In a modest house there was a birth taking place. One beautiful baby had already been born and now the mother was pushing for a second.
Finally the second baby came out silent.
Mara heard the midwife's breath catch, saw her husband's hand tighten on the doorframe. She was too exhausted to understand why until the midwife placed the first child in her arms warm, squalling, alive and she saw the second one being cleaned on the side table.
Two.
Jorik stepped forward. His face was unreadable in the dim lamplight, but when he looked down at both infants, something in his shoulders relaxed.
"Well," he said quietly. "That's fortunate."
The midwife wrapped the second baby in gray cloth and set him in a small basket by the window.
The first one larger, ruddy-faced continued to cry in Mara's arms. She held him close and didn't look at the basket.
"This is Lior," she said. Her voice was steady. "Our son."
The midwife nodded and began cleaning up. No one mentioned the other child. There was nothing to say that hadn't been said a thousand times before in a thousand other houses.
The Royal Sweep arrived three days later, just after dawn.
Kael was awake in his basket when the door opened. He'd been awake often more than newborns usually were and his eyes tracked movement with unusual focus. Gray eyes with a faint silver sheen, alert in a way that would have unsettled anyone who looked too closely.
The Sweeper wore black and gold, his face covered by a ceremonial mask. He checked the baby once breathing, unblemished and picked up the basket without ceremony.
"Name?" he asked.
"Kael," Jorik said from across the room.
The Sweeper made a mark in his ledger and left. Mara was nursing Lior by the window. She didn't turn around. Mara's fingers tightened in Lior's blanket. She kept her eyes on the window. Her only thought now was Lior.
The platform at the village's edge was old stone, carved with symbols that predated anyone's memory. Twelve other families stood in a loose circle, all carefully not looking at each other. Thirteen baskets sat in a row.
The lead Sweeper recited the ritual words ancient, formulaic, meaningless to everyone except perhaps the god they were meant for. When he finished, the air above the platform began to distort.
It didn't tear or rip. It simply changed, the way water changes when you pour oil into it. A shimmer, a distortion, and then a space that wasn't quite there opened up. Darkness pooled at its edges.
One by one, the Sweepers lifted the baskets and dropped them through.
When Kael's turn came, the Sweeper paused. Just for a moment. The baby was staring directly at him through the mask, those strange eyes unblinking.
Then the basket tipped, and Kael fell.
The falling lasted longer than it should have.
Darkness pressed in from all sides, thick and textured. The air felt heavy and thick. Kael felt it against his skin, in his lungs, seeping into him like water into cloth. His body was too young to process what was happening, but his mind was accelerating, he felt conscious.
The impact was soft. Moss, or something like it. The basket tipped and rolled, and Kael came to rest on yielding ground that pulsed with faint purple light. Above, the tear sealed itself shut.
He lay there, breathing air that tasted like metal and ozone. The energy around him was palpable, pressing against his skin. His infant body absorbed it reflexively, cells drinking it in, he could feel it assimilating with him. A burning sensation spread across his left shoulder the birthmark, responding to the energy
Minutes passed. Or hours. Time felt uncertain here.
Then he heard footsteps. "Zone three-seven-two," a woman's voice said, clipped and professional.
"Thirteen confirmed."
"Three survivors," someone else replied. "Most didn't make it."
"Bag them and log the positions. Standard intake protocol."
Kael couldn't see who was speaking. His basket shifted as someone lifted it, and then he was moving, carried through the dark. Gradually, light began to filter in but he didn't feel any ounce of warmth touch his body.
They emerged into a space that looked almost normal. Stone walls. Glowstones set in iron sconces. A wide corridor that could have existed in any city, if not for the faint purple tinge to everything and the way the air still hummed with a bit of fog.
"Processing," the woman said. "Mark this one… gray eyes, crescent birthmark left shoulder. Soul signature is elevated."
"They all have elevated signatures," the other voice said, bored. "That's why they survived the drop."
"This one's higher. Make a note."
Kael was carried through several more corridors, each one more populated than the last. People moved past adults, children, all dressed in practical clothing that had been mended many times over. Some glanced at the basket.
Most didn't.
Finally, they entered a large room filled with cribs. Two dozen infants, give or take, all roughly the same age. Some were crying. Others slept. A few stared at nothing with the blank expression of newborns whose minds hadn't yet caught up to their bodies. But a good majority of them looked sick or ill.
"Crib seventeen," the woman said, and Kael was lowered into place.
A different person approached older, female, with gray hair tied back in a neat bun. She checked Kael with efficient hands reflexes, temperature, breathing. Her fingers were calloused but gentle.
"Another survivor," she murmured. "You've got some fight in you, don't you?"
Kael's eyes tracked her face. She noticed and paused.
"Hmm. Aware already. That'll make things easier or harder, depending." She tucked a thin blanket around him.
"Welcome to Threshold, little one. Try to make it to your first year, though I don't have high hopes most of you little buggers from the other world die." She moved on to the next crib.
The facility operated on a schedule Kael learned quickly.
Feedings every few hours. Diaper changes. Brief examinations by the gray-haired woman Nurse Hadra, he heard someone call her and occasional visits from people in different uniforms who checked ledgers and made marks.
The other infants cried when they were hungry or cold. Kael learned to do the same. He learned to sleep when the lights dimmed, to track faces with less intensity, to mimic the appropriate helplessness.
But at night, when the facility grew quiet and only one nurse kept watch, he stayed awake.
The energy here was different from the drop zone. When he had dropped he felt a surge of warm energy. Something Divine but when had made it down to the ground the energy here felt dead and viscous. But Kael felt his body responding to this energy. It had accelerated his mind and thought process.
Also sometimes, in the deepest part of the night, he felt something else.
A warmth that he couldn't explain properly but somewhere deep he felt loved but at the same time forgotten. He couldn't explain it when he closed his eyes he could faintly see warm lighting with fresh air cool air and a figure holding him. But the more he looked the more it hurt.
Kael's hands clenched around the blanket just slightly, the pain of the vision taking a toll on him. He felt a stir in the energy in the building
Nurse Hadra glanced up from her desk, frowning. She scanned the cribs, saw nothing obviously wrong, and returned to her paperwork.
Kael closed his eyes. The connection faded like smoke, leaving only the hum of the Abyss and the quiet breathing of two dozen other children who'd been thrown away to appease a god no one had ever seen.
Outside the facility walls, the city of Threshold continued its endless work. Somewhere in the distance, something howled.
Kael filed the sound away with everything else he was learning.