The night sky was clear Too clear.
There wasn't a single cloud above the forested hills, and yet thunder cracked across the heavens with unnatural violence. Not a distant rumble. Not a storm on the edge of the horizon. It was immediate, like a blade of sound had been driven straight through the air. Windows trembled. Stones shook Trees stood stiff in unnatural silence.
Above all, the moon hung wrong.
Not silver Not white But a rotted shade of black green, as if it had been dipped in disease and left to fester. It gave no true light, only a warped reflection of what light should be. Shadows moved where they shouldn't. Still things seemed to sway. The land didn't look illuminated. It looked stained.
And though no one in the village dared to speak it aloud, they all felt it in their chests:
Something terrible was coming into the world.
Inside a secluded birthing hut behind the great spire of the temple, the screams began.
The woman on the cot was no ordinary villager. Her station was high. Her devotion unquestioned. She had brought life into the world before, both by her own womb and with her own hands. She had memorized the sacred verses. She had walked the circle of elements. She had knelt at the altar for years without doubt.
But none of it had prepared her for this.
The pain was not just physical. It was wrong. Every contraction felt like it was being dragged from a part of her soul not meant to move. Her back arched again and again, her throat raw from screaming. Her hands clawed at the air, the cot, her own skin.
The mana in the room crackled and hissed like fire caught in water.
Spells meant to ease labor fizzled before forming. Chalk runes blurred as if touched by unseen fingers. Protective wards in the floor sparked briefly, then shorted out entirely. Holy sigils burned a bright white and then went black, leaving the air thick with the scent of scorched ash.
The sacred basin fire, blue and strong just moments before, twisted green and died.
Nothing sacred would stay.
And the child had not yet come.
An elder figure stood at her side, one who had delivered more lives than most had seen years. His hands were still. His voice low and practiced. The divine light gathered at his fingertips again and again, ready to enact the blessing of birth. The rite every newborn under the temple's shadow received. A touch of the progenitor's power. A thread of her order woven into the soul.
But each time he reached toward her, the light vanished.
Gone.
Not blocked.
Not deflected.
Erased.
He tried again. The incantation was perfect. His voice did not waver. But as the energy came within reach of the unborn child, it dissolved, as if it had never been there at all.
"It's not taking," he said, more to himself than to anyone else. "The blessing won't take."
One of the midwives stepped back, eyes wide. "Divine energy doesn't fail."
"It isn't failing," the priest said, sweat running down the side of his face. "It's being undone. Erased from reality."
The others said nothing. There was no answer to that.
Then thunder struck again. Closer. Louder. It hit not the sky but the ground, splitting stone just outside the hut. A sharp crack, like a scream from the world itself.
And then, the final push.
The woman screamed as though her lungs would tear. Blood poured too freely, seeping across the floor. A midwife reached to staunch the bleeding, then yanked her hand back, hissing in pain. Her skin had blistered on contact.
And then the child was born.
The room fell still.
No cries. No cries from the mother. No cries from the child. Just silence. Complete and absolute.
The midwife who caught him took a single look and froze. Her breath caught. Her mouth opened but no sound came out.
She took one step back.
And let the baby fall.
The infant hit the padded cot with a soft, wet thud.
He didn't cry. He didn't move.
His skin was bronze, smooth but cold. His limbs twitched weakly. But his face.
His face should not have been possible.
One side was collapsed, as though crushed in the womb and never healed. One eye was sunken and nearly shut, unfocused and barely colored. The other socket gaped wide, stretched unnaturally, with the eyeball rolling too far in its socket.
His nose was stunted. More a fold than a form. His upper lip split clean through to the base of his nose. Inside, jagged, too sharp teeth already showed in malformed gums. His jaw looked melted. The skin beneath hung tight and shiny, like old scar tissue. It shifted and pulled strangely when the child breathed in for the first time. A shallow, voiceless rasp through broken teeth.
The room recoiled.
One midwife screamed.
Another vomited into the ceremonial basin.
The mother raised her head, barely conscious, but the moment her gaze met the child's, she froze.
A moment passed.
And then she began to cry. Not soft tears. Not joy. Not pain.
Grief.
"No," she whispered. "No, that isn't a child. That isn't mine. That's not mine."
She turned her face away, sobbing, trying to crawl back across the cot with shaking arms.
The child remained still. His wide eye blinked once. Then again. His hands twitched, grasping at the air. His body moved but he made no sound.
The elder priest stepped forward once more.
He gathered the light into his hands. One last try. One final act of mercy. Of ritual. Of purpose.
The rite of birth. The mark of belonging.
He reached forward slowly. Carefully.
And the light disappeared.
Completely. Quietly. Gone.
The priest jerked back, horrified. His hands trembled.
"No resonance," he said. "No core. No thread. Nothing. He is hollow."
"That's not possible," someone whispered. "Everything has a thread. Even stillborns flicker for a moment. Even insects carry the touch."
But this child did not.
He was not blocked.
He was not sealed.
He was empty.
And then it happened.
The final thunderclap struck directly above them.
The moon's color intensified, glowing black green so fiercely it cast hard shadows across the floor. The air thickened. The walls trembled.
And then they heard it.
A voice.
Not heard. Known.
It spoke not to ears but to thought. It pressed itself into the skull, the bones, the marrow. It was not language. It was truth, spoken by something far beyond the world.
The progenitor.
The source of sorcery. The first. The one whose power flowed through every river, root, and star.
She had not spoken in a million years.
Until now.
"This child is a defilement."
"He is born without mana."
"Even the vermin carry my breath. Even the stars burn with my thread. But this one is empty."
"He is not of my design."
"He shames my name by existing. He desecrates what I made sacred. No blessing shall bind him. No light shall touch him. No protection. No connection. No place."
"He is cursed."
Then silence.
This time, it did not pass.
This time, it stayed.
For a long, still moment, no one moved. No one spoke. The light in the room flickered and dimmed, and even the shadows froze.
Then, slowly, the child's body shifted.
His face, his broken, warped face, began to reshape.
Skin smoothed. Bone corrected. The caved jaw aligned. The split lip sealed. The twisted sockets adjusted. The grotesque asymmetry faded into symmetry.
Until he looked normal.
Almost.
His features were still. Pale. Human.
But his eyes. His eyes remained wrong.
A dull, lifeless hazel. No glow. No reflection. No spirit behind them. As if something had been polished on the outside but left rotting underneath.
The mother collapsed backward, unconscious.
One midwife fainted.
Another fell to her knees, weeping.
The elder priest sat back against the wall, divine light still faintly in his hands, but it meant nothing now. Nothing at all.
And the child remained.
Quiet.
Breathing.
Watching.
He had no blessing. No mark. No connection to the divine.
In a world powered by mana, where even the smallest creatures lived by the threads of sorcery, this child was empty
He was not blocked. Not lost. Not untrained.
He was the absence of the sacred.
The first true cursed.
And though the night would pass and the moon would fade, the world would remember what was born beneath it.
Nothing would ever be the same.