The cancer had been eating away at me for months, but I'd never imagined death would feel so... quiet. No dramatic final words, no tearful goodbyes. Just the steady beep of machines fading into silence as I slipped away from a life that had barely been worth living. Twenty-three years as a nobody, invisible to the world, forgotten before I was even gone.
I should have stayed dead.
Instead, I found myself gasping for air in a world that wasn't mine, in a body too small and weak to be my own. The memories came in fragments. Cold hands discarding me like refuse, voices speaking in a language I somehow understood despite never hearing it before. "Cursed child," they whispered. "Born under the blood moon."
The forest should have been my grave. Instead, it became my salvation.
Mira found me first. Her weathered hands were gentle as she lifted my infant form from the moss-covered ground where I'd been left to die. "Gareth," she called to her husband, her voice trembling with a mixture of anger and compassion. "Come quickly. Someone has abandoned a child."
Gareth emerged from between the ancient trees, his beard more silver than brown, his eyes the color of storm clouds. But when he looked at me, those eyes softened. "Poor little one," he murmured, reaching out to touch my fevered forehead. "Don't worry. You're safe now."
For sixteen years, those words held.
They raised me in their cottage deep within the Whispering Woods, far from the kingdoms and their politics, far from the magic academies and their rigid hierarchies. Here, magic was simpler. Mira could coax flowers to bloom with a song, and Gareth could speak to the ancient oaks as if they were old friends. They taught me to read the wind, to understand the language of growing things, to find peace in the rhythm of seasons.
I learned that this world. Earthmyr, they called it, was built on magic as surely as my old world had been built on technology. Every person possessed some spark of it, from the grand mages who could reshape mountains to the humble farmers who convinced their crops to grow. Everyone except me, it seemed.
"Magic comes from the heart, Kael," Mira would say, using the name they'd given me. "Perhaps yours simply beats to a different rhythm."
I believed her. I wanted to believe her.
But belief couldn't stop the war that came creeping through our peaceful forest like a plague.
The Kingdom of Alfaraz had been pressing eastward for months, their territorial disputes with Penomes escalating into full conflict. We'd heard whispers from the occasional trader who passed through our woods, but the war felt distant, unreal. What did kingdoms matter to an old couple and their foundling son?
Everything, as it turned out.
I was splitting firewood behind the cottage when I heard the horses. The sound of hoofbeats and clanking armor cut through the forest's natural symphony like a blade. Mira appeared in the doorway, flour still dusting her hands from the bread she'd been kneading, her face pale with recognition.
"Soldiers," she whispered.
My blood turned to ice. "Should I hide?" I asked, dropping the axe and moving toward them.
Gareth stepped out beside her, his hand instinctively moving to the woodsman's axe at his belt. Not that it would do much good against trained warriors. "No, son. Stay close to us," he said firmly, then lowered his voice. "We've done nothing wrong. We'll answer their questions, give them what supplies we can spare, and they'll move on."
"But what if they. " I started.
"Hush, Kael," Mira interrupted gently, reaching for my hand. "Everything will be fine. You'll see."
How naive we were.
The Alfaraz soldiers emerged from the treeline like wolves, their dark green uniforms marking them as scouts from the eastern battalions. Their leader, a scarred man with dead eyes, dismounted with practiced efficiency.
"You," he barked at Gareth. "This is your property?"
"Yes, sir," Gareth replied, his voice steady despite the tremor I could see in his hands. "We're simple folk. We want no trouble."
The captain's smile was cruel. "Trouble has found you anyway, old man. By royal decree, all settlements within twenty leagues of the front are to be... requisitioned. Your supplies, your livestock, your dwelling. All now belong to the Crown of Alfaraz."
"We have little," Mira said, stepping forward despite Gareth's warning gesture. "But you're welcome to what we can spare. There's dried meat in the smokehouse, grain in the. "
"Did I ask you to speak, witch?" The captain's hand moved to his sword hilt. "I smell magic on you. Earth magic. You're Penomes sympathizers, aren't you? Probably passing information to their scouts."
"That's not true!" I stepped forward, my voice cracking with anger and fear. "They're good people! They've never hurt anyone!"
