Chapter 1 – The Soil That Spat Me Out
I remember the last thing I saw before everything went dark.
The phone screen flickering. Notifications. A message from someone I didn't even truly love. The smell of burnt coffee in the kitchen. The noise of the street below. I was tired. Tired of waking up, of working, of pretending life had any meaning. I closed my eyes for a second… and never opened them again.
At least, not in that world.
When I opened them again, I was underground.
Warm earth was pushing me upward. The soil was opening on its own, as if I were a plant forced to be born. I screamed. I tried to grab onto something, but there was nothing to hold. The ground spat me out and I fell to my knees, naked, filthy, trembling, gasping for breath.
"What the hell is this…?"
My voice came out hoarse. I looked around. An endless green field. Tall trees. A sky too clear. And people. Dozens of them. Men and women with pale, glowing skin, long hair, perfect bodies. They were scattered across the field, some eating fruit straight off the ground, others just sitting, staring at nothing.
I stood up, covered in mud.
"Hey…? Someone… explain to me what's going on?"
A man nearby turned his head slowly. His eyes were empty. There was no curiosity. No fear. Only a strange stillness.
"You were born."
"Born from where? I was… I was somewhere else. I had a life. I—"
"The earth gives. The earth takes."
He picked up another piece of fruit and bit into it, as if the conversation were over.
I tried talking to others. A woman. A boy. An old woman with a young appearance. They all answered the same way: short phrases, no emotion. They acted on instinct. They ate when hungry. They slept when the sun went down. They didn't ask questions. They didn't plan. They wanted nothing beyond what was right in front of them.
I spent the first few days just walking.
The place was vast. Open fields, dense woods, clear streams. Fruit was everywhere. Loaded trees, low bushes, even the ground itself sometimes offered something to eat without any effort. No one needed to hunt. No one needed to plant. The earth gave, and they took. Simple as that.
I searched for information. Anything. A name. A story. A reason.
That's how I found the oldest one.
He was sitting beneath an enormous tree, his skin still smooth, his hair white only at the tips. The others respected him from a distance, but didn't speak to him. I approached and crouched in front of him.
"How long have you been here?"
He took his time answering, as if the question had to travel somewhere deep before it could surface.
"Since the beginning."
"And when was the beginning?"
"When the earth gave us life."
"Who gave it to us? Is there someone… above? Gods? Names?"
He blinked slowly.
"Those who gave life. In the end, we return to the soil. As we came."
"What are their names?"
Silence. He just looked at me, empty.
"I don't know."
I asked again, in different ways. Nothing. He knew only the basics: they were born from the earth, they would live until the earth called them back, and that was it. No story. No curiosity. No ambition. Only pure instinct, built up over too much time.
I walked away that day with my chest tight.
'I won't end up like them.'
I started exploring with a different eye. Not just searching for food — it was everywhere — but searching for material. I hunted now. Not out of hunger, but for hide. Deer, rabbits, boars. I tore off the skin with stones I sharpened myself, cleaned it, dried it in the sun. I sewed with thin bones and plant fibers. I made clothes. Crude at first, full of flaws. But they covered the body. They protected. And they were clean.
I trained my body to exhaustion. Running until my legs shook. Climbing. Stones growing heavier each time. I screamed while I did it, because I needed to feel that something still existed inside me beyond instinct.
One day, after a long hunt, I found a lake hidden among the trees. The water was so clear it reflected the sky like a mirror. I knelt at the edge, drank until I was full, and then saw my own face.
I stopped.
Golden hair fell over my shoulders, well groomed. Eyes the color of molten gold, strikingly so. Skin smooth, without a single scar. A face… androgynous, yet masculine. Soft lines that were somehow strong at the same time. Well-shaped lips. A defined jaw, but without the coarse hardness of the other men of my race. It was as if someone had taken the best of both and fused them into a single body.
'By this world's standards… I would be considered divine.'
I stared at the reflection for a long time. Then I mentally compared it to the faces I saw every day. The others were beautiful too. Perfect, even. But empty. Expressionless. Without presence.
I was more beautiful.
And I knew it.
I smiled for the first time since being born from the earth.
Over time I improved my clothes. I learned to weave finer fibers. I made pants, tunics, belts. I kept grooming my hair every day. And I created a simple lotion: crushed leaves, sweet sap, a few sweet-smelling flowers. I applied it to my neck and wrists. Just that. A light scent of herb and wet earth.
The others watched me from a distance.
I was too strange for them.
They aged slowly, almost imperceptibly. So did I. Fifty years passed and my face still looked like that of a man in his twenties. The difference was that I used every one of those years. They only existed. I built.
My cabin rose little by little. Interlocked wood. A sturdy roof. A garden where I forced dozens of flowers to grow. Inside, a table. And a "book" made of beaten bark, sewn together with sinew. There I wrote down everything I discovered.
Because I wasn't alone.
At night, when the others slept like stones, I saw the shapes.
Pale, almost transparent figures, walking among the trees. At first I thought I was going mad. Then one of them approached.
"You ask too many questions."
I swallowed hard, my heart racing. I looked at the creature more closely. The same stillness. The same emptiness in its eyes. No real curiosity. No ambition. Exactly like the others of my race.
"Who are you?" I asked, more quietly.
"Someone who has already slept. Now I only watch."
"Watch what?"
The figure tilted its head, as if the question were new to it.
"What is still here. What the earth still holds."
I stayed silent for a moment. Then I took a deep breath and spoke carefully:
"Could you… tell me what you know? I want to understand. Everything you can tell me."
The translucent creature looked at me for a long time, unhurried, without real interest. But it eventually spoke.
In the following nights, others came. They spoke of what they had seen while they lived. Of the way the earth had received them. Of the gods who had created them and then withdrawn. Of how, when the time came, they simply fell asleep and returned to the soil. None spoke of what had not yet happened. None knew the future.
I wrote it all down until my fingers ached.
Until one night the truth fell completely into place.
I already knew I hadn't reincarnated as an ordinary human. The earth spitting me out, the entire race with extraordinary vitality… all of it was already strange enough. But now, with what the spirits had told me and everything I remembered from mythology, the final piece clicked.
I had become a golden human.
The first race.
The one destined for extinction.
The shock came slow and heavy, as if the ground had vanished beneath my feet. I had known something was wrong from the beginning. But knowing its name… knowing exactly what came next… hurt in a different way.
I sat on the cabin floor, the book open on my lap, and stared at my own hands.
'No.'
'I already died once. I was already erased. I already lost everything.'
'I won't let them take me again.'
'I won't fall peacefully asleep just because my race's fate is what it is.'
'If extinction comes, it'll have to tear me from this life by force.'
'I won't make it easy.'