People say humans are the smallest voice in a world full of louder throats and sharper teeth. Maybe that's why I write—ink doesn't shake the ground or roar back, but sometimes it tells the truth louder than anything else. This morning, I woke before the sun, the sky still bruised purple. My room smelled like damp wood and old ink, and the papers on my floor fluttered every time the wind pushed through the crooked shutter. I slept terribly. Too much thinking. Too much imagining the road outside Brayford stretching into the world I've only seen in pieces. Before leaving, I opened my journal and wrote: "Day One. The world is larger than the stories. I want to see it myself." My handwriting was awful, as usual.
My father says humans should keep their heads down. My mother says I should look up more. Between the two of them, I guess I learned to watch carefully. Humans are the weakest muscles, dullest senses, and shortest history we're allowed to talk about. But we learn faster than the others. We adapt without breaking. That's something. Elves are lithe, bright-eyed, joints bending almost insect-like. Hunters say they can twist their necks farther than a person should, and their ears track sound independently like tiny living dishes. They move through forests like they're part of the canopy. Dwarves are short, dense, bodies layered with cartilage over bone. Their bones don't crack—they thud. A dwarf falling from a ledge sounds like someone dropped a sack of wet stone. Orcs are thick-jawed, tusks curling forward like digging tools. Their lungs are oversized, built for sprint bursts rather than distance. Every orc I've ever seen looked like they were choosing whether a person was a threat or a meal. Giants…I've only seen one from far away: a walking ache. Their size crushes them slowly—each footstep a negotiation with gravity. Their knees grind loud enough to hear from a hilltop. Ogres, like giants but hunched, have bones thick enough to steam in winter from internal heat. Their muscles don't tear cleanly; they fray. That's why ogres don't run. They thunder.
Werewolves—humans who change into something feral. Everyone whispers that each transformation is a storm inside their bones—snaps, rearrangements, tearing muscle, rewoven nerves. They rarely survive past forty, but somehow they keep choosing to shift. Vampires are pale, streamlined predators, their ribs narrow, curved inward like blades protecting a furnace. They recycle oxygen so efficiently they barely breathe. Lizardfolk have scales layered like shutters, fluttering to cool their blood. They shed heat faster than I can exhale, and their tails do half their balance for them. Insectoids have segmented limbs, vibrating antennae, eyes that don't blink. They feel footsteps from meters away, communicating in body-twitch patterns I'm still trying to sketch. Third-Eyes have a full extra ocular organ in the center of their forehead, wired directly into their motion-processing brain. Nothing ambushes them. Nothing escapes them. Centaurs have deeply curved spines supporting two torsos, shock-absorbing tendons that make their gallops silent and long-lasting. They can run from sunrise to dusk without dying of heat. Snakefolk are tall, slender, smooth-scaled, jaws unhinging wider than human instinct can tolerate seeing. Their body temperature shifts with mood as much as weather. Angels aren't divine—they're engineered, or so some claim. Hollow bones reinforced with calcified fibers, wings that aren't really wings but living gliders. Their eyes glow faintly when furious. Demons have horns that aren't bone but keratin heat-sinks. Their bodies run hotter than any race except werewolves mid-shift. They smell like ozone before violence. Dragons, if they exist, are not the serpentine legends. Travelers describe massive gliders with scale-plates shaped like radiation shields, wings more membrane than feather, organs that shouldn't function in anything natural. Father says they're stories. Mother says stories come from somewhere. Fairies are tiny, insectoid, delicate but terrifying. Wings vibrating so fast they hum like music. Their stingers leave paralysis that lasts hours. Children find them cute. Adults know better.
Our village, Brayford, sits in a bowl of soft hills and slow rivers. The houses are wood and moss-covered stone, roofs bowed from years of rain. Smoke leaks from chimneys in crooked columns. Humans live here because the valley is quiet. Because the other races don't care enough to come. The fields look peaceful, but the forests beyond them change more often than I can chart. Trees shift shape. Pathways appear and vanish. Animals mutate faster than our stories can keep up. This is the world I want to understand.
My father, Joren Ward, has broad shoulders, heavy steps, hands cracked from labor. He doesn't smile much unless I annoy him on purpose. He's traveled farther than most humans and returned quieter for it. He hates that I want to study the world. "Curiosity gets people killed," he says. But he doesn't stop me—not really. He's just afraid of what I'll find. My mother, Lera Ward, calm and gentle and always smelling like mint leaves, taught me letters and numbers and how to listen between words. She believes in me more than I deserve. She slips small charms into my pack, "just in case." I think she knows more about the old world than she admits. Sometimes, when I ask about the past, she looks away too quickly.
I left before sunrise, boots soft on the dew grass. My pack held only what I needed: paper, charcoal, a dull knife, dried fruit, a coil of rope, my mother's charm. The road out of Brayford was empty. Silent. Waiting. At the edge of the fence, Father caught up to me. The look on his face wasn't anger. It was fear. "You'll find things humans were never meant to find," he said. "I need to," I replied. He didn't argue. He just stepped back. Mother kissed my forehead and whispered, "Write the truth, Cael. Even if others fear it."
So I took my first step onto the road—toward the forests, the other races, the creatures everyone told me to avoid. I thought I was beginning a simple journey of study. But the world has a way of remembering what humans try to forget. And I was about to find something that should never have been found at all.