The air was warm.That was the first thing he noticed when he opened his eyes.
The boy lay beneath an endless canopy of glowing trees, each leaf shimmering softly like trapped starlight. The forest was alive with whispers, but not the kind he feared—no footsteps in the dark, no shouting, no pain. Just… wind.
"Where… am I?"
He sat up slowly, his tiny hands pressing against the soft moss beneath him. His body felt strange—light, clean, free of the bruises and scars that once marked his skin.
But something else was off.He felt… smaller. Younger.
He stumbled toward a nearby pond, the water still and glassy. The reflection staring back wasn't the thirteen-year-old boy who jumped from the bridge.It was a child—seven years old.Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Pointed elven ears.
And when he scraped his knee on a rock, golden blood dripped out.
"...What is this?"
The memories of Earth flooded him all at once.The years of abuse.The endless nights alone.The moment he let go of the bridge railing and fell into the dark.
He remembered dying.So why was he here?
The forest held no answers. Only silence.
He looked down at his hands—soft, unscarred, trembling. A weak laugh escaped him, thin and bitter.
"This isn't heaven… is it?"
As if to answer, the world itself pulsed.A strange vibration filled the air for a single heartbeat.And then—everything stopped.
The wind froze.The glowing motes hung motionless in the air.Even the sound of birds disappeared.
Time had stopped.
"What… is happening to me?"
The moment ended as quickly as it began, but his heart wouldn't stop racing. Something deep inside him was different now—something beyond his understanding.
But before he could process it further—
Crunch.A twig snapped behind him.
Two figures emerged from the shadows of the trees. Women dressed in immaculate white robes. Their eyes gleamed with a reverence that made his skin crawl.
"We found him.""The child with golden blood…"
They approached slowly, almost kindly, but their smiles didn't reach their eyes.
"Come now, little one," one of them said sweetly. "You'll be safe with us."
His body froze.Something deep inside screamed that this was wrong.
But he was seven.He was alone.And he was too weak to fight.
The women extended their hands. He hesitated, stepping back—but vines erupted from the ground and wrapped around his arms and legs, tightening until he gasped.
"No—!"
His cry echoed through the forest as they dragged him away.Back toward the holy city.Back toward the place where his blood would be farmed.
"This… isn't a second chance.""It's another nightmare."
The boy who died on that bridge was gone.The child known as xesre was born into a gilded cage.
And suffering had only just begun.