It was a clear morning. The kind where the sky looks like it's made of glass — smooth, distant, and too perfect.
Father was reinforcing the outer barriers of our farmland, using timber thicker than my arm. I had been watching for a while, wanting to help. He gave me a quiet nod. It meant yes.
I helped carry what I could. The tools were heavy, the wood even more so, but I didn't want to be seen as weak. My grip hurt, but I didn't let go.
There was a ladder.
A beam needed to be lifted and held in place while Father hammered it in.
I volunteered.
He hesitated. Then relented.
I climbed.
The world changed in a heartbeat.
One step.
Then another.
Then the wood beneath my foot gave way.
I remember falling.
Or rather, I remember the moment I stopped falling.
It wasn't dramatic — no echo, no scream.
Just a dull thud and the sensation of the sky blinking out above me.
Then silence.
Not unconsciousness.
Just stillness.
My body didn't work.
I couldn't move.
Not from pain — from stillness deeper than that.
It was like the air had stopped touching me.
Then I heard a voice.
Nyssara's. Sharp. Frantic.
"Get up. Move. You must."
Then Solara, warm and trembling.
"You're not supposed to leave. You're not allowed."
And finally Aelira, quiet but firm.
"You can't die here. Not yet."
I opened my eyes.
Everything hurt, but none of it made sense.
There was dirt in my mouth, blood on my lips, and the sky above me had changed — too bright, like it had come closer while I was gone.
Father's face loomed over me, wide-eyed and pale.
He looked… scared.
I sat up.
Something cracked — not the earth, not the wood — something in me. Like rules being rewritten.
My limbs moved. Wrong at first. Then right.
No healing light. No dramatic flare of energy.
I just stood.
As if I hadn't fallen at all.
The village healer came. Insisted on checking me.
But there was… nothing wrong.
I had bruises that were already fading.
Scratches that had stopped bleeding.
Bones that felt sore but whole.
"He must've been protected by something," the healer said.
"That fall should've broken him."
It didn't.
And I knew it.
-break-
I had just died.
And I came back.
The wind howled through the canyon's edge as I stood silently, my small body unmarred by what had, moments ago, been a fatal wound. Bloodless. Ageless. Eternal.
My skin was flawless. My breathing—calm. My soul, however, buzzed with something new.
Not energy. Not emotion.
Awareness.
Something vast and incomprehensible had cracked open in my mind like a mirror reflecting infinity.
"You weren't meant to know yet."
Nyssara's voice rang out behind me, flat and unsurprised.
I didn't turn. I couldn't. The silence of the world suddenly felt… staged. Like someone had drawn the curtains around me and whispered, "Now you begin."
Solara stepped closer, her gentle warmth brushing my shoulder like a blanket of understanding.
"Igris," she said, "some truths must be earned. But you always did force open doors before you had the key."
"I didn't do it on purpose," I muttered.
"You never do," Aelira chimed in with a chuckle from above, reclining midair, upside-down. "You just... are."
I lowered my eyes. My shadow rippled unnaturally, darker than the night around us.
"Why me?" I whispered.
There was a long pause. Solara kneeled beside me. "Because even the Eternal Record cannot define what you are."
That sent a chill through my spine. The Eternal Record—the archive of every being's essence, from the birth of the stars to the silence between realities. Everything that ever lived or could live was etched into its cosmic pages. And yet… I was not?
Nyssara finally spoke again. "We don't know what you'll become, Igris. Only that your soul cannot decay."
"Your essence," Solara added, "exists outside causality. No future binds it. No past anchors it."
I clenched my tiny fists. "So I'm a fluke?"
"No."
That voice didn't come from any of them.
It came from the shadow.
From me.
I turned slowly. My shadow flickered. Twitched. Shifted with wrong angles that defied geometry. Its edges bent like water around a force unseen.
And then, for a heartbeat—only a heartbeat—it moved of its own accord.
A ripple of white static danced across its form.
Neon black flames briefly traced a humanoid shape.
And… eyes.
Two glowing white orbs stared at me from the floor.
No face. No mouth.
Just a presence.
Then it was gone.
I blinked. No one else seemed to notice.
Or maybe they did, and chose not to speak.
Aelira's mood had shifted. Her usual smile faltered.
"Don't think too hard," she said. "Some answers show themselves when you're ready to break."
Break?
Is that what this is?
Solara put a hand over my chest. "Feel that?"
A pulse. Not a heartbeat. Not mana.
Essence.
"You're stable… but your immortality comes with a cost."
I said nothing.
Aelira landed gently beside me, nudging me with a grin that didn't reach her eyes. "Don't die again, idiot. Not until you're ready to meet the thing watching from your own shadow."
As the stars above shimmered with unfamiliar constellations, I knew one thing for certain:
I wasn't meant to be like this.
Which meant—someone, or something, had made me this way.
And if they did?
Then I would find them.
Learn from them.
Surpass them.
Even if it took a thousand years, even if I had to twist the very laws of existence into something new…
I would understand everything.
Far away, in a forgotten valley no map dared mark, something stirred.
A shadow peeled itself from a dying fox. It walked without steps. It watched without eyes.
And in a voice only the essence could hear, it whispered:
"He's almost ready."