—!" His voice broke as the last threads of light vanished into him, leaving only a slow, alien heartbeat echoing in his veins.
He collapsed to one knee, breathing hard. His vision swam with data-lattices and unknown starfields. He could feel it — the fragment — nested somewhere inside his soul, as if it had always been there.
A shadow moved at the edge of his thoughts. A feminine outline, flickering, built of equations, and impossible light. She said nothing — only watched him, like prey and kin all at once.
Raphael's shaking hand brushed the floor until his fingers closed around something soft — Skia's old ribbon, half-buried in dust. He tied it around his wrist, the knot tight, unyielding.
Kevin's voice came from the doorway, thin and shaken.
"Raph… tell me you didn't just let that thing inside you…"
Raphael stood slowly, his eyes catching the light in a way they hadn't before — as if they were lenses, reflecting an endless archive of stars and data.
"I didn't let it in," he said, voice like steel cooling in ice.
It chose me.