Kael never walked into J High like a student. He stormed in like a revolution.
His shoes were worn, his backpack torn, and his eyes—cold, calculating—like a veteran returning to a battlefield, not a teen strolling into school. At seventeen, Kael was already a ghost story in the halls. "Crazy Kael," they whispered. "The guy who knocked out three seniors with a broom handle and a death stare."
They weren't wrong.
He wasn't a bully. He wasn't a hero either. He was... necessary.
J High was a mess. Not just the broken lockers and graffiti-stained walls—but the rot inside. Drugs flowed through it like blood in veins. Pills, powders, deals behind vending machines. Students were fading away into shadows before they even hit eighteen.
And Kael? He'd seen what drugs could do. Watched it eat his father alive—flesh, soul, and finally the pulse. His mother? She didn't even get to fight back. Died giving birth to the one person his father couldn't protect.
So Kael became his own protector. And then he became everyone else's.
By the time he hit final year, Kael had turned the school into a warzone—for the better. Dealers feared him more than the principal. The weak had a silent guardian. The strong had a reason to behave.
Until the last day of school.
That day, every enemy he'd made crawled out of the cracks. Seventy guys—seventy angry, bruised egos with baseball bats, brass knuckles, and grudges.
The schoolyard felt like a gladiator ring.
But Kael?
He stood calm. Hoodie zipped, hands clenched, stance ready. "One last dance," he muttered.
What happened next was poetry in violence. Kicks like lightning, punches like thunder, the kind of fight that felt like a myth in the making. Bones cracked, grunts echoed, and by the end…
Kael stood alone. Panting, bruised—but unbeaten.
And then he left.
No goodbye. No ceremony. Just silence as he walked off that blood-stained ground.
A year later, Kael's hands trembled—not from rage, but from nervousness. A college application form sat on his table. "No more fists," he whispered. "Just books."
But fate?
Fate loves irony.