The name "Kazuhiyara" wasn't on the kingdom's maps.
A small village hidden among the mountains, it seemed to be meant to be forgotten.
Its houses were built of dark wood, their walls cracked, and the roofs of each house were heavy with moss.
The days were short, and the nights were longer than they should have been.
The strangest thing about it was that it wasn't built on soil, but on a solid layer of white stone.
Every child born there heard a sentence repeated by the adults:
"We live on bones, don't wake them."
No one understood what that meant, but everyone kept quiet when it was said.
On the edge of the village lived a boy named Sohan.
He was fifteen years old, his body thin, his hair black and disheveled, his eyes always searching for something missing.
He lived with his uncle, Rogan, a rough man who hated talking ever since Sohan's parents died in an accident that no one spoke of.
Sohan had no place among the children. He was different. He tended to remain silent for long periods, staring at the mountains more than playing with his peers.
Even the children would whisper:
> "Sohan... sick with the bones."
No one knew what they meant.
That morning, the villagers gathered in the square.
They were talking about strange noises heard in the night: a hammer-like pounding, as if something was hammering from underground.
But they quickly pretended to ignore it and went back to their work.
Only Sohan remained standing, listening.
That afternoon, he went, as usual, to the old cemetery behind the cedar trees.
The place no one dared enter.
They were no ordinary graves; they were tall, white stones, smooth as alabaster, arranged without names.
He sat down by one of them and began drawing on its surface with a small dagger.
His only friend, Renji, approached him, carrying a basket of food.
He said, smiling:
> "You come to these stones more often than to your home... You will become one of them one day."
Sohan didn't laugh.
He replied calmly:
> "Sometimes I feel like the entire village is one big grave."
Renji was silent. He couldn't find anything to say.
As the sun set, Renji decided to suggest an adventure:
> "Let's go north... No one has set foot in that forest for years."
Sohan hesitated, but agreed.
They slipped through the dense trees, the orange light fading.
The further they went, the colder the air became.
There was something strange: the trees there had no discernible roots...their trunks grew directly from the white, bone-like rocks.
Then they found a crack in the ground, as if it had recently opened.
A narrow, dark hole, from which a cold steam rose.
When Renji threw a small stone into it, they didn't hear a crash.
Sohan reached out to touch the edges of the crack, and felt a smooth surface...as if touching a giant bone.
It didn't last long.
The ground shook suddenly.
A loud sound split the sky, like thunder, but without lightning.
The two boys raised their heads and saw something descending swiftly from the high clouds… a white, flaming object.
It crashed into the forest with a tremendous explosion, and the air was blown away like a powerful slap.
Birds fell dead from the sky, and trees snapped like straws.
Renji shouted:
"Let's go back to the village!"
But Sohan didn't move. His eyes were fixed on the white smoke rising from the crash site.
When the villagers gathered around the crash site, they found nothing but a huge, smoking crater.
In its center rose a huge white bone, like a giant rib torn from the body of a strange and buried there long ago.
But it wasn't long… until the ground began to shake.
Fissures opened between the tree roots and the village houses.
Out of them came hordes of bones.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands.
Incomplete skeletons, floating skulls, arms crawling on their own, deformed creatures half-man, half-beast.
They moved like a black flood, unstoppable.
Screams filled the air.
Men tried to resist, but every time they smashed a creature, it regenerated from its fragments.
Women fell beneath bone fangs tearing at flesh.
Children screamed, then suddenly fell silent.
The entire village was reduced to a massacre in minutes.
Souhan was in the middle of it all.
His body hit the ground repeatedly, the creatures' limbs ripping at his clothes, blood—the blood of others and his own—covered his face and hands.
He no longer knew where Renji was…or where his uncle was.
Everything was engulfed in screams and fire.
He ran.
He thought of nothing but survival.
Every path he took was blocked by a new attack, until he found himself running straight toward the center of the crater, where the giant white bone glowed like a blue moon amidst the smoke.
He was covered in blood from head to toe, breathing heavily, his eyes half-closed in pain and fear.
He drew closer to it...
And with every step, he felt a terrible weight in his chest.
The bone wasn't still. It was pulsing.
It was like a living heart screaming to be swallowed.
Sohan fell to his knees, his hands trembling, his body torn apart.
But suddenly... something inside him moved.
His mouth opened on its own, as if his muscles were no longer his own.
A scream escaped him, not a scream of pain... but a primal call.
Instinctively, without reason or awareness...
He pounced on the massive bone.
He latched onto it, then began to devour it.
The sound of the bone crunching echoed throughout the valley, as if a wall of skulls was being broken.
Soohan had barely swallowed the last bit of bone when his body shook like a volcano.
His bones grew from the inside out, ripping through his skin, protruding from his shoulders, arms, and legs.
He was no longer human, no longer a monster… but something in between.
He stood breathing heavily, his chest heaving and falling, blood pouring from his mouth.
Slowly, the skeletal creatures that had filled the village began advancing toward him.
There was no fear in their eyes, but they no longer attacked the others…they all turned toward him alone.
The first creature approached: a skull with two heads connected by two long arms.
Soohan unconsciously raised his hand, and a sharp bone shard shot out, piercing the monster's chest.
It hit the ground and exploded into dust.
A strange cry escaped him, one of relief.
Then five more attacked at once.
In a single movement, he spun his body halfway around, sending white blades flying from his ribs, shattering their bodies.
The skeletons exploded like glass toys.
He was killing them without thinking, without any attempt to escape...
It was as if his body, not his mind, was in control.
Dozens of people rushed toward him, but he moved like a storm.
His right arm transformed into a bony spear, piercing their chests.
His ribs became circular knives, tearing at anyone who approached.
Even his teeth transformed into blades, with which he bit the necks of monsters, breaking them.
The village ground was drenched with white blood, gushing from the shattered skeletons, and the air was thick with bone dust.
In a brief moment...
All the creatures that had filled the place just minutes before were scattered around him, disintegrating corpses.
After he finished, Sohan stood amidst the rubble, his body dripping with blood and sweat. His eyes were still white, and his chest rose and fell savagely.
Then suddenly… he fell to his knees.
His entire body trembled, and some of his skin reattached to his exposed bones, but not all of it.
He was still half a skeletal beast, and the other half a boy, drenched in blood.
In the distant mountains, the masked man watched.
He smiled and said in a low voice:
> "Slaughtering the sons of bones… before he even learned how to breathe with his own power. This… isn't normal."