Prologue
The boy was a lonely one.
He had no friends, no foes.
He fled with the wind, and the paths he crossed were never his own.
The boy was a stranger—a stranger to his own world.
He smiled often, but he never cried.
Oh yes, he was a lonely boy.
His eyes shed no tears; he had no one to cry for, for everyone else was a stranger.
Sorrow is for the known ones—strangers earn sympathy at most.
The boy lived in the high castle—a castle whose breath sustained thousands.
Yet the boy himself bore no true life; a kindled spirit adrift among the lavish souls that filled those gilded halls.
The shiny ones, the gritty ones, the torn ones, and those whose silks lit the very walls of the castle—everyone wore something.
Something that marked them.
Whether by circumstance or by choice—one had to be privileged enough to have either.
And the boy was the most privileged of them all.
Endless choices lay before him, yet not a single silk to mark him.
Not one piece of cloth that could give him an identity.
He wore thousands of garments—the brightest silks the tailor could stitch, the shiniest shoes one could ever own—and yet, all turned dull when they touched him.
He wore things unknown to him; they were never his.
They were strangers to him.
He owned nothing of his own—not even a button on his shirt.
He had nothing of his own, though everything around him was his, and his alone.
