Francisco Alves had never been afraid of machines.
But when the steel bar slipped and the weight came crashing down, fear wasn't even the first thing he felt. It was pain — sharp, crushing, so total that his mind went blank. His last breath rasped out, hot blood filling his throat.
So this is it…
He expected nothing after. Nothing but dark.
Yet when the darkness came, it wasn't empty.
---
He floated. Or maybe he fell. Hard to tell — his body was gone, yet he still existed. Threads of himself stretched thin, unraveling in the cold of a space without stars. The black around him rippled with shapes, vague and massive, like shadows of giants moving behind a curtain.
His soul burned. It was being pulled, torn, twisted.
What's happening to me?
The pain should have broken him, but something held. Strands of his spirit wove together wrong, then right, then wrong again, until at last they settled into a rhythm that was not the same as before.
It pulsed. It drank in threads of light from the darkness itself. Each pulse filled him with a faint, strange warmth.
Am I… alive?
The void split.
---
A cry burst from him — his own cry. Thin, weak, desperate.
Cold air stabbed into his lungs for the first time. He flailed, his body tiny, fragile. A woman's arms caught him, pressing him against warmth and skin damp with sweat.
Her voice trembled as she whispered sounds he didn't understand.
He opened his eyes — blurry shapes swam above him. A woman's face, pale with exhaustion, yet smiling through tears. A man stood close, rough hands hovering, his breath smelling of wood smoke and earth. He muttered words too, harsh in rhythm but softened by awe.
Who…? Where…?
The world was new. He was new.
---
The hut around him was dim. The walls smelled of clay and smoke, the air thick with the sharpness of herbs. A fire snapped low in the hearth. From outside came the murmur of running water, the rustle of night wind.
He whimpered. His mother pressed him tighter, wrapping him in worn cloth. Her heartbeat drummed in his ear, steady, calming.
Then the door creaked.
An old woman entered, back bent, hair white, eyes sharp as stone. She leaned over him, muttered something, and touched his forehead with dry fingers. He squirmed, but her gaze softened.
Words passed between the three adults, tones shifting — the father uncertain, the mother gentle but insistent, the old woman decisive. At last, she took a stick of charcoal from the hearth, drew a symbol above the door, and turned back.
Her voice rang clear, one word carrying the weight of finality:
"Kaelen."
---
The mother repeated it, breathless. "Kaelen." She kissed his damp forehead again and again, as if the name itself could protect him.
The father hesitated, then echoed it in a low rumble. "Kaelen."
The newborn felt the sound tremble through his bones. A tether. A weight. A name.
Kaelen…
It was him.
---
Days blurred. Hunger, sleep, warmth, cold. His cries were loud, his breaths strong. And always, beneath skin and bone, something pulsed — a warmth that grew with each inhale, each tiny gasp of air. His body seemed to drink more than milk.
Once, through the crack of the door, he heard children shouting. Their voices rose in excitement, one mimicking an explosion with his mouth, another falling dramatically into the mud. They shouted a name — "Jinhai!" — then laughed and ran.
Another time, he drifted half-asleep as his father drank with a neighbor by the fire. The man spoke low, words slurred: "The river turned because of them… one strike, and a new stream was born. But half the forest burned black."
His father grunted. "Far from Ashwood. Cultivators don't bother with us."
Ashwood. That was the village. That was home.
---
His grandmother came often. She smelled of bitter herbs, her voice rising in chant as she waved smoke over him. She told stories while she worked, her tone equal parts awe and warning.
"There was a woman, Elder Sova. They say she touched the sick and they rose again. Creation in one palm… but in the other, destruction. To heal, to kill — one choice away."
Kaelen didn't understand the words, but the rhythm clung to him. Creation. Destruction.
---
Nights were hardest. Cold pressed in, wolves howled far off. His mother held him tight, his father paced, tense with every thunderclap.
But Kaelen felt something else. Each flash of lightning outside fed that warmth in his chest, each rumble of thunder steadying his breath. While his parents worried, he slept calm, as if the storm cradled him.
---
The world outside the hut kept moving — indifferent, vast. Men chopped wood, women washed clothes, children played in mud. People lived, worked, feared, laughed.
Kaelen lay in his mother's arms, small and helpless, yet his spirit pulsed with a quiet rhythm all its own, drawing in threads no one else could see.
The Last Breath had passed.
The First Cry had been made.
And in the fragile body of a newborn in Ashwood Village, a seed had already begun to grow.