Henning Villadsen sat silently in the back of the crowded bus, staring blankly out the window as the forests and distant fields blurred past at frightening speed. His mind remained trapped on the test he had just completed and the uncertain future waiting ahead of him. He had turned sixteen only two days ago, though he had not celebrated it in any way. In truth, he had completely forgotten about it until the woman handling registration checked his identification card and casually wished him a happy birthday. The words had felt strangely hollow to him, almost unreal, as though birthdays belonged to someone else entirely.
Unfortunately, peace and silence were impossible to maintain. Sitting beside him was a girl far too cheerful and energetic for his liking. She had apparently failed to understand why every other candidate on the bus had deliberately avoided sitting near him despite the many empty seats available. Ever since the bus departed, she had bombarded him endlessly with questions while occasionally poking his arm in an attempt to force a reaction out of him. "Hey, what's your name? Mine is Mya! Did you think the test was difficult? How many people did you spot? And those dogs were adorable, right? I swear I almost stopped to help one!" she rambled excitedly without giving him even half a second to answer.
Normally Henning would have ignored someone like her entirely. Yet strangely enough, he did not truly mind her constant talking. It had simply been too long since anyone had treated him with even the slightest bit of warmth. His life had long since become a nightmare that seemed determined to crush whatever hope remained inside him. He had been born in Denmark to a Danish mother and an American father who had once served in the military. Their marriage collapsed quickly after his father cheated repeatedly, leaving behind nothing but bitterness and violence. From that point onward, his father became a drunken monster who neglected and abused both him and his younger sister without restraint.
Henning still remembered the fear that consumed him every night when he realized the kind of man his father truly was. His sister had only been two years old at the time, innocent and defenseless, while his father stumbled home drunk almost every evening. That was why Henning had started sleeping beside her with a weapon hidden nearby despite still being a child himself. Deep down he knew it was never a matter of if something terrible would happen, but when. Thankfully, matters never reached that point. Instead, his mother slowly destroyed herself first. Crushed by depression after the divorce, she drowned herself in alcohol and drugs until one day she simply never woke up again. After which, his father fled the country, never to be seen again.
As though fate had not suffered enough amusement from his misery, tragedy struck again when his sister turned eight years old. She developed a horrifying illness no doctor could identify, let alone cure. Her body constantly felt freezing cold no matter how many blankets surrounded her, and the pain she endured daily eventually became unbearable to witness. Henning tried everything he could think of to ease her suffering, but nothing ever worked. Then the System arrived, changing the entire world overnight. Yet even that miracle brought them no salvation. The only thing that changed was that his sister eventually slipped into a coma.
That was the reason he had traveled all the way from Denmark to the Netherlands carrying his unconscious sister with him. Every point and coin he possessed had been spent simply keeping her alive this long. To afford treatment, Henning had taken every degrading and dangerous job imaginable over the years. Eventually he even fell into working for local criminals who used his sister as leverage to keep him obedient. Luckily, after she fell comatose, their grip on him weakened slightly since she was no longer capable of running away or resisting. Taking advantage of that opportunity, he gathered everything he owned and fled. Even then the journey had nearly broken him financially. The taxi driver who brought him here had obviously overcharged him horribly, but Henning paid the five copper coins anyway because he had no other choice.
The reason he chose this faction specifically had nothing to do with archery. In truth, he had never even held a proper bow before. His decision came from rumors and fragments of history he uncovered while desperately researching cures for his sister's illness. During that search he learned about an ancient family of doctors whose medical knowledge supposedly stretched back farther than many nations themselves. Somewhere along the way he also discovered the family connected to the Crimson Sun Guild. If anyone in the modern world possessed forgotten knowledge capable of helping his sister, he believed it would be them.
He had actually tried approaching those doctors directly once before. The memory alone made hatred boil inside him even now. Before he had even gotten close to meeting anyone important, guards and servants drove him away like garbage. They mocked the tiny amount of money he offered and told him someone like him was unworthy of wasting the doctors' precious time. Three hundred euros. That was all he had managed to save over five years of backbreaking labor and criminal work. At that moment he had truly wanted to burn the world to ashes. Even now, simply remembering those expressions caused murderous hatred to leak unconsciously from his body.
The sudden change in atmosphere finally silenced Mya for the first time since boarding the bus. She glanced nervously at him as though sensing something deeply wrong hidden beneath his calm expression. Yet before the silence could grow uncomfortable, she awkwardly started talking again about random things simply to fill the space. Henning barely listened. His thoughts had already drifted back to the memory that stopped him from completely giving in to despair years ago.
After being rejected by the doctors, he had returned to the overpass where his little sister waited for him beneath the pouring rain. He remembered forcing himself to smile while telling her he failed and that maybe they could try again another time. Despite her constant pain and exhaustion, she had actually laughed softly before replying, "So that Eastern saying was true. It's easier to reason with the King of Hell than with his servants." Shortly afterward she fell asleep against his shoulder from sheer exhaustion. That memory alone prevented him from destroying himself completely.
Now he sat quietly on the bus heading back toward the city hospital where his sister remained unconscious. He had spent his final copper coin paying the hospital to care for her for one week. If he failed to earn a place within the Crimson Sun after that, he honestly did not know what he would do next. Perhaps he would return to that old man sitting calmly in the field drinking tea. Karl Sonneberg. Henning had never met anyone who appeared so harmless while simultaneously giving off the terrifying sensation that he could see through every lie, wound, and secret hidden inside a person. Merely standing near him had put Henning on edge.
What Henning failed to notice, however, was that someone had followed him ever since he left the testing grounds. Hidden among the crowd outside the bus station, a lone figure quietly watched him without drawing any attention whatsoever. Even the other passengers unconsciously ignored the presence trailing behind the exhausted Danish boy and the overly cheerful girl beside him.