The night the child was born, the sky cracked with fire. Streaks of burning stone tore across the heavens, and the old shamans gathered outside the huts, their faces painted in ash. They whispered that the Breath-Stones—the black cliffs laced with iron to the east—were singing. In the silence between thunder, the stones hummed as if the earth itself had drawn a long breath.
Inside a hut woven from reeds and bark, a woman cried out. Her labor had stretched from dusk into the burning hours of the night. At last the infant slid into the world, slick with blood, and for a moment there was quiet. Then the child wailed—not in one voice, but in many.
High and low, shrill and guttural, as though a dozen throats spoke through one fragile body. The midwives dropped their tools, their faces pale.
"Ekaaru," whispered one. The one who carries all.
The boy was named Kairava, but none spoke that name at night. By firelight, they called him Ekaaru, though in fear rather than reverence.
Strange Childhood
Kairava grew as other children did, but with oddness that made mothers clutch their charms. He survived longer than any babe should when the milk ran dry, his tiny body quieting into stillness as if the hunger did not touch him. When storms raged, animals edged away from his cradle. And when he laughed, sparks snapped in the firepit, as though flame bent toward him.
But the worst were his dreams.
At three summers old, he began to wake screaming in the voices of strangers—a starving mother begging for grain, a warrior crying as his chest was pierced, a child shivering in endless snow. He spoke words older than his tribe's tongue, sobbing until dawn.
The shamans said it was the Wound-Fire, the unseen flame of suffering passed from blood to blood. But never before had it burned so fiercely in one vessel. "The earth has chosen him," the elders muttered, "to carry what we cannot."
The First Breath-Stones
One day, while gathering herbs, the boy wandered near the eastern cliffs where the Breath-Stones rose. The rocks were heavy with iron, black and sharp, where no bird dared perch.
Kairava placed his hand against the stone and stilled. The air trembled. Dust lifted in whorls as if an invisible wind stirred. His hair rose from his scalp, and the stone gave off a faint humming, like bees inside the earth.
The shaman who followed him fell to his knees. "The earth drinks him," he whispered.
When asked what he had felt, Kairava only shook his head. "It spoke," he said softly. "But it spoke in pain."
Foreshadowing
That night, as the tribe slept, Kairava sat awake, staring into the embers. He pressed his hand to his chest where the heart thudded—sometimes fast as the hare, sometimes slow as the tortoise. He did not know how, but he could command it. He could bring warmth to his skin when cold crept in, or still himself so completely that he felt like a stone among stones.
He whispered to the fire: "I am many, but I am one. If I burn, they burn. If I live, they live."
And though the wind outside carried only the smell of smoke and earth, he thought he heard voices answer—hundreds, layered atop each other.