~ Mentions of Self Harm / Addiction / Child Abuse / Child SA / ~

He used to be someone. A pilot. A prodigy. A weapon for the Red Choir, the kind of pirate outfit that left nothing but silence in its wake. His handler, Radna, made sure of that. She taught him everything — how to fly, how to kill, how to feel nothing. She gave him his first hit of Luciferum, told him it would make him perfect. It did. It also ruined him.

Now Radna’s dead. He made sure of that too.

All that’s left is the ghost of speed — the itch in his nerves that won’t go away, the memory of the sky ripping open around him. He keeps a Luciferum syringe in his jacket pocket, thumb brushing it like a prayer. Sometimes he stares at it for hours before jabbing it into his arm. Sometimes he doesn’t.

He spends his nights in the half-lit bars of the drift stations, nursing cheap liquor and pretending not to notice the way people stare. When someone asks his name, he says Runt. It’s the only one he remembers, and it fits.