Chapter 3: Home is where the heart is

  The bus slowed to a stop, Students began to trickle off, one by one, their faces lit by the afternoon light that had begun to filter through the melting snow. Murmurs filled the air, fragments of conversations about what had transpired earlier at school, what had gone viral in the blink of an eye.

  The whispers washed over him as he stepped off the bus, his shoes crunching against the slush that still clung to the street. The snow, a bitter memory of the past week, had mostly melted, leaving the ground soggy and dull, like the aftermath of a storm that never truly passed. The screen in his mind replayed the fight, Jumanar’s club crashing against his body, yet not flinch.

  His hands were shoved in his pockets, a familiar gesture, as he walked, the path leading toward the cul-de-sac where his house waited, just like it always did. It was a place that had always been a place to put a halt to an endless journey. The houses around him sat quiet, framed by cracked sidewalks and overgrown lawns, their edges softened by the fog from the morning.

  As Connor approached the door of his house, the unsettling quiet from the outside seemed to seep into the air. He reached for the handle and stepped inside.

  The moment he entered, the sharp scent of cleaning products hit him, like something fresh and suffocating all at once. The house was always like this—immaculate, yet somehow unsettling in its attempt to be perfect. The kitchen counters were spotless, the floor gleaming under a haze of dull lights. The shelves were lined with knick-knacks and tiny statues, all dusted down to the last inch. Yet, despite the cleanliness, the disarray lingered—discarded papers and clutter scattered across the floors. Suddenly, a bag of flour flew out of the cabinet, spilling all over the floor. And there, in the middle of it all, stood his mother.

  She was a spitting image of Connor, though far more refined. She was hard at work, making her way to the mess with a broom, her movements rhythmic and methodical. “Connor, you’re home early,” she said without looking up, her voice soft but stern, her attention caught between Connor and the mess on the floor. “Why didn’t you wear the jacket the neighbors gave you? It’s been sitting on that chair for days now. You know it’s cold out, son. I don’t want to see you get sick.”

  Connor shrugged, the motion almost imperceptible. He let his gaze drift toward the open kitchen, the forgotten jacket still draped over the chair by the front door. “Eh. Not my style.”

  His mother’s sweeping up the mess. She paused with the broom in mid-air, as though trying to force herself to accept his answer. But she didn’t argue. Instead, she turned to face him. “How was your day?” she asked, her tone still warm, though there was a hint of expectation buried in the question.

  Connor reached into the fridge without answering, his fingers brushing the cold glass bottles and half-empty containers until he pulled out the familiar spherical bottle of green liquid labeled “Mountain Brew.”

  “It was fine,” he muttered, not bothering to mention the havoc that happened.

  His mother eyed him for a moment, as if waiting for something more, but the silence stretched between them. She was used to the silence. It was the way things had always been.

  “It still doesn’t work,” she said finally, her eyes flickering toward the corner where the furnace sat, dormant and covered in dust. “And neither does the hot water.”

  Connor didn’t respond at first. His fingers drummed lightly against the bottle, his eyes scanning the cluttered kitchen. The cracks in the ceiling. The slight creak of the floorboards. It was all part of the house’s natural rhythm, its endless cycle of wear.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said with a nonchalance that bordered on indifference.

  His mother’s shoulders sagged, her head tilting as though she were about to speak but decided against it. Instead, she reached over to a counter, wiping down a spot that was already spotless, as if she couldn’t stand for even the faintest speck of dust to remain.

  “I know you don’t like to hear it,” she began, her voice strained, “but when was the last time you—”

  She stopped herself, sighing heavily. Her gaze softened as she turned to face him. “When are you going to start applying yourself? You spend all your time on those video games, and I can’t—” She paused again, her fingers brushing over the sleek surface of the counter, still trying to wipe away invisible smudges. “When are you going to get your driver’s license?”

  Connor, rolling his eyes as if hearing this millions of times already, didn’t answer right away. He could feel her eyes on him, sharp and searching, as if she were peeling back the layers to find something more. But he didn’t care. Not really. “I’ll get it eventually,” he said in a single tone. The words are coming out with no weight. “Or I could always just walk wherever.” He muttered.

