![[Nadar.png]] Nadar was always different. Even among the orphans, even among the lost, he didn’t quite fit. Most of them had come from homes that had burned, families that had vanished. They had memories, of warmth, of laughter, of names whispered by loving voices. But Nadar? He had nothing to remember. No one knew where he came from. Not even him. He didn’t remember parents, or a home, or even a time when he wasn’t running. Just the trees. The towering ruins of Alexandria were a cage of stone and ash, but before them, before the streets, before the alleys and the hunger, there had been something else. He had lived in the forests once, or so he thought. He could feel it in his blood, in his bones, in the way his feet knew how to step without a sound. The way he could feel the pulse of a tree even in a city that had long since strangled its roots. But that was all gone now. The wilds had been taken from him, leaving only cold stone, grey skies, and the distant, empty promise of something more. He didn’t belong with the city orphans, not at first. They were loud, reckless, too busy scheming and surviving to listen to the things he listened to. But Pirate? Pirate saw him. Saw the quiet way he moved, the way he seemed to know when to run, when to hide, when to strike. “You’re with me now,” Pirate had said, grinning like he already knew the answer. And Nadar, for the first time, had stayed. He learned to fight, to steal when he had to, to disappear when it was smart. He wasn’t the best at talking, at convincing, at making people laugh the way the others did. But he was fast. Faster than any of them. Faster than the guards, faster than the dogs they let loose on the children who got too close to food that wasn’t theirs. Pirate called him “Ghost.” The others called him “Leaf.” And for a while, he almost had something that felt like home. He should have disappeared into the streets like all the others. Should have faded like the wind through dying leaves. But they found him. Sordia Vignti, the warriors, the legends, the ones Pirate had admired from afar. They offered food. Shelter. A place. Nadar hesitated. Then he stayed. Not because he trusted them. Not because he believed in safety. But because Pirate wanted him to. And that was enough. For now.