Starborn silence

Long before Kanah became a cursed name… before the world feared the boy called Sparow…

He was just a child in a cold room.

White walls. Silver machines. Men in coats who never smiled.

They called him "Subject 23" before he earned a name.

They didn't beat him. They didn't starve him.

They did something worse.

They taught him.

Taught him to question everything.

Taught him that love was a lie.

That freedom was a cage.

That emotion was a virus.

> "What do you see?" the instructor asked, pointing to a picture of a crying woman.

> "Weakness," German had replied, barely ten.

They applauded.

---

At eleven, he solved equations scholars failed to crack.

At twelve, he killed a man in self-defense—with his hands—and didn't blink.

But even machines need fuel.

And German's fuel was a belief.

A quiet voice that whispered:

> "You will change the world, not through power… but through understanding."

That voice belonged to Father Hale—the only one who treated German like a person.

A man of intellect, calmness, and brutal ideologies dressed in poetry.

Hale didn't love him. He sculpted him.

> "A king is not born," Hale once said.

"He is carved—piece by piece—until only purpose remains."

German listened.

And obeyed.

But he never forgot the pain.

He simply learned to smile through it.

---

One night, Hale asked German to choose between two caged children—one would live, one would not. The lesson was control.

> "Mercy is chaos. Precision is peace."

German chose neither.

He set the entire facility on fire.

No one ever figured out how.

But that was the day German Sparow was born.

Not as a subject.

Not as a weapon.

But as a belief walking in human skin.

---

Back in the present…

Sunny stood at the edge of the temple, gripping his side as the illusions faded. His breaths came hard. He had seen too much.

> "He's not evil…" Sunny muttered.

> "He's dangerous… because someone made him believe it was the only way to survive."

But the most terrifying thing wasn't German's past…

It was the fact that Sunny could relate to it.

A whisper echoed from the walls—maybe from the memory itself:

> "We are mirrors, you and I.

The only difference is… I embraced the truth first."

Sunny clenched his fists, his shadow flickering strangely in the torchlight.

He didn't know what power lived inside him yet…

But now he knew who it would be used against.