Title: Feathers from Fire
Joshua Wayne was only seven when the whispers began.
"They say he's cursed," the maids would murmur behind the kitchen doors. "A boy with no family, only fire in his eyes."
He didn't remember the flames, but he dreamt of them every night—the twisting red, the scent of burnt leather, and two shadowy figures standing in front of a burning car. His caretakers at the Bobilon estate told him his parents had died in that crash. That he was lucky to survive. That the Bobilon family had saved him.
But luck never felt so cold.
Raised in one of the most powerful families in Solencia, Joshua had everything—private tutors, marble halls, and a surname worth gold. Everything, except love. The Bobilons weren't a family. They were a business. And Joshua was a tool. He learned to keep his head down, smile when spoken to, and never cry.
Until he met Elena.
She was the gardener's daughter, with dirt-streaked cheeks and a laugh like windchimes. She didn't care that he was a Bobilon. She just cared that he was kind. They became inseparable—two misfits in a world of steel and silence.
By twenty, they were married, and soon after, their son Jaden was born. For the first time in his life, Joshua felt human. Happy.
Then came the crash.
One rainy afternoon, as Joshua closed a high-stakes deal in a glass tower, his phone rang.
"We're sorry, Mr. Wayne. Your wife and son… they didn't make it."
Time stopped.
He raced to the hospital. He held their lifeless hands. He screamed until his voice broke. And for days, he simply ceased to be.
But tragedy didn't move the Bobilon board. "Unstable," they called him. "Weak." At a family tribunal, they stripped him of everything. "We took you in out of pity," spat Aunt Celeste, the CEO. "And this is how you repay us."
Homeless, grieving, and utterly lost, Joshua wandered through alleys and abandoned train stations. It was in the back of a bar, drunk and on the verge of collapse, that he met an old hacker named Rylos—one of the city's underground truth brokers. And Rylos knew things.
"The car crash wasn't an accident," he said, sliding a file across the table.
Joshua opened it.
His heart stopped again.
Security footage. Bank transfers. Voice memos.
His real parents hadn't died in a car crash when he was a child. They caused it. They'd rigged the vehicle with explosives as part of a scheme to fake their deaths, steal insurance money, and vanish from Solencia's criminal syndicates. He was collateral. Disposable. But he survived.
And the Bobilons had known.
His entire life was a lie. Built on betrayal, blood, and abandonment.
That night, in the rain, Joshua screamed into the void. His sobs echoed through the alleyways, sharp and ragged. He tore the Bobilon crest from his coat, burned it, and swore an oath: he would rise, not as their tool—but as their reckoning.
It was Madame Veyla who found him weeks later, collapsed outside the gates of Crow Academy. A sanctuary for the discarded, the broken, and the damned.
"You want revenge?" she asked, staring into his hollow eyes.
"I want peace," he croaked. "But I'll settle for purpose."
Crow Academy became his crucible. He trained under warriors, monks, former assassins. He learned to control his Aura—an energy force born from emotion and spirit. Anger gave him power. Grief gave him focus.
And then there was Katlen.
She was fire and thunder, stubborn and kind. A Crow veteran who didn't flinch when Joshua broke down remembering Elena and Jaden. She listened. She challenged him. She made him feel like a man again—not a ghost.
They talked. They fought. They healed.
One spring morning, after a mission to dismantle a Bobilon data vault, Katlen took his hand. "They don't own your pain," she said. "You do."
A year passed.
Joshua, no longer just a name, was a leader. A mentor. A protector. He visited Elena and Jaden's graves every week, planting white feathers beside their stones. And when Katlen told him she was pregnant—with twins—he didn't cry from fear.
He cried from joy.
He named them Jaden and Elena. Not to replace what was lost, but to ensure their light lived on.
---
Seven Years Later
The world now knew the name Joshua Wayne. Not as a Bobilon. Not as a broken man. But as a visionary.
Wayne Industries had towers in every major city. His Aura-tech revolutionized energy, security, and health. He owned aerospace companies, environmental initiatives, and schools for gifted children. He made billions a day, but it wasn't the wealth that fulfilled him.
It was them.
Jaden. Elena. Skyla. Orion.
Quadruplets. Two girls. Two boys.
Each one with fire in their hearts and feathers in their souls. He saw in them the strength he never had as a child. He raised them not in luxury, but in truth, in warmth, in the hard-earned light of a life rebuilt from ashes.
At night, he'd sit with Katlen on the balcony of their oceanside villa, listening to the laughter of their children echo across the waves.
"I used to think I was born in fire," he once said.
Katlen smiled, resting her head on his shoulder.
"You were. But now you fly."
And in the sky, where the stars shimmered like silver feathers, Joshua finally believed it.
He was no longer just the flame.
He was the light it left behind.