The sky showed no abnormalities.
Clouds hung low, heavy and unmoving. The air carried a suffocating weight, thick with humidity. Heat clung to the ground and rolled slowly along the streets, turning the long gray road into something that resembled a strip of worn leather repeatedly pressed beneath invisible wheels.
Seven was the first to notice something unusual.
It was not a sound.
It was a shadow.
A distorted patch of darkness fell from high above, stretching across the ground for a fraction of a second before shrinking rapidly as it descended.
Tap.
The noise was faint.
Extremely faint.
Like a small pebble striking dry, cracked concrete.
Seven stepped closer.
What lay on the ground was a die.
Its edges were worn almost smooth. The once-defined corners had been rounded down by time. The surface had faded to a dull tone, and the engraved markings were barely visible, as if the passing years had slowly erased them.
The color was muted.
It lacked the sheen of any modern material.
If anything, it looked less like an object manufactured by humans and more like a fragment of ancient mineral pulled from deep within the earth.
Seven bent down and picked it up.
The first sensation was weight.
It was far heavier than it looked.
The mass seemed concentrated in the center of his palm, sinking downward with an unnatural density. Along with that weight came a faint, strange chill that spread slowly into his skin.
"What is this made of…?"
Seven murmured quietly to himself.
He lifted the object slightly, intending to examine it more closely.
The next second—
The die disintegrated inside his palm.
There was no explosion.
No sound.
It simply collapsed.
As if some invisible force had crushed it instantly into an impossibly fine dust.
The powder scattered into the air.
Seven did not have time to step back.
The first wave entered his nose.
The second brushed directly across the surface of his eyes.
The rest slipped through his hair, seeping into the scalp beneath.
For a moment, he did not even recognize the danger.
A few seconds later—
Pain detonated.
Not in a single place.
It began deep inside his chest, where something seemed to collapse inward. Then it surged into his eye sockets, scraping across them like sheets of heated iron. Finally, the pain hammered into the deepest layers of his brain with the blunt, relentless rhythm of a heavy object striking bone.
"…Not good."
That was the final coherent thought that surfaced in his consciousness.
The next moment—
He fell.
His body hit the ground and immediately began to roll uncontrollably.
His retinas felt as if they had been burned open. Tears mixed with thin streams of blood as they flowed down the corners of his eyes. He raised his hands instinctively and pressed them against his face.
His fingers came away warm.
Not sweat.
Blood.
His scalp tingled violently.
In a half-delirious reflex, he grabbed a handful of his hair.
The entire clump came away in his hand.
Pain crushed his sense of time.
He had no idea how long he struggled against the ground.
It could have been minutes.
It could have been half an hour.
When fragments of awareness finally returned, the world was filled with unfamiliar voices. Somewhere close by, metal scraped against pavement—harsh, grating sounds produced by the wheels and joints of a stretcher frame.
He was lifted.
Carried away.
When he woke again, the air smelled faintly of disinfectant and old fabric.
Seven opened his eyes.
The world was black.
He froze for several seconds.
Then he blinked.
Again.
And again.
Nothing changed.
Slowly, he raised his hand and waved it in front of his face.
He saw nothing.
His heartbeat began to lose its rhythm.
He reached toward his head.
His fingertips touched bare skin.
Smooth.
No hair roots.
No remaining strands.
The entire scalp had been shaved clean.
In that moment, he understood.
This was not temporary blindness.
His visual feedback was gone completely.
The doctor said something.
Chemical neural burns.
Foreign particulate intrusion.
Abnormal cortical reaction.
Seven did not ask whether it could be restored.
Because the doctor's tone already contained the answer.
That possibility did not exist.
After returning to the orphanage, everything became slow and difficult.
Eating required feeling for the rim of the bowl.
Using the restroom depended entirely on memorized paths.
When people appeared in the corridor, they pushed past him.
He began to collide frequently with table corners and doorframes.
Bruises quickly covered his knees.
What changed more noticeably was the sound of the people around him.
Casual conversations decreased.
