_VHSG0TH
For as long as Y/N L/N could recall, the walls of St. Jude's Orphanage had been the whole of his existence.
He had been brought here mere hours after birth, with no name upon his arrival save for the one bestowed by the matrons, no record of lineage, no keepsake nor memory to bind him to any life before this one.
From his earliest years, his thoughts had turned instinctively toward all that was strange, unexplained, or veiled in shadow.
Whilst other children delighted in simple tales or familiar games, his mind wandered toward the mysteries that lay just beyond the edge of ordinary sight: whispers of ancient beings, accounts of places untouched by time, and phenomena that reason could not explain.
Yet deep down, even as he drank in these tales and let his imagination soar, he had always believed them to be nothing more than beautiful fancies-charming inventions woven by those who longed for magic in a world that seemed so plain and unremarkable.
Never once, in all his hours of wondering and all his years of dreaming, had he dared to conceive that these "silly little fantasies" were anything less than reality itself.