The days blurred together in a haze of hunger and drowsy warmth, but little by little, fragments began to stick. Shapes, sounds, patterns.
At first, it was the woman's voice. Soft, flowing, wrapping around him when she held him close. He couldn't understand the words, but the tones repeated—rising and falling like a gentle song. His tiny mind began to notice how her hum always smoothed the gray inside him, like cloth pressed over splinters.
Then came the man. His voice was different: deep, cutting, edged with something heavy. When he spoke, the air seemed to shift. Even as an infant, he felt the difference—his skin prickled, his chest tightened. Sometimes the words rang sharp like iron striking stone. Other times they rolled like distant thunder.
And once, as he lay in the cradle, eyes barely open, he saw the man stand outside at dusk. His silhouette burned against the horizon, arms moving in deliberate arcs. With each gesture, faint ripples trembled in the air, distorting the twilight like heat above a fire.
He didn't understand it. He couldn't name it.
But he felt it.
The world here was alive in a way his old one never was.
Even the house itself breathed differently. When silence settled, he could sometimes hear a faint hum in the walls, as though the very wood carried a pulse. He would lie awake, tiny fists clutching nothing, feeling that rhythm seep into him.
Then came the words.
Not many. Only a few, repeated often by the woman as she leaned over him. The gray within him strained, reaching, clinging. Slowly, painfully, his mind held onto them.
"Ji…"
"Mu…"
"Chi…"
They were fragments, but they rang with strange weight. Like seeds pressing into his chest.
And sometimes—only sometimes—he thought he heard another kind of word. Not spoken, but resounding. When the man trained, or when the night beasts howled, a sound without sound trembled through him. A rhythm that stirred something he could neither resist nor understand.
It frightened him.
It thrilled him.
It whispered: This is not your gray life. This is a place where even the air carries power.
But his body betrayed him still.
One night, when fever gripped him again, he choked on milk. His tiny lungs spasmed, air refusing to enter. He thrashed, helpless, terror drowning him. The woman panicked, pressing him upright, patting his back until the liquid burst free. He gasped, sobbing, eyes burning.
And in that moment, in the edge between breath and nothing, he thought he heard it again.
The boom.
The same mountain-striking sound from the void.
It echoed inside him now, faint but undeniable.
He was not only reborn. He was bound to something else.
Time thickened and thinned without shape. Some days vanished into hunger and sleep, while others stretched endlessly in discomfort—heat rash, damp cloth, or the suffocating closeness of fever. He floated in this half-conscious haze, waiting, though he did not know for what.
Yet pieces began to press themselves into him.
The man again.
Always the man.
Sometimes at dawn, sometimes at night, the baby's bleary eyes would catch glimpses of him through the half-open doorway or from the corner of the yard. The man's body moved slowly, deliberately, each gesture weighted with intent. His arms carved lines in the air, feet steady as stone.
And then—there was the distortion.
Not every time. Only rarely.
But when it came, the air bent. The outlines of trees behind him seemed to waver, and even the baby's chest felt heavier, as if the man's movements dragged at the very breath of the world.
He could not name it.
He only knew that when the man moved like that, the gray inside him grew restless.
Other things intruded.
Once, the woman brought a bitter-smelling liquid, pressing it to his lips. It stung, sharp and earthy, sinking into his tongue. His infant body squirmed, gagged, but she forced it down with gentle insistence.
Moments later, the gray within him jolted. His skin prickled, heat rushing through his veins as though the liquid carried tiny sparks. He cried, terrified, while she soothed him with soft humming.
But even in his panic, a thought lingered:
That was no ordinary medicine.
And the house itself…
At night, when silence thickened and even his small cries went unanswered, he could hear it—the low hum. Not every night, but often enough that he knew it wasn't his imagination. It pulsed through the beams of the roof, through the floor beneath his blanket. Sometimes faint, sometimes strong, like a great slow heartbeat that had nothing to do with his own.
It frightened him. He would lie still, fists clenched, listening, until exhaustion drowned him.
Once—only once—he saw something that shattered even his infant's fragile logic.
The man stood outside, moonlight silvering his outline. His hands pressed together, his breathing steady.
And then—light.
Not bright like the sun, but faint, shimmering, curling around him like mist. For only a heartbeat. For only long enough for the baby's weak eyes to widen, his gray soul to thrash in disbelief.
And then it was gone.
Had it been real? Or only a fever dream?
He could not know.
He only knew that this world was not his gray world.
This world breathed.
It pulsed with hidden power.
And even though he could not crawl, could not speak, could not lift his head without effort—somewhere deep inside, something whispered that he was caught in its rhythm, whether he wished it or not.