Footsteps began to detour.
Sometimes voices lowered into quiet whispers.
He could hear them clearly.
Resources.
Burden.
A new group of children.
No one said it directly.
But everyone understood.
Blind Seven no longer had cultivation value.
The notice came one afternoon.
The supervisor stood in front of him, voice deliberately steady.
"Seven, resources are tight right now. Before, your labor could cover part of the shortage."
A pause.
"The upper administration has confirmed they will be taking in a new group of children."
Another pause.
"So we'll have to ask you to graduate early."
Seven nodded.
No argument.
No request.
He only confirmed the statement.
That evening, he left the orphanage.
No luggage.
No destination.
The streets felt wider than he remembered.
The wind sounded louder than before.
After losing his sight, he could only judge direction by the movement of air.
On the first night, he curled beneath an overpass.
The concrete still carried the warmth of the day.
When the temperature dropped before dawn, he woke from the cold three separate times.
On the second day, he began searching for water.
He followed memory toward public faucets.
If he wasn't chased away.
The water was cold.
He drank it directly.
Food came from trash bins.
If he could smell it, he dared to reach for it.
Leftover rice sealed in plastic bags.
Hard bread crusts.
Occasionally, he found unopened nutrition bars.
Those were luxury.
Bathing stopped existing as an option.
When it rained, he stood outside beneath open roofs.
Letting rainwater wash the dirt from his body.
Relief was even simpler.
Street corners.
Construction barriers.
If his pants became dirty, he washed them.
Cold water.
Scrubbed by hand.
If they didn't dry, he wore them anyway.
His skin began to ulcerate.
Blisters formed beneath his feet.
They burst.
Then hardened into scabs.
He kept walking.
He learned to judge road direction from the sound of traffic.
To measure alley width from echoes.
At night, he slept against walls.
During the day, he searched for sheltered corners.
He did not beg.
Not because of pride.
Because of efficiency.
Begging meant exposure.
Exposure meant being cleared away.
And being watched.
So he simply existed.
Like a discarded stone.
Time flattened into one long gray block.
Days had no numbers.
Only alternating heat and cold.
During that year he learned:
How to identify large vehicles through ground vibration.
How to control hunger by regulating breathing rhythms.
How to force himself awake when his consciousness began to fade.
This was animal-level survival.
Not life.
One year later—
The first thing that returned was not images.
It was light.
As if someone had lit a lamp behind thick fabric on the far side of the world.
Seven kept his eyes open.
He could only distinguish brightness from darkness.
Day and night existed again.
The change was small.
But stable.
Later, outlines appeared.
The height differences of buildings.
The movement of human silhouettes.
The direction of the street stretching ahead.
The world did not suddenly return.
It was allowed back into his sensory system piece by piece.
At the same time, his body was changing.
The first thing he noticed was strength.
Not external.
Internal tension.
He could support his body weight more easily.
He could stand up without leaning on walls.
After walking long distances, the burning sensation in his muscles decreased.
Then came reaction speed.
He could avoid oncoming pedestrians.
He could catch falling objects before they struck the ground.
His movements became faster than conscious thought.
The streets offered no training conditions.
This was a systemic reconstruction.
Muscle density increased.
Bone load capacity improved.
Neural reflex pathways rearranged themselves.
He could feel old fatigue points disappear.
New operational zones expanded inside his body.
It felt like someone had replaced the structural supports of his frame.
This was not recovery.
It was rewriting.
Seven did not feel grateful.
He remembered the die.
He remembered the burning powder entering his eyes.
He remembered the pain when his hair fell out.
He remembered being treated like useless waste and forced to graduate early.
If this was a gift—
The price had already been paid.
At the end of that year, he could see the shape of the street.
He could distinguish human outlines.
He could confirm in the reflection of water that he was still alive.
At the same time, he confirmed something else.
His body was no longer the same.
Its fundamental structure had been altered.
Sensory thresholds raised.
Some unknown level of enhancement had been buried deep within the system's foundation.
When that year ended—
He was eleven years old.