The captain's cold gaze fixed on me. "And who might this whelp be?"
"Leave the boy out of this," Gareth said firmly, moving protectively in front of me. "We're not involved in your war. We've lived in these woods for forty years, bothering no one. "
The sword cleared its sheath in a whisper of steel. The old man's words died with him, cut short by the blade that opened his throat. He fell without a sound, his storm-cloud eyes wide with surprise.
"GARETH!" I screamed, rushing toward his fallen form.
Mira's scream shattered the forest's quiet as she threw herself between me and the soldiers.
"No!" She knelt beside Gareth, her hands glowing with desperate magic as she tried to heal wounds that had already stolen life away. "Please, no, not like this. "
"Stay back, Kael!" she sobbed, even as her healing light flickered and failed. "Run! Please, just run!"
But I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't think past the sight of Gareth's blood pooling in the dirt.
The captain's blade found her heart before she could finish the spell.
"MIRA!" My voice broke on her name as she collapsed beside the man who had been her partner for forty years.
I watched it happen. Watched the two people who had given meaning to my worthless existence crumple to the ground like discarded dolls. Watched their blood seep into the earth they had loved so tenderly. Watched the soldiers laugh as they set fire to our cottage.
Something inside me broke.
Or perhaps, something inside me finally awakened.
"You..." I whispered, my voice barely human as I stared at their bodies. "You killed them."
One of the soldiers laughed. "What's the matter, boy? Going to cry for mommy and daddy?"
I looked up at him through tears I didn't remember shedding. "They were everything to me."
"Were," the captain corrected with cruel amusement. "Past tense. Now you're nothing. Just like they are."
"No." The word came out as a growl. "Now... now I'm angry."
The power that had eluded me for sixteen years came roaring to the surface like a dam bursting, wild and terrible and hungry. It poured out of me in waves of shadow and fury, turning the air itself into a weapon. The soldiers' laughter died in their throats as darkness swallowed them whole.
But the darkness wasn't finished with me yet.
As the shadows began to recede, I felt something else stirring within me. A hunger I'd never experienced before. It pulled at me, whispering promises of strength, of justice, of power beyond imagination. The dying soldier at my feet gasped, his life essence flowing out like golden threads visible only to my transformed sight.
Without thinking, I reached for those threads.
The moment my fingers closed around them, ecstasy flooded through me. His memories, his skills, his very life force poured into me like water into a drought-parched earth. I could feel his sword training, his battle experience, even his cruel satisfaction at burning villages. All of it became mine in an instant.
"Impossible," the captain croaked from where he lay pinned beneath a fallen tree, his leg twisted at an unnatural angle. "What... what are you?"
I turned to face him, and I could see my reflection in his terrified eyes. My face, but changed. My eyes now held flecks of gold that swirled like trapped starlight. "I'm what you made me," I said quietly.
He tried to crawl away, but his broken leg betrayed him. "Stay back! Stay back, you monster!"
"Monster?" I stepped closer, feeling the absorbed soldier's combat instincts guide my movements. "You killed two innocent people. You burned their home. You destroyed everything I loved." I knelt beside him, my hand hovering over his throat. "I think you have me confused with someone else."
"Please," he gasped.
"Did they beg too?" I asked, my voice eerily calm. "Did Gareth and Mira plead for their lives before you cut them down?"
His answer was a whimper.
My hand closed around his neck.
The captain's life essence was richer, more complex than his soldier's had been. Years of training, magical knowledge, and combat experience. It all flowed into me like a raging river. But more than that, I felt his magic. Earth magic, deep and strong, the kind that could make mountains tremble and stone obey.
He died with his eyes wide open, staring at me in absolute terror.
"Captain!" The remaining soldiers had finally freed themselves from whatever spell had held them frozen. Five of them, all drawing weapons, all backing away from me with the same look of horror their leader had worn.
I stood slowly, still holding their captain's corpse, feeling his earth magic settling into my bones like it had always belonged there. "Your captain is dead," I announced, my voice carrying a new resonance, deeper and more commanding than before.