  His mother didn’t seem convinced. She stepped forward, her gaze still intent on him. “It doesn’t work like that. I don’t care even if you can teleport, you’re getting your license.” Her voice softened again, a slight tremble creeping in. “I just don’t want you to end up like your dad.”

  His mother’s eyes locked on the pile of dirty laundry on a chair near Connor’s room, a stack of unopened bills, and the dust bunnies nestled in corners. She hated it. She hated how everything seemed to spill out of control around her, no matter how hard she tried. But she couldn’t change it.

  She swallowed, took a deep breath, and turned back toward her sweeping. Her voice dropped low. “I’ll be gone most of the day again. I have another cleaning job and I need-”

  RIIINNNNNNNG

  The conversation was suddenly shattered by the shrill ring of her phone. The high-pitched chime reverberated through the walls. Connor immediately turned toward his room. His mother’s footsteps, soft but deliberate, her heels clicking faintly on the worn floorboards before the door to her room creaked open.

  Connor lay idly on his bed until he heard his mother’s voice over his favorite song. “Connor!” his mother’s voice echoed down the hallway, sharper than before. “Get out here!”

  He sighed, putting his phone in his pocket. His body was heavy, weighed down. a constant thrum of frustration in his chest that he could never quite shake. He stood slowly, pushing his chair back with a scrape that sounded too loud in the house.

  When he reached the doorway, he paused for a moment, peering into his mother’s room. She was standing by the bed, phone pressed to her ear, her brows furrowed in that way he knew meant something was wrong, and he had a pretty good idea what.

  He leaned against the frame of the door, arms crossed, eyes half-lidded.

  She glanced up then, her eyes snapping to him. Connor could already feel the storm brewing behind her gaze, the silence thickening between them like an ominous cloud.

  “Connor, what the hell happened?” Her voice cut through the air, as sharp as glass. She lowered the phone, already furious, a tremor in her voice that she couldn’t entirely hide.

  He shrugged. It was the same move he always used, casual, like the weight of her words couldn’t reach him. “What?”

  Her face twisted, her jaw tightening as she shook her head, as though she couldn’t comprehend what she was hearing.

  “A fight?” Her voice rose, and with it, the air in the room seemed to crackle with tension. “You got in a fight? Is this some kind of joke?” She stepped toward him, her movements brisk, agitated. “They’re telling me you were suspended.”

  Connor looked at the floor, feeling the weight of the words but choosing not to meet her eyes. He shifted uncomfortably, his hands buried deeper in his pockets. “It’s just school. It’s not that bad.”

  “Just school?” She repeated, her tone a mixture of disbelief and rising anger. “Just school?” Her words hit like a slap, sharp and cold. “Do you want to throw your life away?”

  The air between them thickened, both of them standing in the same space yet so far apart in their worlds. His mother’s gaze was fierce now, a torrent of frustration and disappointment, while Connor just felt like a wall he couldn’t climb. He couldn’t even bring himself to care.

  “Get in the car,” she said suddenly, her voice steely, as though she had decided there was no other option. “Now.”

  Connor looked up, surprised for just a moment. “Where are we going?”

  “Not now,” she snapped, already turning toward the closet, rifling through it with quick, impatient movements. He stood there for a moment longer, frozen in place, as if he might protest or argue, but the feeling was gone before he could even fully grasp it. He couldn’t bring himself to challenge her. Instead, he simply turned and walked toward the door.

  His mother didn’t watch him leave, already focused on finding her jacket and her keys, as she rushed Connor to the car.

  Connor barely had time to register what was happening before his mother was pushing him toward the car, her hand pressing against his back with surprising urgency. The car door slammed shut behind him, and before he could even process it, the engine boomed. The reverberation of the motor filled the air, but it felt muffled, as though it were happening in a distant world, a world he wasn’t fully part of.

