The first breath wasn't air; it was dust.
The silence wasn't empty. It was solid, heavy, as if the air itself were made of lead.
Hayjin snapped his eyes open, but his vision was a blurred smear of gray and ochre. He tried to bring a hand to his chest right where he had felt the cold of the blade, or whatever it had been but his arms weighed like lead. In fact, they were different. Too short. Too thin.
"Breathe... breathe..." he forced himself, but the panic was a wall of icy flames.
He tried to inhale, but his chest didn't respond the way it should have. He felt a sharp hiss escape his lips, a strangled sound he didn't recognize. The pain in his thorax where the blade had pierced him was gone, replaced by a terrifying sensation of emptiness, as if his organs had been removed and replaced with nothingness.
"Am I... dead?" The thought flashed through his mind like lightning in a storm. "The asphalt was freezing. He killed me. That guy killed me."
He tried to move his fingers and felt cold stone beneath his fingertips. But the distance between his head and the floor was wrong. It was too close. He tried to raise a hand to touch his throat, but the limb that appeared before his eyes nearly made him faint.
It was a small hand. The knuckles were tiny, the skin too pale, the fingers thin as twigs.
His heart leapt into his throat, thudding with a frantic speed the accelerated beat of a caged bird. Thump-thump-thump-thump. "No... no, no, no…"
The voice that came out was a shrill, childish whisper. He brought both hands to his mouth, feeling small teeth and thin lips. Pure terror the kind that locks your muscles and makes you wish to vanish hit him full force. He began to hyperventilate. Every breath was short, broken, a gasp that echoed in the silent hall.
He managed to focus on his surroundings. It wasn't a room. It was an immense cavern, illuminated by a bluish light that seemed to emanate from the walls themselves. And then he saw them.
Scores of hooded figures were arranged in a perfect circle around him. There were dozens, perhaps hundreds. They didn't move. Not a rustle of fabric, not a single cough. They were solid shadows staring at him from the darkness of their hoods.
Hayjin felt cold sweat trickling down his back. Anxiety pressed on his lungs like a hydraulic press.
"They killed me. They killed me in the alley. That was blood... I felt the cold... I was dead."
He looked frantically around, searching for an exit, but his vision blurred from the tears that began to fall beyond his control. They were the tears of a child, or little more than a young boy, warm and abundant, streaking down his cheeks.
"Please..." he croaked, trying to back away. But his legs those short, weak legs wouldn't respond. He tripped over the too-long tunic, falling backward.
The impact with the hard stone forced a groan of pain from him. He curled into himself, bringing his knees to his chest, trying to make himself small, to disappear, to wake up from this cursed dream.
"Wake up... Hayjin, wake up..." he whispered to himself, closing his eyes so tightly he saw spots of light. "It's just shock. It's only a nightmare... wake up!"
But the smell of incense and ancient dust didn't fade. And the silence of the hooded figures was a deafening scream.
He felt a shiver run down his neck. The Mark. It was pulsing. But it wasn't the usual dull ache; it was as if he had an exposed nerve reacting to the presence of these people.
He opened his eyes again, trembling violently. One of the figures, the closest one, made a tiny movement of the head. Just a tilt. It was enough to make Hayjin snap.
"Stay back! Don't touch me!" he screamed, but his voice broke into a silent, desperate sob.
He tried to crawl away, scratching his nails against the rock, but his movements were clumsy, uncoordinated. He felt trapped in a body he didn't know how to use, a shell too tight and too young for his young-adult mind.
The anxiety turned to nausea. He leaned forward, retching a bit of bitter bile onto the stone floor. He was alone, in a world that made no sense, surrounded by silent monsters, with the vivid memory of a blade splitting his heart still fresh in his mind.
He wanted to scream until his lungs burst, but he could only produce small, muffled sobs while the circle of shadows continued to watch his agony without lifting a finger.
As Hayjin collapsed to the ground, overwhelmed by hyperventilation and the silent weeping of that foreign, tiny body, the silence of the hooded circle was broken. It wasn't a collective movement, but a single figure stepping out from the shadows of the innermost circle.
Her steps were light, almost imperceptible a rustle of coarse fabric against millenary stone that echoed like a distorted heartbeat in Hayjin's ears. The figure approached and knelt beside him, casting a dark shadow over his body.
The hood slipped slightly back, revealing a face of glacial, almost statuesque beauty. It was a girl. Her eyes, a red so pale they looked almost like they were made of blood, glowed with a feverish intensity a mixture of fanatical devotion and possessive lust that paralyzed Hayjin more than pure terror.
