Darkness.
That was all that remained of the world for Silas.
No sky, no walls, no faces. Only a boundless darkness stretching in every direction like a sea with no floor. And Silas sat at the heart of that sea, trembling, while the cold gnawed at his small fingers without mercy.
Then the blue dots began to fall.
A pulse. A pulse. A pulse.
Raindrops, each one carrying a faint thread of mana before touching his skin by seconds. He didn't know the name of this thing he saw. He had heard the word "mana" only once in his life, from one of the older mine workers, moments before the ceiling collapsed on top of them all. But he had always known this thing existed. He had felt it even as he carried coal through the narrow underground tunnels — an invisible thread running through his chest.
Now, with everything else gone, that thread was all he had.
He pulled his knees to his chest and buried his face between them. The wooden barrels behind his back were cold and wet, and the ground beneath him was colder and wetter still. He couldn't see the barrels. He couldn't see the ground. He had found this spot with his hands alone — leaning into a corner whose shape he didn't know, in an alley whose name he didn't know, in a city he had never seen at all.
Nebula. That was what they called it in the mine, when the workers spoke in hushed voices at night. The great capital. The city that never sleeps.
It didn't feel great from here. It felt like silent noise.
A week had passed since the mine collapsed.
On the first day he was still inside it, buried under stone, blood running down his cheeks from a place he didn't understand. Then many hands pulled him out, and many voices spoke above his head. Then one voice said, without care: "He's no use to anyone now."
Silas hadn't understood all the words. But he understood the tone.
That tone was always the same — in the mine and everywhere else. A tone that looked at you and saw something less than human.
Days later he found himself in the street. He didn't know how he had gotten there. He didn't remember who had carried him or pushed him. He only remembered that his feet were on different ground, harder than the mine floor, and that the air was different — wider and louder. And that he was alone.
Silas sat and waited for a fate he didn't know, as hours passed and he remained in the same place.
Then, in the darkness, a dot appeared.
Not a raindrop this time. Something else. Yellow and warm, moving slowly from far away. Then a second dot, a third — until there were nearly twenty.
His dead eyes widened behind the dirty bandages.
He saw veins.
That was how he understood them. A web of glowing threads weaving and moving as though they were vessels beneath transparent skin. Each web held a different color, though he didn't know why. A yellow web, a red web, one that blended both colors and moved with something unlike the rest.
That last web was at the center of the others. And it was denser.
The sound of wheels on wet cobblestone. The sound of hooves. Then the crack of a whip and a shout: "Make way! Make way for His Lordship!"
Silas didn't move. He didn't know where the sounds were coming from or how to step aside. He only held himself behind the barrels and breathed slowly.
But he couldn't pull his gaze from that dense web at the center of the carriage.
It was different from anything he had seen before. In the mine, some of the workers had carried faint, barely visible threads — used to light small lamps or push heavy carts. But this...
He focused.
The moment he did, something cracked behind his eyes. A sharp pain, as though a needle had passed from inside his skull outward. He opened his mouth to cry out but made no sound. When he touched the bandages with his small hands, he found them warm.
Blood.
He pressed himself behind the barrels and curled there, both palms against his face, breathing fast. His heartbeat filled his ears. The carriage passed. The dense web faded into the darkness and disappeared.
He sat like that until the pain stopped.
Then he slept, because he had nothing else to do.
Yet the sounds of the city woke him.
It wasn't a sudden awakening. It came gradually — layer upon layer of sound seeping into his ears. Wheels and footsteps and vendors shouting things he didn't understand. The smell of smoke and something cooking in the distance made his stomach clench around nothing.
He sat up slowly. His hands ached, his back ached, and the bandages over his eyes had stiffened with dried blood.
In the darkness, small dots here and there. Faint threads moving everywhere. People around him. He couldn't see their shapes, their clothes, their faces. He only saw those weak threads telling him that someone walked there, another walked here, and a crowd moved somewhere ahead.
And his stomach was hollowing out.
He heard them before he "saw" them.
Children, from the sound of their voices. Shouting short, repeated words toward the moving threads nearby. And sometimes he heard the sound of something metal dropped on the ground.
Silas sat and listened for a long time.
Then he stood.
He didn't know how to do what they did. He didn't know the right words. But his stomach was clearer than he was, so he found a spot where the threads seemed to pass most often, and held out his hand.
He didn't know how long he sat. He couldn't see the sun. He couldn't feel the shade. Only the sounds around him slowly changed and thinned. And every now and then, he heard something fall into his palm.
Coins. Not many — but they were all he had.
He found the shop by its smell.
Meat. Something grilled, warm steam rising from it, a scent he could catch from a distance. He moved toward it in slow, careful steps — one hand feeling through the air ahead, his feet sensing the ground beneath.
He pushed the door open. A faint bell chimed.
"We're closed for the day."
A man's voice. Heavy and tired, but holding something Silas had rarely heard before. No anger in it. No hatred.
Silas didn't speak. He only opened his hand and showed what was in it.