  His mother’s eyes stayed focused on the road ahead, her hands gripping the wheel with a tightness that spoke of more than just the moment at hand. She wasn’t looking at him, but he could feel the storm of emotions swirling in the silence between them.

  Connor stared out of the window, the familiar sights of his neighborhood sliding past in a blur, the trees, the houses, each one a fragment of a life he was no longer fully connected to. He pulled the seatbelt across his chest with a slow, deliberate motion, his fingers numb as they clicked the buckle into place.

  A large stone bridge loomed ahead, its massive arches cutting across a deep ravine. The bridge stretched far above the jagged rocks below, the stone surface worn smooth from years of use. The car eased onto the bridge, its tires scraping against the ancient stone. The view was dizzying—below, the ravine stretched endlessly, a chasm that seemed to swallow up the world, its depths hidden in shadows.

  Meanwhile, below them, a city of patchwork of grime, stone, and roaches crawling out from cracks. Ogre Street they called it—a place where the sun barely found its way through the thick layers of smog and the crooked skyline. Jumanar’s footsteps reverberated in the narrow alleyway as he trudged toward home, his chest still tight with the memory of the fight. It was a lawless place, a maze of crumbling stone and rusting metal under the bridge. The air stank of neglect and old blood, the kind of place where survival meant making your own rules. Violence and crime were as common as breathing, and Jumanar had long since grown used to the sound of sirens that never seemed to fade in the distance.

  His home was tucked at the farthest end of Ogre Street, a squat stone structure with broken windows and walls that threatened to collapse. The place didn’t offer much, but it was his, and it was all he had.

  The door groaned as Jumanar shoved it open with the back of his hand, stepping inside to the dim glow of flickering lights. The room was small, barely enough to house him and his family, but it was enough to shelter them from the chaos of the streets.

  A weak vibration filled the air, and at the far end of the room, on a rickety metal bed, lay Orua—his mother. The sickly figure of her was hooked up to a tangle of wires and tubes, the machinery hissing and clicking softly as it kept her alive. Her skin, gray and stretched thin, had the telltale sheen of someone who had been kept alive by will alone. She was a troll—a rare and powerful kind.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Orua’s eyes opened slowly as he approached, the soft metal machinery making quiet whirring sounds as her hand stretched out. A piece of torn paper floated in the air before her, gripped by the thin thread of metal she had created from thin air, a scrap of a poster drifting toward her. She manipulated it with a flick of her wrist, the metal bending effortlessly under her touch.

  “Whoa: Mind in awe Tournament…,” she rasped, her voice rough, like stone in a dry throat.

  Jumanar stopped in his tracks. He had seen the poster before at school, the bright letters glinting against the paper like a beacon. The prize was grand—$10,000 for the winner, a fortune in a place like this. He couldn’t help but wonder how far that could take them. But a deep sense of doubt gnawed at him. The tournament seemed like a joke, a trap for desperate fools. And they had no chance—no experience in Whoa, no equipment, and Orua… She could barely move, let alone fight.

  He ran a hand through his tangled hair, his muscles aching with the weight of frustration. “We can’t afford entry, Ma,” he muttered under his breath, his eyes dropping to the ground. “We have nothing.”

  But Orua, despite her frailty, looked up at him with a glint in her eyes—an old, hard fire still burning beneath the sickness. She made a small noise, a hissing breath. Her thin fingers twitched, and the torn paper seemed to fold and crumple slightly, as though the very metal itself were resisting her will. “Sometimes,” she croaked, “sometimes the fight’s not about what we have. It’s about what we make.”

  Just as Jumanar opened his mouth to argue, a sinister voice echoed like a cold breeze brushing over them. “I think you should join,” A tall, lean shape, wrapped in dark armor, carrying a duffel bag slung across one shoulder. said its movements were smooth, skin covered in sleek gray scales, the texture of his body like stone and serpent intertwined. His eyes gleamed in the dim light—a sharp, unsettling crimson that cut through the haze of the room. The figure paused in the doorway, his posture relaxed but imposing. Jumanar narrowed his eyes, his spine stiffening, stepping in front of Orua instinctively. “Gandrion.” his grip tightened on the edge of the doorframe. He recognized this figure, this presence—the kind of man who belonged in even deeper cracks of the world. The figure was familiar in a way that made his skin crawl. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Orua’s eyes darted, recognition, fear, and something darker—hate—sweeping across her face. She twisted slightly on her bed, the wires pulling tight as her hand gestured in a harsh, slow arc through the air. The metal groaned in protest but complied, and with a flick of her wrist, she sent the metal drifting toward the door.

