The Price Of Hatred

Prologue - The Seed of the void

​The classroom in the small village school smelled of chalk dust and unfulfilled promises. It was the only place where James felt like he could breathe, even though his stomach often ached with the hollowness of a skipped breakfast.

​"Tell me," the teacher said, pacing between the rows of scarred wooden desks. "What do you dream of becoming?"

​James stood up, his uniform patched and fading, but his spine was a straight line of iron. "I will be the richest man in the world," he said. His voice didn't waver.

​The classroom erupted. A chorus of jagged laughter broke out from the children of farmers and laborers. "How can a boy with no shoes buy the world?" one mocked. “He can't even afford to get is hair cut”.

​James didn't sit down. He looked toward the back of the room, where a quiet boy named Todd sat. Todd didn’t laugh. He looked at James with an intensity that felt like a silent pact. When it was Todd’s turn, he stood and looked directly at James. "I will be the smartest man in the world," Todd whispered. "Smart enough to know why the world is the way it is."

​In that moment, a bridge was built between them—a bridge made of ambition and the shared scent of poverty.

​At home, the air was thicker. James’s father, John, spent his days on his knees, scrubbing the floors of a small cafe for a pittance that couldn't even cover the school fees James and his sister, Tidder, needed. His mother, Clara, was the family’s heartbeat. She worked as a live-in cleaner for a wealthy woman named Halia.

​Clara only returned on Saturday mornings, her hands red and raw from lye. She would press a few crumpled coins into Tidder’s palms and kiss James’s forehead, her eyes weary but filled with a desperate hope. She never spoke of how Halia shouted at her, or how the grandeur of that mansion felt like a tomb.

​Then Arthur, Halia’s husband, returned from a long trip.

​From the moment he saw Clara in the kitchen, his eyes were predatory. He was a man who believed everything had a price, and if it didn't, he would take it anyway. He began with "accidental" touches—a hand on her waist as he passed, a brush against her shoulder in the hallway. Clara recoiled, her skin crawling, but she needed the school fees. she needed to keep her children in that classroom where they were allowed to dream.

​The breaking point came on a Sunday morning. Halia was out. The house was a hollow shell of marble and silence. Arthur called Clara to his upstairs bedroom under the guise of wanting a drink.

​When Clara entered, the trap snapped shut. He sat on the edge of the bed, a dark shadow in a room filled with expensive things. As she set the glass down and turned to flee, his hand clamped around her arm. The struggle was short and brutal. Her screams were swallowed by the heavy velvet curtains and the indifferent walls of the rich. ‘He raped her'.

​When Halia returned that evening, the air was poisoned. Arthur, practiced in the art of the lie, met his wife at the door. "The cleaner," he hissed, "she came to my room. She tried to force herself on me. I had to fight her off."

​Halia’s pride was a sharper weapon than Arthur’s lust. She didn't look at the bruises on Clara’s neck or the terror in her eyes. She saw only a threat to her status. "Get out," Halia commanded, throwing Clara’s small bag of belongings into the dirt. "Out, before I call the police."

​Clara stumbled into the night. The weight of the shame, the physical trauma, and the knowledge that she had lost the only way to provide for her children became too heavy for her heart to bear. Two miles from the gates of the mansion, her legs gave out. She collapsed on the cold asphalt, her last breath a silent prayer for James and Tidder.

​The funeral was a blur of grey sky and damp earth. James held Tidder’s hand so hard his knuckles turned white. He didn't cry. He felt something hardening inside him, a cold layer of frost settling over his heart.

​Days later, James and tidder walked home from school, the silence of their house louder than usual. When they pushed the door open, they didn't find their father at the table. They found him on the floor, the metallic scent of blood filling the small room.

​John had reached his limit. A knife was clutched in his hand, and his life was draining away. As James rushed to his side, John reached out with a trembling hand, slick with his own blood, and touched James’s cheek. He left a crimson mark—a brand of pain that would never truly wash off. With a final, ragged gasp, the man who had scrubbed floors to keep them alive went still.

​James and Tidder were alone in a world that had stolen their mother’s dignity and their father’s hope.

​Miles away, the cycle of agony was completing itself in another house. Todd, the boy who wanted to be the smartest in the world, was forced to watch as the light left his parents' eyes. They were murdered in front of him when he was only five years old—a senseless act of violence that left him an orphan.

​In the orphanage, Todd became a target. The older boys bullied him, sensing the hollowed-out shell he had become. But Todd didn't fight back with his fists. He sat in the corners, watching, learning, and carrying the memory of his parents' blood like a holy relic.

​James and Todd were no longer just boys. They were the architects of a future built on the ruins of their pasts.

​For James, the pain didn't break him; it forged him into a weapon. He would chase that dream of wealth, not for comfort, but for power—so that no one could ever throw him into the night again. He became a creature living in the narrow, jagged space between money and hatred.

​For Todd, the pain became his identity. He became the "Existence of Pain" itself, a reminder that the world gives nothing without taking everything first.

​The dream in the classroom was dead. The nightmare had begun.