"Hello, hahaha. I am Asmita."
Without saying a word, she reached out a hand. Her fingers were long and cold as metal. Hayjin flinched, trying to back away with a strangled gasp, but he was too weak, too uncoordinated.
Asmita brushed his cheek. The sensation was horrible: the chill of her fingers against the warm, soft skin of the child he now was. It wasn't a caress; it was an inspection, a proprietary touch claiming ownership. Her fingers rose slowly, tracing the contour of his small, bony jaw, pressing lightly as if to measure the density of his bones.
"Sarah... Sarah, where are you?" Hayjin's thought was a silent scream that pierced the fog of panic.
In his mind, he clung desperately to the last clean memory he had: Sarah's smile under the thin city rain, the smell of burnt coffee at the Blue Bean, the taste of the bagel that tasted like cardboard. Those mundane, everyday details were his only lifeline against the horror surrounding him.
"It's just a bad dream... it's just a fever dream caused by stress... I'll wake up... I'll wake up in my bed... I'll see Sarah again..." he kept repeating to himself, a desperate litany as he shut his eyes so hard he saw spots of violet light.
But the pressure of Asmita's fingers didn't fade. She moved to his forehead, pushing aside the boy's raven hair to observe the bare skin. Then, with a slow and deliberate movement, her hand descended, brushing his neck where the Mark pulsed like an auxiliary heart, and settled on his chest, right over his frantic heart.
Her cold palm pressed against the hemp tunic, directly onto the small, fragile flesh. Hayjin felt the accelerated beat of his child-heart thump-thump-thump-thump resound against the girl's hand, as if it were trying to escape her touch.
Asmita tilted her head, a thin and disturbing smile curling her lips. Her red eyes never left his face, devouring him with an obsession that was anything but human.
"So weak in appearance... so fragile... and yet... so powerful," she whispered, her voice a low hiss laden with a distorted adoration that made Hayjin retch a bit more bitter bile onto the stone floor.
The physical contact was the final, irrefutable proof. Dreams weren't this physical, they weren't this freezing, they weren't so steeped in an obsession you could feel beneath your skin.
"It's not a dream," Hayjin realized, and this time the thought wasn't a flash, but a death sentence. "It's real. All of this is real."
Asmita's touch was stealing his last hope of mental escape, leaving him alone and naked in the body of a child, surrounded by monsters who claimed him as their property. He wanted to scream until his lungs burst, but he could only produce small, muffled sobs, while Asmita continued to map his new shell with a hunger that promised never to let him go.
It was in that moment of absolute despair, with Asmita's hand still pressed to his heart, that the circle of hooded figures opened to let someone through.
The silence of the cave was suddenly broken by a rustle of heavier fabric. The circle of figures parted, dividing with military precision, to make way for a man who did not wear a hood.
He had an angelic face, and his eyes were incredibly calm, almost glassy. He approached Hayjin with measured steps, keeping a safe distance, as one would with a wounded animal ready to bite.
"Breathe, Hayjin. Do it slowly. One breath at a time," the man said. His voice was deep and steady, but laced with an artificial sweetness that made the skin crawl. "Your heart isn't used to a chest this small. If you don't calm down, it will stop again."
The man spoke and he did so in perfect, clean language, devoid of any exotic accent. That familiar sound, in a place that seemed plucked from a fever dream, was like a bucket of ice water.
Hayjin's eyes widened, his small fingers clawing at the damp rock. "You... you speak like me. How do you know my language?"
The man offered a thin smile, a gesture that never reached his glassy eyes. "The Mark is not just a sign on the skin, Hayjin. It is a bridge. We have studied your lineage for centuries. We know your tongues, your habits... your fragility. We are not strangers; we are the guardians of your heritage."
Hayjin looked up, wiping his mouth with the back of a trembling hand. "Who... who the hell are you? How is this possible... I was in... That guy... he..."
"My name is Cross," the man interrupted, ignoring the question about death. He crouched down to Hayjin's level, resting his hands on his knees. "And no, it is not a nightmare. I know you hope it is, that you're waiting to wake up in your unmade bed in London. But I'm sorry to tell you, that life is over. What you see, what you feel... this is your new reality."
Hayjin shook his head frantically, but his senses betrayed him: he felt the cold of the stone, the humidity of the air, the pungent smell of incense. It wasn't a dream. Dreams weren't this detailed.
"Why am I like this?" Hayjin croaked, gesturing to his minute body.
