Berou was born with four wings.
Not two.
Four.
Where other children were kissed by the light, he was touched by suspicion. The moment he emerged into the world, something ancient recoiled — as if fate itself had made a mistake.
His parents stared at him like he was a crime.
They whispered behind closed doors. They cried when they thought he couldn't hear.
They never named what he was.
They only called him wrong.
And so, the beatings began.
At first, they were clumsy. Hesitant. As if unsure whether pain could correct what divinity had already condemned. But soon, it became habit. Routine. His wings were bound in cloth and splinters, dragged through dirt and ash until they bled feathers like snow.
Then one day, his mother stopped looking at him.
And the next, she was gone.
His father followed soon after — leaving only silence and broken floorboards behind. Whether by grief, guilt, or something darker, Berou never knew.
He was left alone.
The orphanage was worse.
The other children mocked him.
Teachers whispered slurs when they thought he slept.
He was beaten for speaking, spat on for breathing, and dragged through days without kindness, like a ghost still chained to the skin of a boy.
No one touched his wings.
Not in front of others.
But at night…
The silence was different.
Heavy.
Breathing.
Hands found him in the dark. Rough. Cruel. Quiet.
They told him he was lucky to still be alive.
That something with four wings should've been culled like a sick animal.
He believed them.
Years passed.
Berou forgot what kindness felt like.
He forgot the sound of his own voice.
He forgot how to cry — until all that remained was a shell of a boy who stared at walls and thought only of escape.
Not into the world.
But out of it.
And that's when the Abyss found him.
The Abyss was not a place. Not exactly.
It was a system. A machine. A purpose.
An underground organization built on the bones of the unwanted — angels stripped of grace, demons abandoned by war, broken creatures too dangerous to live and too useful to discard. It promised power in exchange for pain. A role in exchange for obedience. Identity in exchange for your soul.
The Abyss looked at Berou — at his wings, his silence, his scars — and didn't see a freak.
It saw a weapon.
And he accepted that.
Because being a weapon was better than being nothing.
In the shadows of the Abyss, Berou trained.
He killed.
He forgot who he was.
He buried the boy in the dirt behind him.
But deep in the center of his chest, a pulse remained — slow, poisonous, growing stronger with every command he obeyed and every memory he tried to erase.
Hatred.
Cold, endless hatred.
For the world.
For the Abyss.
For the silence.
And for himself.
One day, the Abyss would cast him out, just like everyone else.
And when that day came, they thought he'd disappear.
But Berou had learned something they hadn't.
Weapons don't vanish when you throw them away.
They turn back.
And they cut deeper then ever before.