The town did not have a name worth remembering.
It was small, caught between trade roads and forgotten by ambition. Stone houses leaned into one another for support, their walls cracked but standing. Smoke rose from chimneys every morning, thin and gray, carrying the scent of bread and burnt wood. Life here was ordinary—fragile, but persistent.
Carl entered it without ceremony.
Barefoot. Bare-skinned. Silent.
People noticed him immediately.
Not because he looked dangerous—but because he did not look human in the way they understood humanity. His body bore no scars. His skin held no color of labor or sun. His eyes were dull, reflecting faces without responding to them.
Whispers followed him.
A naked boy walking in from nowhere should have caused alarm. Instead, it caused confusion. No one sensed threat. No one sensed illness. He simply… existed.
An old woman pressed a cloak into his hands without a word.
Carl accepted it.
That night, the ground screamed.
It began as a tremor—small, almost apologetic. Cups rattled. Dogs barked. Then the earth split open beyond the town's edge, and fire roared upward as if answering a call long overdue.
The volcano awakened.
Flames clawed at the sky. Lava spilled like blood from a wound too deep to heal. Heat rolled across the land in suffocating waves, wilting crops and blistering skin. People ran. Prayed. Screamed names of gods who did not answer.
Carl stood still.
He watched molten rock carve new paths into the world. He watched stone melt, reform, collapse again. The heat brushed against his skin and meant nothing.
When the eruption ended, it left silence behind.
And something else.
At the heart of the cooled lava pit lay an object untouched by fire.
An egg.
It was large—too large to belong to any known creature. Its surface was dark and cracked, veins of faint red and gold light pulsing beneath the shell as if something inside was breathing. The ground around it was scorched black, yet the egg rested there without so much as a mark.
People gathered cautiously.
Curiosity outweighed fear.
A man stepped forward first. He reached out, fingers trembling, and touched the shell.
He did not scream.
His body collapsed inward on itself, skin turning gray, then pale, then nothing at all. Where he stood moments ago, only ash remained—scattered lightly by the wind, as if he had never existed.
Panic erupted.
Another tried to help him. Then another.
Each time, the result was the same. Flesh did not burn. Bone did not crack. They simply… ceased. Eyes widened in frozen terror before dissolving into fine dust that settled on the ground.
The town recoiled.
The egg was abandoned.
No one guarded it. No one approached it again. The place became a wound in the land, circled by fear and rumor. Some said it was a curse. Others said it was a god's heart, fallen and angry.
Carl walked toward it.
"Stop."
The voice was old, brittle, but firm.
An elderly woman stood between him and the pit, her back bent but her eyes sharp. She smelled of herbs and smoke, of years spent surviving rather than living.
"Don't touch that," she said. "It kills."
Carl looked at her.
Then at the egg.
He stepped past her.
The woman reached out—but did not grab him. Something in the air around him pressed back, subtle but absolute.
Carl reached the egg and placed both hands on its surface.
Nothing happened.
No ash. No fire. No scream.
The glow beneath the shell steadied, deepening slightly, as if recognizing him. The land around the pit changed. Cracks in the scorched ground closed. Heat bled away. The air grew breathable again.
The old woman stared.
The town stared.
Carl lifted the egg with ease and turned away.
Fear turned to rumors before nightfall.
He was cursed.He was a demon.He was the reason the volcano erupted.
But as days passed, nothing bad followed him.
The egg rested in a basket inside the small house the townsfolk gave him. Where it stayed, the ground grew fertile again. Crops recovered. Illness slowed. Deaths stopped.
People forgot their fear.
They told themselves the eruption had been natural. The deaths—tragic accidents. The boy was just a boy.
Carl accepted clothes. Accepted food. Accepted a place among them.
He did not understand why they smiled at him. He did not feel gratitude. But he stayed.
Something changed.
Not in him—but around him.
The air felt strained at times, like a thread pulled too tight. Nights grew restless. Dreams haunted those who slept near the volcano. Storms gathered without warning, skies bruised purple and black.
The seal was weakening.
Carl felt it first as pressure behind his eyes. A dull ache that came and went. Something inside him stirred, restless and heavy.
Inside the egg, the light pulsed faster.
One night, the shell cracked.
Inside was no creature.
There was a pill.
Small. Dark. Smooth. It radiated warmth—not heat, but presence. Carl stared at it for a long time, then picked it up and turned it over in his hand.
He did not know what to do with it.
So he opened the window and threw it away.
Rain fell that night.
Heavy. Relentless.
By morning, there was a knock at his door.
A girl stood outside.
She was small—no more than four years old. Her clothes were soaked, clinging to her thin frame. Her eyes were sharp in a way they should not have been, layered with something far older than her body.
She looked at Carl as if she already knew him.
"I'm cold," she said.
Carl let her in.
He did not ask where she came from.
She sat on the floor and watched the egg's remains without speaking. When she finally reached out and touched the cracked shell, Carl felt the pressure behind his eyes spike.
The world tilted.
Sleep dragged him under without permission.
When he woke, the girl was still there—sitting upright, eyes open, watching nothing.
Outside, the sky darkened.
Far away, banners were raised.
The war had begun.
And something that should have remained sealed was starting to wake.