The night air was heavy, thick with the metallic tang of fear. I remember my mother's hands clutching mine, trembling, her voice breaking as she called my name again and again. My father's arms carried me, his strides quick, almost desperate, as the hospital doors burst open with a hollow clang.
I was five years old. I didn't understand much– only that my chest burned, that every breath felt like pulling air through shattered glass. The fluorescent lights above blurred into white streaks as they rushed me down the hallway. The world smelled of antiseptic and cold steel.
Doctors swarmed me like shadows with voices, words spilling over each other in frantic tones i couldn't grasp. My small body was placed on a bed, masked faces leaning over me, hands pressing down me, poking, attaching things to my skin.
I heard one voice–calm, but heavy. "His oxygen is dropping..... five percent..."
Another voice broke. "We...we can't save him. It's too late."
My mind floated somewhere between waking and fading. Their words blurred into a distant hum, like echoes underwater. What are they saying? Why can't i breathe? Why does my chest hurt so much? The questions circled in my head, but no one answered. My eyelids grew heavier, the edges of my vision dimming.
And then–
It came.
A voice. A voice echoed in my head, it was calming but at the same time it made me feel uneasy, a voice of a man. Not from my parents, not from the doctors. It was inside me, yet all around me, resonating like the toll of a distant bell.
"Do you wish to live?"
I didn't understand. Live? What did that mean? I was too young to know the weight of life and death. But the voice persisted, each time clearer, deeper, repeating the same question again and again. I realised it won't stop until i give an answer but i didn't know how to respond or what to answer.
"Do you wish to live?"
The room faded. My parents' cries became whispers lost in the wind. I stood–or thought i stood–in a vast, colorless void. My small hands clenched as i thought of home, of the laughter i hadn't yet heard from friends i hadn't yet made. I thought of the warmth of my family, the simple mornings, the small dreams I'd never see if I let go.
"I...I wish to live", i whispered. My voice was small, but it didn't shake.
The void seemed to tremble. The voice fell silent, but its weight remained, lingering in my chest like a pact.
That was the night i should have died.
That was the night the natural order was broken.
And that was the night i began walking the path that would make me–
The flaw in the natural orders.
–Sebas Dravenveil