The storm began long before the cries of labor reached the mountain village.
Thunder rolled in thick waves across the sky, rattling the wooden shutters of every home. Lightning carved jagged lines over the clouds, and the air carried the heavy taste of iron. People huddled indoors, whispering fearful prayers. To them, storms were nothing new—but this one felt different, alive, almost watching.
Inside a small hut at the edge of the village, a woman labored in the flicker of oil lamps. Her name was Lian, frail and gentle, her body trembling as though the child inside her were clawing its way into the world. The midwife dabbed sweat from her brow and muttered encouragement, though her voice shook with the storm outside.
Then the moon vanished.
One moment, its pale light seeped through the gaps in the roof. The next, darkness swallowed it whole. When the midwife dared glance through the window, she screamed.
The moon had turned red.
A crimson eclipse loomed over the sky, staining the world with its glow. The river outside boiled as though set aflame, and animals wailed in panic. The storm grew louder, and with it came the sound of a newborn's laugh.
Not a cry.
Not the wail of life's first breath.
A laugh.
The baby lay in Lian's trembling arms, his face red and scrunched but his mouth stretched wide with mirth. He laughed at the thunder as if mocking heaven itself.
The midwife stumbled back, clutching her beads. "This… this is no child," she whispered.
But Lian, exhausted, smiled faintly and kissed her son's brow. "Even heaven cannot chain you," she murmured, before her eyes dulled and her breath slipped away.
The storm howled louder, as if claiming her life as its due.
By morning, the village knew what had happened. They came in silence, drawn by the crimson sky that lingered long after the eclipse should have ended. When they entered the hut, they found the child lying beside his dead mother, still staring upward with eyes too sharp, too knowing for an infant.
And on his back, burned into the skin, was a mark of stars—fractured, broken, glowing faintly as if the heavens themselves had branded him.
The priests arrived with their talismans and incense. They tried to chant seals, to bind the boy's soul. But every prayer faltered on their tongues, turning into meaningless babble. Lightning struck between them and the infant whenever they drew close. The oldest priest spat into the dust and shook his head.
"He bears no thread," the man muttered. "He has no place in the Heavenly Loom."
Another priest's voice cracked. "He should not exist."
But they could not touch him. Even the gods would not allow it.
So they left him with the villagers, burdened with a single decree.
"From this day forth, he is the Cursed One Under Heaven."
---
Years passed, and the curse proved true.
The boy grew, but never as other children did. He spoke early, too early, yet his words came in riddles. Sometimes they made no sense. Sometimes they came true.
He laughed at funerals. He wept at weddings. He mocked priests by repeating their prayers backward. Dogs barked when he walked by, and children hid behind their mothers' skirts.
At five years old, during a storm, he climbed onto a roof and shouted at the sky, "If you want me, strike me! If not, stop wasting your noise!"
The storm parted instantly.
At seven, he found a cracked spoon and declared it "a weapon for killing gods." The villagers sneered—until he flung it at a soldier's spear and shattered the steel shaft in two.
At ten, he walked into the temple and pushed over the idol of the harvest god. The priests shrieked, certain famine would follow. Instead, the fields yielded twice their crop that year.
The villagers did not thank him. They feared him more than ever.
Oracles came from far and wide, desperate to define him. One claimed he would tear down the heavens. Another said he would crown himself emperor of gods. A third said he would unravel the Loom of Fate and plunge all into chaos.
But an old, blind prophetess whispered differently. "He is not the end of the world," she said, trembling. "He is the end of endings."
When the boy turned twelve, soldiers came to kill him—twenty armored men sent by a king terrified of what the child might become.
The boy grinned as they surrounded him. "So many shiny tin cans for one little mistake of heaven?"
They attacked.
What followed was madness made flesh. He stumbled where he should have been struck, and the captain's spear pierced his own lieutenant. He tripped over a rock, and somehow the enemy's formation collapsed. Steel clashed against phantom walls no one else could see, shattering into useless fragments.
When it was over, twenty soldiers lay broken in the dust. The boy held his cracked spoon high and laughed, his voice louder than thunder.
"See? A god-killer."
From that day, the world no longer whispered only of a cursed child. He became a story, a legend, a terror. The peasants saw him as freedom. The priests, as blasphemy. Kings swore to destroy him, yet none dared face him alone.
The heavens had decreed him cursed, bound to madness. Yet in that madness, he found strength no god could predict and no fate could bind.
And though he bore no name of his own, the world began to call him with awe and dread alike:
The Cursed One Under Heaven.