There was no light. No sound. Only warmth.
Then—pain. A bright, raw pressure pushed against me from all sides, squeezing my tiny body as I was shoved violently through something narrow, wet, and suffocating.
I screamed.
Not out of fear—but instinct. The first breath I took burned my lungs with cold air. My ears filled with cries—mine and others. And then… I saw her.
A woman. A face bathed in sweat, tears in her eyes. She was smiling—smiling down at me with such overwhelming joy it made my newborn heart ache in a way I couldn't explain.
"My son…" she whispered. "My little Argon…"
Wait. What?
ARGON?
ARGON?!
I wanted to scream. No—how?! That was supposed to be his name! That divine bastard who lectured me between life and death! Why the hell did I get it?
But I couldn't talk. All I could do was cry and flail my little arms, drowning in confusion.
The midwife wrapped me in soft cloth and handed me to my new mother. Her name, I would later learn, was Leria. My father, a strong man with rough hands and kind eyes, was Doren—a farmer with more heart than coin.
They were poor. Dirt poor. We lived in a quiet valley village called Rethmere, far from any city, deep in the shadow of misty mountains. There were no grand castles, no fancy towers, no signs of any cheat powers or demon kings. Just fields, sweat, and mud.
I was not a chosen one.
Childhood: The Curse of a Name
As I grew older, the irony of my name burned more and more. The villagers spoke it with amusement at first. "Argon?" they'd say, raising an eyebrow. "Sounds like a name from an old story."
It didn't help that I was a weird kid.
I knew things I shouldn't have—how to count before I could walk, how to form full sentences by age two. I made jokes no one understood and cursed like a drunk soldier in a toddler's body.
By five, I had a reputation. Not a good one.
They called me strange. Cursed. Not right in the head. Some kids avoided me. Others bullied me. I got into fights often—and usually lost, because no amount of adult wisdom could fix my weak, underfed arms.
But still, I survived.
There were moments of light—my mother's lullabies, the smell of bread when we had enough wheat, the feeling of dirt between my fingers when I worked in the fields. Life wasn't easy… but it was real.
A Glimmer of Power
On my seventh birthday, something changed.
I was tending goats near the forest edge when I heard a strange hum in the wind. It wasn't music. It was… pulling me. Drawing me toward an old stone hidden beneath moss and roots.
When I touched it, something sparked inside me. A pulse. A tiny flame.
A voice—not Agron's, but something older—whispered through my bones:
"You are marked."
I collapsed.
When I woke up, the mark was on my palm—a faint, silver glyph shaped like a broken star. No one in the village recognized it. My parents thought it was just a birthmark I hadn't noticed. But I knew better.
It was a beginning.
Not of greatness. Not yet. But of something different. Something dangerous.