In one of the higher worlds — a world said to have been shaped by a god's own hands — on a young and still untamed planet, a boy was born.
An ordinary human boy.
His hair was black, like soot from a chimney flue, and his eyes were darker still. Not brown, not deep brown, but truly black, like the void between stars. They did not reflect light; they seemed to drink it in, and if you stared long enough, you began to feel there was no bottom to them.
His family was not poor. Their home was no hut, but a sturdy stone house with a tiled roof that sang in different voices when it rained. Around it lay a garden, enclosed by a low wall of wild stone that his father had once built with his own hands, though he could easily have hired laborers. In that garden grew not only apples and pears, but also rare trees brought by merchants from across the sea, bearing fruit whose names the boy had yet to learn. Behind the house stood a stable for three horses, and it smelled of hay and warmth even after the sun went down.
They dressed him simply but well: linen shirts, soft leather boots that never chafed, and a woolen cloak for windy days. His mother made sure the cloth was clean and the buttons sewn on tightly, and every evening she checked whether he had torn a sleeve or lost his belt somewhere.
Otherwise, he grew up like any other child: he climbed trees, though his mother scolded him each time and threatened to have the gardener cut off all the lower branches; he raced through the orchard, scraping his bare heels on roots and stones; he stole unripe fruit, winced at the sourness, and still finished every bite — out of sheer stubbornness.
He was six when everything broke.
That day, he climbed for the ripest fruit — the ones that hung at the very top of the old tree at the far edge of the orchard. The bark was warm from the sun, rough and familiar beneath his fingers. He climbed higher and higher, never looking down — why look when you already know how high you are? The branch beneath his foot cracked without warning. Dry. Thin. He didn't even have time to be afraid — the world simply jerked and flipped upside down.
Below, right under the tree, stood a furnace.
The workers had built it at his father's request the year before: rough stones held together with clay, topped with a grate of tempered rods. Simple, clumsy, but solid. That day, the furnace was cold — it hadn't been lit since morning; ash mixed with coal dust lay in a gray layer at the bottom, and it smelled of dry bitterness and old smoke.
He fell headfirst onto the edge of the stonework.
The sound was quiet — wet, crunchy, wrong. As if something alive had cracked, not wood.
For a few seconds, everything went still. Even the birds fell silent.
And then the boy stirred.
Slowly, in jerks, like a broken doll someone tried to stand upright. He pressed his palms against the ground, pushed himself up, and stood. The head — the most fragile part of the human body; any blow to the temple or the back of the skull with that force should have killed him on the spot. Or left him lying unconscious until nightfall.
He felt no pain.
None at all.
Only warmth — thick, wet — ran down through his hair, over his forehead, along his cheeks. He blinked, and the world before his eyes blurred red. Blood poured down his face, dripped onto his shirt, onto the grass, onto the stones of the furnace. There was so much of it — far too much for a child.
He did not cry. He did not scream. He just stood there, bewildered, groping the air in front of him, not understanding why nothing hurt.
Then instinct took over. He tore a large leaf from a nearby bush — it was nearly the size of his head, coarse, with a waxy sheen — and pressed it against the wound. The leaf quickly grew wet, darkened, and turned slippery. The bleeding would not stop.
His vision dimmed at the edges — not from pain, but from weakness. He felt his legs turn to wool, the ground beneath them swaying like the deck of a ship.
And then he ran.
Blindly, through the orchard that had suddenly become alien and hostile, through the scents of familiar flowers and herbs that now smelled only of blood. Branches whipped his face, but he didn't notice. He ran toward the house, toward his mother, toward the only place that was supposed to be safe.
The door burst open under his shoulder. Inside, it was quiet and smelled of dried herbs and warm bread.
"Mother! Mother!"
He screamed again and again, but no one answered. The house was empty.
At the far end of the garden, near the gate, a woman's figure appeared. His mother was returning from the market, a woven basket of purchases in her arms. At first, she did not understand what she was hearing — the wind carried a scrap of a cry, thin and breaking. Then she saw.
A small figure on the doorstep, drenched in red.
The basket fell from her hands. Apples rolled across the ground, but she didn't even notice.
She ran.
But the boy no longer saw her. His strength was gone. The world around him shrank to a narrow tunnel, darkness gathering at the edges, and in that darkness there was no sound, no pain, no fear. Only weariness. A vast, all-consuming weariness.
He collapsed on the threshold before her hands could catch him.