"Why? Simple. To ensure our mission succeeds, we needed you to have a new body to host the Bearer," Cross explained, nodding to the figures around them.
"We are the Cult of the Mark. We have waited generations for this moment. You probably know this already, but generations ago your lineage were the guardians of the cult. They were too weak, however, to see everything through. Their task was to prepare an empty shell that would protect the seed until it bloomed within you."
As Cross spoke, Hayjin began to look around with a desperate lucidity dictated by adrenaline. He wasn't really listening; he was looking for an exit. He noticed, a short distance away behind a natural rock column, a small fissure in the wall. It was narrow, irregular, too small for an adult, but maybe... maybe a child could fit.
"My... my family...?" a shaken Hayjin muttered. "What the hell does my family have to do with any of this?"
"Remember, our goal is not to kill you, Hayjin," Cross continued, moving an inch closer. "On the contrary. You are our most precious tool. Through you, the Cult can finally reclaim what is rightfully ours in this world. Alius is a land of ancient kingdoms and powers, and your mark is the key to..."
"A tool?" Hayjin hissed.
Fear, for an instant, was submerged by a surge of pure rage.
When Cross uttered those words, something in Hayjin snapped. It wasn't fear that took over, but a dull ache that started in his stomach and rose to his throat, turning into an incandescent rage. In that child's body, his man's mind returned powerfully to the events of a few hours prior.
He saw Sarah's smile again under the bus shelter. He felt the warmth of her friendly elbow nudge, the taste of that bagel that tasted like cardboard but had been the sweetest meal of his life. For the first time after years of loneliness and failure, Hayjin had glimpsed a sliver of light. Not heroic glory, but something far more precious: normalcy. A quiet evening, an exam to prepare together, the chance to no longer be "that loser" but just Hayjin.
"They took... everything from me," he thought, and his small teeth began to chatter with fury. "Just when I was starting... Just when there was her."
The image of Sarah waving to him and saying "Don't disappear" burned in his brain like a branding iron. Those hooded men, that leader with the calm voice, had decided that his life was worth nothing except as a cog in their delusional plans. They had torn him from his reality, killed him, and then thrown him back into this tiny shell just so they could "use" him.
"You killed me. You tore me from my home, took the only good thing I had left... and you talk about me as if I were a hammer or a key?"
Cross tilted his head, surprised by the intensity of the tone. "It is an honor, Hayjin. Your previous life was a pile of rubble. Here, you will be the pivot upon which Alius turns..."
"My life was MINE!" Hayjin screamed, standing up with a strength he didn't think he had in those little legs. "I don't care if it sucked, I don't care if I was a failure to the rest of the world! It was my life, and there were people who cared about me! You aren't guardians, you're just kidnappers, goddamn murderers!"
"I don't give a damn about Alius, your cult, or whatever you want to reclaim!" Hayjin shouted, his childish voice screeching against the walls. "I don't know how I ended up here and I don't know why you reduced me to this, but I won't be anyone's tool. Go to hell, all of you!"
The rage gave him the necessary push. Before Cross could react or the guards could close the circle, Hayjin spotted the fissure behind the column.
"I won't be your toy. Never!"
Cross remained surprised for a millisecond the time Hayjin needed to bolt.
With the clumsy but rapid coordination of his new body, Hayjin lunged toward the column. He heard the cries of the hooded figures, but they were confused sounds. He squeezed into the fissure, scraping his shoulders against the raw rock. The tunnel was dark and narrow, but he kept pushing with his legs, crawling through the freezing mud until he saw natural light at the end.
He felt the rock scratching his arms and chest, the coarse fabric of the tunic snagging on protrusions, but he didn't stop. He crawled through the dark, hearing Cross's voice ordering them not to harm him, until he burst outside.
He tumbled out of the fissure, rolling onto the tall grass. Before him were not the buildings of London, but a vastness of dark forests and mountains that seemed to touch the sky under a moon too large and too close.
He was free.
The air that greeted him was different. It wasn't the heavy smog of the city, but a freezing, pure air that smelled of moss and ancient resin.
Hayjin rolled on the thick grass, struggling to stand. Before him stretched an immense valley, dominated by gigantic trees whose leaves glowed with a faint bioluminescent light. In the distance, the mountain peaks looked like black claws against a sky studded with too many stars.
He looked at his hands, scratched and soiled with dirt. He was a six-year-old boy, alone in an alien world, hunted by a cult of fanatics. But as he stared at the unknown horizon, a single thought dominated his mind:
"You won't take me. I will never be anyone's tool."