"Kill the freak!" one of them shouted, raising his sword, and they all charged at once.
I hurled the captain's body at them like a battering ram. The corpse struck the lead soldier with enough force to send him flying backward into his companions, and they tumbled to the ground in a tangle of limbs and armor.
But I wasn't done.
The earth magic sang to me, showing me possibilities I'd never imagined. I raised my foot and brought it down hard against the forest floor with a sound like thunder. The impact sent ripples of power racing through the ground, turning soil and stone into weapons at my command.
"Earth Spike Barrage," I whispered, somehow knowing the spell's name as if I'd used it a thousand times before.
The ground beneath the soldiers erupted in a wave of jagged stone and hardened earth, each spike as sharp as a blade and as fast as lightning. They had no time to dodge, no time to scream. The attack pierced through armor and flesh alike, ending their lives in a single, devastating moment.
When the dust settled, I stood alone among the corpses of my parents' killers, the forest around me withered and black. The cottage was gone. The garden was gone. Everything that had made this place home was ash and memory.
But I was still here.
And for the first time in two lifetimes, I was not nobody.
I was someone with power. Terrible, hungry power that fed on the life and magic of others.
I was someone with nothing left to lose.
I opened my hand, palm facing upward, and felt the pull of my newfound hunger once more. The remaining life essence from the fallen soldiers rose like golden dust motes, swirling through the air in delicate spirals before flowing into my skin. With it came their memories, their skills, their magical aptitudes. Fragments of lives that were now part of my own.
Fire magic from the young soldier who had dreamed of being a battlemage. Wind magic from the archer who could guide arrows with gentle breezes. Combat techniques, survival skills, and even their knowledge of the kingdoms' geography. It all settled into my mind like pieces of a vast puzzle I was only beginning to understand.
I flexed my fingers, feeling the new magics responding to my will. Earth, fire, wind. Three elements that had been beyond my reach just moments ago, now flowing through me as naturally as breathing.
But power felt hollow when everything I cared about was gone.
I turned toward where Gareth and Mira lay, their bodies still and peaceful despite the violence that had claimed them. They deserved better than to be left for scavengers. They deserved better than to have their final resting place remembered only as a battlefield.
Using the earth magic that had once belonged to the captain, I knelt beside them and pressed my palms to the ground. The soil responded to my call, rising gently to cradle their bodies before pulling them down into a soft embrace. I carved their grave deep and secure, then covered it with the richest earth I could summon, the kind that would nurture flowers in the spring.
The ruins of our cottage came next. With careful precision, I buried the charred remains, the broken furniture, every trace of the home that had sheltered us. The earth swallowed it all, leaving only smooth ground where memories had once lived.
But I wasn't finished.
I stood at the head of their grave and reached deeper into the absorbed magics, combining earth and wind in ways that felt both foreign and familiar. The forest responded to my will, growing wild and thick around the clearing. Ancient oaks sprouted and stretched toward the sky, their branches intertwining to form an impenetrable canopy. Undergrowth surged upward, thorny and dense, creating barriers that would discourage any traveler from wandering too close.
In moments, the place where I had known love and safety disappeared beneath a maze of trees and shadows. No one would find Gareth and Mira's resting place now. No one would disturb their peace or defile their memory with the knowledge of what had happened here.
I stepped back to admire my work, then knelt one final time at what I hoped was the right spot.
"I'm sorry," I whispered to the earth beneath my knees. "I'm sorry I couldn't protect you. I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough until it was too late." My voice cracked, and for a moment, I was just a frightened boy again, alone and lost. "I don't know where I'm going, but... but I'll make them pay. All of them. The ones who started this war, the ones who gave the orders, the ones who thought your lives didn't matter."
The wind rustled through the new forest, almost like an answer.
I rose to my feet and turned away from the grave, away from the deep woods that now protected everything I had loved. My path led toward the setting sun, toward kingdoms I had never seen and a future I couldn't imagine.
But as I walked away from the place that had been my world, I carried with me the power of those who had wronged me, and a hunger that whispered of greater strength yet to come.
The forest closed behind me like a door, sealing away my childhood forever.