  “Go back to the hell you slithered out of,” she spat, her voice weak but cutting through the room like a blade.

  Gandrion didn’t flinch. Instead, he stepped forward with a slow, deliberate pace, his duffel bag making a soft thud as it swung against his hip. “Relax.” His voice softened, an unsettling calm settling over him as he spoke. “You should know,” he said, looking at Jumanar as though he were some kind of errant child. “I’m deeply sorry about the past. The wars I started, the feuds I caused… inexcusable. But this tournament,” he gestured toward the crumpled poster Orua had summoned, “It’s your chance to change your life for the better.”

  Jumanar’s heart hammered in his chest. The words hit harder than he expected. Gandrion—the figure standing before him—was a ghost from the past, a warlord of sorts, the kind of man who had carved his name into history with blood and fire. He had once ruled with an iron fist, and Jumanar could never forget the destruction he had caused. The entire region had felt his power and had been left in the wake of his decisions. Yet here he was, standing in front of them, his armor gleaming in the dim light like a reminder of everything they had suffered.

  “And I can be your trainer. Gandrion said, holding out a duffel bag to Jumanar. “I’ve arranged all the equipment you’ll need. All you have to do is join it.” He let the bag dangle from his fingers. “Think about it.” His voice dropped lower, more insistent. “I can help you win. You know I can.”

  Jumanar glanced at the bag—what was inside, he didn’t know, but he knew it was heavy with options, with decisions that could change everything. He could almost feel the weight of the metal gear inside, promising him power, an edge in the fight that would let him finally rise above the mess of this city.

  But then, his eyes flickered back to Orua—frail, hooked to machines. She was watching him, her gaze steady despite everything, her fingers twitching toward the metal around her.

  Jumanar’s mouth tightened. He turned back to Gandrion, eyes narrowed. “Yeah,” he muttered, taking a step forward. He eyed the duffel bag, then looked up at the serpent’s cold eyes. “I’ll join…” His voice was harsh, uncertain. “But I don’t need you.”

  The moment hung between them, heavy with something unspoken.

  Gandrion didn’t flinch. He simply turned, his movements fluid. “Fine,” he said without looking back. “We’ll see how far you get without me. But if you ever change your mind- well, you know where to find me.”

  With that, he disappeared into the shadows, leaving nothing but the faint echo of his footsteps behind.

  Connor sat in silence as the car slid to a stop with a low, groaning hiss of the brakes. The engine cut off, leaving the quiet of the outside to creep back in. Connor stared out of the window, watching the police station’s looming presence settle into his peripheral vision. The grey stone walls looked as unyielding as the thick, foggy air.

  His mother didn’t wait for the car to cool before she snapped the door open, her heels clicking sharply against the pavement. She didn’t glance at Connor; her eyes were already ahead, focused on the building as if it were the only thing that mattered in that moment. He remained still, his body heavy in the passenger seat, fingers drumming absently against the door handle.

  “Stay here,” she muttered, more a command than a request.

  Connor didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. She was already halfway to the front door, her white hair trailing like a silk banner behind her. The smell of disinfectant from the police station seeped through the air as she disappeared inside, leaving him alone with nothing but the soft rumbling of the car’s weak engine.

  The minutes dragged on like slow-moving molasses. Connor leaned his head back against the seat, his eyes tracing the faint cracks in the dashboard, the dust gathering in the corners of the windows. His thoughts scattered, like leaves in a light breeze, none of them staying long enough to form a shape. The world outside was numb, a washed-out watercolor of concrete and grey skies.

