The flashbacks came suddenly— uninvited and overwhelming.
Vivian stood by the kitchen window, hands deep in the dishwater, starring into blank space. Her mind was faraway lost in a night fifteen years past.
A night she had tried, for years to bury under the weight of an ordinary life.
The storm. The screaming. The emergency room lights flickering like a bad omen. She remembered it all.
She hadn't planned to come back to Elmsworth General Hospital that night. But had to deliver some documents. Fate really had other plans. Fate... or something far older.
The doors had burst open like the wind itself carried the woman in. Soaked to the skin, barefoot, face pale and wild with fear.
Her hands were wrapped protectively around her swollen belly, her mouth repeating the same frantic words.
"They want to kill my baby. Please, someone help us. Please."
No name. No ID. No family. No record. Just panic and a presence that seemed to fill he room with pressure.
When they wheeled her into the delivery, the machines began to flicker and whine. The air turned heavy, almost electric.
The labor was rough. She fought hard. Like she wasn't just birthing a child.
And then, the child came.
Tiny. Too quiet, unmoving until the screaming— loud and piercing— and he storm outside died instantly.
Vivian watched it all, frozen.
The woman cradled the baby with shaken arms, kissed his forehead, whispered a word the nurses didn't understand. Thalon.
A name heavy with sorrow. Then her head tilted back, her eyes stared skyward, and she was gone.
She died with the baby in her arms.
No one ever came for the child. The man who brought her vanished before anyone could've questioned him. Social services were already on the phone when the decision hit her like a thunderclap
She couldn't let them take him,
She didn't know why. She had no reason to intervene. But something about the baby... he belonged to her, even if he didn't come from her.
The first few weeks were brutal.
He cried at everything. Noise, light, movement. Sometimes for no reason at all. Nothing soothed him. Not lullabies. Not rocking. Not warmth. It was as if his little body was too aware— too raw— for the world around him.
She remembered lying beside his crib on the cold floor tears soaking into the pillow as he sailed through the night.
She remembered how she had to quit her job immediately, after the third hospital visit. Because his immune system was weak. Everything made him sick.
And through it all her husband— Paul kept repeating the same thing:
"He's not ours, he needs more help than we can give. Let him go."
But Vivian couldn't.
And eventually, Paul stopped resisting. In time, he softened— especially when the child, around his third year, began to laugh.
A strange, sudden, golden laugh that made everything feel lighter, just for a moment.
As the years passed, the child grew stronger. The sickness stopped , though he remained thin and often distant, like some part of him was still searching for something.
But every so often, when Vivian looked at him— especially when he starred off into nothing with that faraway look — she would wonder.
Who was that woman ?
Where did she come from?
And what did she mean when she whispered that name ?
Fifteen years, and still no answer.
Only a boy with storm in his eyes and a name the world had forgotten.