The night was heavy with silence. No wind stirred the trees, no stars blinked in the heavens. It was as if the entire world held its breath, waiting for something to happen. In a small village tucked deep between mountains, a child was born beneath that suffocating stillness.
The midwife had seen many births, but none like this. She trembled as she pulled the infant into the cold air. His first cry cut through the silence like a blade, raw and piercing, but it wasn't the sound that made her falter. It was the mark.
On the boy's neck, just beneath the curve of his jaw, lay a blemish the color of spilled ink. Black and formless, yet strangely alive, as though it pulsed faintly with its own rhythm. The midwife gasped and nearly dropped him. She whispered a prayer, not daring to speak the truth aloud: the Shadow's Curse.
The villagers soon gathered, summoned by the cry and the rumor spreading like wildfire. Faces pressed through the doorway, their eyes wide with fear and fascination. Some clutched charms of protection, others muttered blessings under their breath. The mother, pale with exhaustion, held the child to her chest. She didn't care for curses or prophecies. To her, he was simply her son. Yet the weight of the villagers' stares pressed down like chains.
From the moment of his birth, the child was no ordinary infant. There was an air around him, subtle but undeniable, like a shadow that stretched just a little too far. Animals avoided him. Flames in the hearth flickered low when he passed. Children dared each other to touch him, then ran away screaming, convinced they felt something cold seep into their bones.
Whispers began. Whispers that turned into fearful murmurs. Murmurs that grew into calls for exile. The boy had no name, for none dared give him one. To name him, the elders said, would be to invite the curse more deeply into the world. And so he remained nameless, growing in silence, a ghost among the living.
But the gods were not silent. Far above, in realms of light and fire, they watched. They had long known of the curse, long feared its return. Once, in the age before memory, the Shadow had risen and nearly consumed them all. It had taken all seven gods together to bind it, scattering its remnants across the cosmos. That it should awaken again, within a mortal child, was a terror they could not abide.
In the village, the boy grew quickly. He did not smile often, though he could. He did not laugh, though he learned how to mimic the sound when others expected it. His eyes were dark, too dark, swallowing light instead of reflecting it. Some swore they saw shapes move in their depths, flickers of something vast and unknowable.
And yet, he was not cruel. He did not harm the children who mocked him, nor the villagers who spat at the ground when he passed. If anything, there was a gentleness in him, though it was laced with sorrow too deep for his years. He spent hours watching the shadows stretch across the fields at dusk, silent, as if listening to a voice only he could hear.
On the night of his seventh year, the air changed. Clouds gathered where none should have been. The sky darkened though the moon was full. The villagers grew restless, muttering prayers and lighting candles, but no flame held steady. Each wick sputtered and died.
The boy stood outside his hut, staring at the heavens. He felt it before any of them did—the weight of eyes, vast and ancient, pressing down upon the world. The gods had come.
The first sign was fire. Not the gentle flame of hearths, nor the crackling torches of men, but rain—droplets of flame that fell from the sky like burning tears. They struck the earth and sizzled, setting fields alight, consuming homes in breaths. Screams tore through the night as the villagers ran in panic. There was no escape. The fire fell everywhere.
The boy did not run. He stood still as embers licked the ground around him, as if waiting. And then, through the smoke, they appeared.
Seven figures descended, radiant and terrible, their forms too brilliant for mortal eyes. Each god bore a crown of power: flame, storm, stone, tide, wind, light, and time. They were the masters of creation, the lords of the cosmos, and they had come to end him.
The villagers fell to their knees, begging for mercy, but the gods did not hear them. Their gaze was fixed only on the boy. One raised a hand, and a spear of light formed, sharp enough to split the earth.
The boy's mother screamed and ran to shield him, but the fire struck her down. She fell without a sound, her body reduced to ash before she touched the ground. The boy did not cry. He only watched, silent, as the gods closed in.
The spear of light descended. The world seemed to hold its breath again, waiting for the moment the curse would be destroyed forever.
And then—darkness.
It was not the darkness of night, nor the absence of light. It was deeper, older. A living shadow that surged from the mark on his neck, bursting outward like a storm. It swallowed the spear whole, devouring it as though it had never existed. It spread across the ground, up the walls of burning homes, wrapping the boy in a cocoon of shifting black.
The gods recoiled. For the first time since the birth of the universe, they hesitated. The shadow hissed like a living thing, whispering in tongues older than creation. The fire above sputtered out. The night grew colder.
The boy's eyes opened wide, and in them was not fear, nor pain, but something far more terrible: recognition. As if he had always known this moment would come.
The gods raised their weapons again, summoning storms and blades of purest stone. But the shadow moved faster. Tendrils lashed out, striking their forms, leaving black scars that smoked and burned. Their divine light flickered. Their power faltered.
One god cried out—not in rage, but in fear.
The boy stepped forward, the shadow wrapping around his small frame like armor. The village lay in ruin, his mother gone, the world he knew reduced to ash. Yet he did not weep. He did not scream. He only whispered a word, one he had never been taught, one that rose from the shadow itself:
"Mine."
The gods froze. Their crowns dimmed. For in that single word was a claim, ancient and undeniable. Not of a child, but of something greater, something they had tried to bury.
The shadow pulsed, spreading further, reaching toward the sky itself. The gods, shaken and wounded, withdrew in haste, their forms vanishing into the night. They had not destroyed him. They had not destroyed the curse. They had only awakened it.
The boy stood alone among the ashes. No mother, no villagers, no name. Only the darkness remained, curling gently around him, a silent companion.
And in that silence, a new truth settled into his bones: the gods had tried to erase him. They had failed. And though he did not yet understand why, he knew this much—
One day, he would come for them.