Omar’s telepathy showed up before his first words did. His parents were working at the Sands Alliance, and they reported him to the Empire, seeing profit in a psychic son.

By the time he was old enough to remember any of it clearly, he was already inside the Champion training pipeline. A resource for the Empire.

He was seven the first time he killed someone. A training drill paired him against an older boy on a rooftop endurance course. Omar built the boy a doorway that wasn’t there, at the platform’s edge, and made certain the boy felt no doubt at all when he stepped through it. The trainers logged it as a successful exercise. Omar understood, even at seven, that it had been something else. 

By sixteen, his climb through the Empire’s ranks was fast, even for a system built to fast-track its most useful children.  

His rise to First Champion had no single visible moment. It ended with his predecessor’s death, ruled natural, never investigated, and in truth, that was what everyone around him believed.

He had the title now. A base in Scarab City. A reputation that did most of the work before he ever walked into a room.