  He didn’t even flinch when the door opened again. His mother stepped back in, followed by a man in a dark uniform. The officer’s shoes made a soft thud against the asphalt as he closed the door behind him, his face set in a professional mask.

  The officer, in a stretched blue uniform barely containing its muscled bulk. Thick fur, dark and matted from years of patrol, poked through the seams of its sleeves and collar. He appeared to be in his mid-forties, maybe a bit older. There was a kind of tired understanding in his eyes, but also something sharper, as if he could see right through the surface of things. He stood a little straighter when he noticed Connor still slouched in the passenger seat, and his lips thinned for a moment as though deciding how to approach.

  “Connor,” the officer greeted him simply, “Officer Alex.” his voice was smooth.

  Connor offered a slight nod, his gaze lingering on the officer for a beat longer than necessary before he returned to staring out the window.

  His mother, however, wasted no time. She was already talking, her words rushing out as if they’d been held back too long. She spoke quickly, her voice tight with a mixture of frustration and fear, but also a certain cold resolve.

  “You see what I mean?” she said, turning to the officer with a sharp look. “He spends all his time holed up in that room, playing those damn video games. Doesn’t help with anything around the house. It’s like I’m talking to a wall. And when he’s not playing, he’s sulking. Barely even talks to me anymore. He’s so… disconnected.”

  She paused, eyes narrowing. “His father—well, you can guess what kind of man he was. And now, it’s like he’s following in his footsteps.” She shook her head, voice barely above a whisper but thick with the weight of years. “I’ve tried everything I can think of. And today at school he…” she paused. “He got into a fight at school. I thought maybe… maybe juvie could knock some sense into him. Shape him up before he gets any worse.”

  Connor’s hands tightened, the fingers curling into his palms as his mother’s words landed like stones. She wasn’t looking at him, and that somehow made it worse. He wanted to say something, anything, to argue, to lash out, but he said nothing.

  The officer took a step back, his eyes turning from the mother to the son, scanning Connor with the subtle precision of someone who had seen this before. He stood still for a moment, and when he spoke, his voice was calm—almost gentle.

  “I’m not sure that’s necessary, ma’am,” the officer said, his gaze softening as it landed on Connor. “There’s something else you could try.”

  Connor didn’t respond, but the officer seemed to sense the tension in the air. He glanced back at Connor’s mother.

  “What your son needs,” he began slowly, “is an outlet. Something that gives him direction. Focus. Look, I’ve dealt with a lot of kids his age. You’re right—he’s disconnected. But juvie… that’s not going to fix the root of the problem.”

  The officer stepped forward, hands clasped behind his back. He glanced at Connor again, then looked directly at his mother.

  “Competitive Whoa,” he said, as though the words were the key to some lock.

  His mother stood frozen, her eyes laced with skepticism, “Great, more fighting...”

  “Well, yes, but it’s more than that. It’s a discipline. It’s mental and physical training. Some of the best individuals I know, the ones who’ve really turned their lives around… they found Whoa. It gave them a purpose. Something to channel all that aggression into.”

  The officer let the silence settle between them for a moment, then nodded toward the car, giving Connor a brief but thoughtful glance.

  “Get him in, get him training. You’d be amazed at what it can do.”

  Connor shifted slightly, his shoulders tense beneath the weight of his mother’s gaze. She wasn’t convinced, not yet, but the words had caught her attention. Maybe just enough. Finally, she let out a quiet sigh, her shoulders slumping a fraction.

  “I’ll think about it,” she muttered, but Connor didn’t miss the look that passed between her and the officer—something unspoken, something that changed the air in the space between them.

  The officer nodded, as if his part in the conversation had been concluded. He turned to head back to the station, his footsteps quiet against the pavement.

  Connor, however, remained still, feeling the gravity of the moment hang in the air. His mother didn’t speak for a long while after that. She got into the car.

  The engine roared to life again, but this time, there was a different kind of weight in the air. With a soft click, her phone came to life in her hand, and she dialed the number. “Hello, is this Parkulir High School?”