Prophecy Fragment:
"They spat his name into the dirt; the heavens laughed. Let a demon name him, and the world will taste sorrow beyond measure."
The night sky was fractured. Stars glimmered coldly, indifferent—or perhaps malicious—in their gaze. In a small village nestled among jagged hills, a cry split the night. It was not the cry of a child, but of something older, hungrier, and infinitely cruel.
The midwife's hands shook as she pressed against the newborn's chest. His skin was pallid, almost translucent, and from him came a faint, unnatural warmth—not life, but something darker. The straw beneath him blackened in her touch.
"The stars… they curse him," she whispered, voice trembling.
Outside, the wind carried whispers older than grief itself. The constellations above, in their infinite arrogance, seemed to recoil, then twist into patterns of mockery. They laughed silently at the child's first breath, their light stabbing the earth with judgment.
The child did not cry in a way the world expected. He screamed, and the sound tore through the hut like a blade. Even the dogs in the village whimpered and fled; the wind itself carried the echoes as if afraid to linger.
The villagers who remained whispered prayers to gods who would not answer. "Cursed," they muttered, "a harbinger of ruin."
But far beyond the reach of human fear, a shadow lingered. Something vast, something older than the hills themselves, had watched the child's first breath. The air quivered as though anticipating a storm. Its eyes—or whatever part of it could be called eyes—burned with patient curiosity.
In that moment, the child's hunger became apparent. It was not a hunger for milk, nor for warmth, nor for human touch. It was a hunger for power, for blood, for life itself. And the stars above, for all their arrogance, had offered nothing but scorn.
Somewhere in the void, something darker than death smiled.
The newborn's hands flexed, grasping at the air, at the straw, at the fear around him. Each movement left traces of shadow, faint black smears that burned like soot into the floor. The midwife recoiled, muttering prayers, but there was no mercy left for this child. Mercy would not touch him. The heavens had already abandoned him.
And far above, the constellations twitched in cruel delight.
The prophecy had begun.
"They will call him nothing, yet his name will tear the skies. They will laugh at him, yet he will make the stars bleed."
The child's eyes opened fully for the first time. They were small, sharp, and glinting—not with innocence, but with an intelligence that should not have belonged to a newborn. Somewhere in the dark, unseen by mortal eyes, a presence stirred. A hunger older than the universe itself had noticed him.
This child would not be a man. He would not be a boy. He would be a storm given flesh, a shadow eating stars. And the world, unprepared, would bear witness.
The night deepened. And the first thread of the Chains began to coil, unseen, around his fragile body.