A long silence.
"How old are you, boy?"
He didn't answer.
Heavy footsteps approached. Then stopped. Then the sound of something being opened and wrapped. Then a large hand extended something warm toward him.
The moment his fingers touched the warm bread, the coins slipped from his other hand and scattered across the floor.
He didn't notice. He was already eating.
"Eat slowly," the man said.
He couldn't.
He ate standing, with both hands, without pause, until nothing remained. Then he stood there, breathing, and felt something strange in his chest. Not pain. Something heavier than pain and warmer at the same time.
"Do you have parents?"
The boy didn't answer.
"At least tell me your name."
"...Silas."
"All right, Silas." He felt the man crouch, then heard the coins being gathered one by one from the floor. Then a large hand took his small one and placed the coins inside it, closing his fingers around them. "Listen carefully. Don't show these to anyone. Next time, you won't find someone willing to give you food — all you'll find is a knife aimed at your throat. The meal tonight is on me."
Silas wanted to say something. He opened his mouth twice and nothing came out.
"Go on."
The barrels were gone.
Silas stood in the place he thought he knew. His hands felt through the air. Nothing. The wall was there — his palm had found it — but the barrels that had made his small corner had vanished. And Silas had no home to return to, so he sat in that same spot while the cold wind tore at his small body.
Then he heard voices approaching.
"I'm telling you, brother — that little kid collected quite a haul today."
He froze.
The voice came from behind. Then a second, deeper one: "Since when do we have a new beggar in our territory? You think Red Tiger's crew is sending their people into our streets now?"
In the darkness, two threads moved toward him.
He ran.
He didn't know where. His feet moved on their own, hands stretched ahead, everything he owned clenched in both fists. He hit something he couldn't see and nearly fell, but kept going. A turn, then another. Then his hand found something large and wooden and he hid behind it, gasping.
"Quick little animal, aren't you."
They were there.
Waiting for him.
One large hand seized him by the throat and lifted. His feet left the ground. Another hand pried open his fist and took what was inside.
"Pretending to be blind while you run through alleys? Who are you trying to fool? Let me take these bandages off for you."
Then the voice stopped.
Then the deeper voice spoke in a different tone: "...Brother."
The man pulled the bandage from his eyes.
Silas didn't resist. He was fighting only for air. But in that moment — through the fear and the pain, through everything — he felt the night air touch the hollow of his uncovered eyes for the first time in a week.
Darkness.
Neither of them moved.
The large man still held Silas by the throat, but his hand had stopped. His eyes were fixed on what lay beneath the blood-soaked bandage. No pupil. Only snow-white spreading from edge to edge — the eyes of something not made to see, or to be seen.
"...Brother."
The word came out very low.
"Let him go."
"But—"
"Let him go."
The small throat was released. Silas dropped to his knees on the wet ground, coughing, his hands searching for something to hold onto.
The coins were gone. He knew he wouldn't get them back. But that wasn't what occupied him now. What occupied him was that he could hear their breathing, hear their footsteps, and know they hadn't left.
Then he heard the sound of a sword drawn from its sheath.
"What are you doing?"
"We're going to kill him."
"What? Why?"
And while the two men spoke, instinct didn't think. The body moved on its own.
Something in Silas's chest — that thread he had always felt inside himself — was yanked suddenly from a place he didn't know. As though an invisible hand had seized everything within him and wrung it all at once.
It wasn't a decision. It wasn't magic he understood.
It was raw fear turned into something else.
The wave left him without shape, without color, without direction. A sudden pressure exploded from his small body in every direction at once. Nearby barrels slammed into the wall. Both men flew backward and struck the opposite wall with a heavy sound.
Then nothing remained in Silas.
His face hit the ground.
Blood. He felt it on his lips and chin and inside his nose. In his dead eyes. In his ears. His whole body hurt in a way he had never known before — as though something inside him had torn, or been emptied.
The darkness he knew grew deeper.
The faint blue dots vanished.
No rain. No threads. Nothing.
Only one voice reaching him from very far away, as though coming from underwater:
"You attack a blind child, rob him, then try to kill him..."
A pause. Then:
"And they call me the criminal."
A laugh. Not the laugh of a pleased human. Something hollow — like iron dragged across iron.
All the boy heard was a soft sound. Then the terrifying silence that swallowed the place whole.
Then slow footsteps, approaching.
Stopping above him.
Silas couldn't open his eyes. Couldn't move his hand. His body no longer obeyed him. But his mind was still there — a thin thread of consciousness clinging to something it couldn't name.
He felt the weight of a gaze.
Someone standing over him, studying him. Not the way the shop owner had looked at him — tired and warm. Not the way his old master had — cold and indifferent.
This gaze was different.
It was calculating.
The last thing Silas felt before sinking into nothing: one hand seized the back of his collar and lifted him from the ground with complete ease.
As though he weighed nothing.
As though he wasn't human.
And then, in the filthy alleys of the capital, a man vanished — and with him, a small child, into a place no one knows.