Part I: The Water Was Singing
The water was singing again.
Not in words. Not in a language anyone else seemed to understand.
But Zaire heard it — like a song inside his ribs, humming through the soles of his feet as he stood at the river's edge. He was only nine, but it felt like the water had known him forever.
"Zaire!" his sister Uriyah called, her voice bright and distant behind him. "Come back! Mama said not to wander!"
He didn't move. His eyes were locked on the current.
It pulsed with light. With rhythm. With... memory.
Footsteps approached behind him.
Ozais (flatly): "You know better than to wander off."
Zaire didn't turn around.
Zaire (quietly): "It's not just a river… it's alive."
Ozais: "Everything's alive. Doesn't mean it talks back."
Zaire turned now, fists still raised from sparring. There was something sharp in Ozais's voice — tension just beneath the surface.
Zaire: "You always think you know everything."
Ozais: "And you always think Flow will save you when things get hard."
Zaire stepped forward, fists up again — challenging.
Zaire: "Then fight me."
Ozais (smirking): "You're serious?"
Zaire (nodding): "One round."
Ozais: "Alright then. Lesson time."
They circled each other, dust swirling beneath their feet. Zaire lunged — wild, wide. Ozais sidestepped, smooth as water, and parried the blow with a palm to Zaire's shoulder, spinning him off balance.
Ozais: "Flow doesn't come from the arm. It comes from the soul."
A faint shimmer of moisture trailed behind Ozais's movement — Flow pulsing subtly through his limbs, smooth and controlled. It wasn't loud. It wasn't flashy. But it was there.
Zaire charged again — barehanded, reckless.
Ozais caught him mid-strike, grip like a tide pulling back, and threw him to the ground like wind brushing aside a leaf.
Zaire coughed, cheeks burning with frustration and humiliation. He slammed a fist into the dirt.
And the ground responded.
The river surged. The current shivered. A pulse echoed in the air.
Zaire dusted himself off, grinning through grit.
Zaire: "No fair. You used your Flow."
Ozais (smirking): "Don't blame me just because you haven't activated yours yet."
Uriyah giggled from the trees, chasing butterflies. The mood lightened. For a moment, the world felt ordinary.
Then the wind stopped.
Birdsong vanished.
Ozais (tense): "Zaire. Uriyah. Get behind me."
Part II: The Day the Sky Broke
From the cliffs above, they came — shadows tearing through the twilight sky like falling blades.
Masked figures dropped in silence — rogue Flow-users, their bodies streaked with glowing marks that pulsed across their skin like burning scripture. Their movements were unnatural, jerky, fluid — like water moving in reverse.
One surged toward Ozais.
Another seized Uriyah.
Zaire: "No!"
He lunged forward, striking wildly — but a third figure intercepted him, delivering a brutal blow to his ribs. Zaire hit the dirt hard, gasping, pain blooming across his side.
Ozais reacted instantly.
Water burst upward from the soil beneath his feet, coiling around his arms in twin spirals. His Flow moved with trained precision — not wild, but pressurized, like a dam unleashing in tight, weaponized bursts.
He struck with force and focus — kicking the first attacker backward, then sweeping the legs out from the one clutching Uriyah. A jet of water sliced through the air, slamming a masked figure into a tree.
But there were too many.
One attacker landed a shoulder blow to Ozais's side.
Another blasted a shock of corrupted Flow toward his legs, knocking him off balance.
Uriyah screamed.
Zaire crawled toward her, eyes wide. She was curled by the roots of a tree, trembling. Blood streaked her forehead where one of them had struck her with the butt of a weapon. Her tiny fingers twitched against the earth.
Protect her. Move. Get up.
A sharp, high-pitched ringing filled Zaire's ears.
His vision warped — colors bending, sounds fading.
Zaire (whispering, trembling): "Don't hurt her…"
His mark — once dormant, a faint streak barely visible on his forearm — ignited.
It flared up his arm, across his chest, glowing like lightning against storm-torn skies.
The world cracked.
The air thickened.
The ground trembled beneath him.
Zaire stood — and screamed.
A black and white aura erupted from his body, bursting outward like a shockwave through the trees. The forest bent. Branches shattered. The river surged.
The masked attackers staggered — caught in the surge.
Then Zaire was on them.
Faster than thought.
Wild.
Brutal.
Uncontrolled.
One attacker went down with a sickening crunch.
Then another — Flow ripping from Zaire's limbs like living fire, his fists crashing into bone and breath.
Ozais turned—too late.
Zaire's fist, pulsing with raw, unstable Flow, collided with his brother's chest.
CRACK.
Ozais flew backward, launched into the cliffside. His body slammed into the stone, then dropped, limp.
Zaire stared at his own hands, glowing and trembling.
His chest rose and fell in silence.
A scream echoed in his skull — not from his throat, but from the world itself.
Then everything went white.
Part III: The River Remembers
Zaire woke in his mother's arms, sobbing.
His Flow was gone.
Ozais lay nearby in a bed, unconscious — ribs broken, chest bandaged. Their father stood silently in the doorway, shadowed in sorrow.
Zaire's mark had dimmed.
It looked… ashamed.
That night, Zaire dreamed of water. Of a storm. Of a figure — distant, cloaked in moonlight, eyes glowing like rivers under starlight.
A voice echoed from the depths.
Zora (gentle, distant):
> "The Flow is never angry, child. Only powerful.
You must learn to listen… so you can become one with it."
Then came flashes:
A woman with dreadlocks walking into the storm — Flow swirling around her feet.
Flow Hunters branding themselves with corrupted marks.
A monstrous, chained creature thrashing beneath black waves.
A future Zaire — older, bleeding, clutching Uriyah's hand in despair.
He woke with tears on his face.
But in his chest, where fear had once been, something else stirred.
A strange, fragile peace.
The river had spoken.
And it remembered him.
🌊 CHAPTER 2: Echoes and Silence (Coming Soon)
Zaire isolates himself, guilt-ridden over Ozais.
The Flow Council begins investigating the eruption of unstable Flow.
A stranger watches from afar — a wielder of Echo Flow.
And Zora's voice lingers…
But now it warns Zaire.