Chapter 1 — *The Breath of New Life*

  Darkness Before Breath

  There was no body.

  There was no breath.

  Kael existed, and yet he didn’t.

  Drifting in a blackness beyond sleep, beyond death — deeper and quieter than any silence he had ever known. There was no up. No down. No pain. No time.

  Fragments of what he once was hung like faint dust motes in that vast emptiness — disconnected flashes of memory.

  A subway tunnel.

  Wet pavement.

  The taste of metal in his mouth.

  ...Falling.

  Had he fallen? Or had something struck him?

  Even these thoughts unraveled like fragile threads slipping from numb fingers.

  *Is this...death?*

  The thought didn’t echo. There was nothing for sound to touch.

  But then — something *moved*.

  Subtle as the ripple of a wind across still water.

  It was not sight. Not hearing. It was... *presence*.

  It was aware of him.

  It approached — vast, quiet, ancient.

  A sound — no, less a sound than an imprint pressed directly into whatever he still was.

  A voice without voice.

  *"Live again."*

  Not a question.

  Not a request.

  A *command*.

  And then—

  Pressure.

  Searing. Crushing. Enclosing.

  Kael’s formless awareness shrank — folded — *compressed* like molten metal forced into a mold too small.

  Sensation screamed into existence.

  Heat. Wetness. Movement.

  The world was closing in on him, pressing from all sides — squeezing — an unbearable force driving him forward, through, into something narrow, hot, wet—

  A *pulse* thundered around him like a war drum. No — a heartbeat.

  His heartbeat.

  A roar of sound and confusion exploded all around.

  Muffled voices — deep, panicked, strange syllables of an unknown language. The wet slap of something against stone or wood. Footsteps pacing frantically.

  And his body — he *had* a body — was being forced, shoved by muscles not his own, down a tunnel of suffocating heat and pressure.

  The air was wrong.

  Thick.

  Burning.

  A stab of blinding light pierced his eyes — pain sharp and immediate.

  Cold slammed into his skin like a blade — unbearable after the liquid warmth that had cocooned him.

  And he fell.

  Fell into screaming.

  His own screaming.

  Raw. Instinctual. Animal.

  The sounds burst from a throat that had never known speech, a mouth that had never formed words. The air scorched his lungs.

  Shapes moved above him — blurry, huge.

  Hands — rough but trembling — lifted him from wetness and heat into the shocking, dry, freezing air of a world newly born.

  He wanted to retreat.

  Wanted to return to the nothing.

  But there was no going back.

  Life — crude, terrifying, merciless life — had begun.

  The Woman Who Holds Me

  Screaming.

  That sharp, primal noise — it was his own.

  But even that screaming was weakening — exhaustion dragging at Kael's newborn body like a heavy tide.

  Shapes swam above him — twisting shadows rimmed in blurred gold from torchlight. The air was thick with unfamiliar smells — sweat, blood, damp cloth, burning oil.

  And then —

  A sound.

  Soft. Close. Shaking.

  Not a word he understood — but the *shape* of it curled around him like hands unseen.

  A voice.

  Female.

  Low. Roughened by pain and exhaustion — yet thick with something unmistakable.

  Warmth.

  "*Shhh...ahh, my little one...shh, it's over, it's over now...*"

  The language struck him oddly — alien to his memory, but something within his raw instincts latched onto the tone. Comfort. Safety.

  Arms gathered him up.

  They were shaking.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Hands — small, calloused, strong in their own way — pressed him against damp skin slick with sweat. The beat of a heart — loud, too loud — filled his ears.

  But not the monstrous pulse from before.

  Human.

  Alive.

  Hers.

  That voice, raw with tears, whispered again.

  "*Kael... Kael, my son...*"

  Kael.

  The name struck through him like heat against ice.

  That was him.

  That *was* him.

  Not a man of forty-five.

  Not the broken shell lost to that other world.

  Here — here he was *Kael* — and her shaking arms, her scent of blood and earth and saltwater tears — this was his world now.

  Another voice intruded — deeper, rougher, taut with fear barely masked as command.

  "*Is he breathing? Ayra — is he...*"

  A man.

  Presence like stone and iron.

  Heavy boots scraped against wood — pacing, then stopping near.

  Kael was turned slightly — just enough to glimpse the blurred shape of this figure towering close. A man crouched low, muscles tense, scarred hands wringing together in dread.

  "*He's...he's so small,*" the man whispered hoarsely. "*By the gods, Ayra, he's so small.*"

  Her answer was not weak — despite her exhaustion.

  "*He's strong,*" she whispered fiercely. "*He screamed like a warrior. He's ours, Garron.*"

  Garron.

  Ayra.

  Mother. Father.

  The man — Garron — exhaled hard, like someone who had not dared breathe until this moment. His big hand — calloused and broad — hovered awkwardly over Kael’s tiny head, not yet daring to touch.

  "*Kael,*" he said roughly. "*Welcome, boy. You're home now.*"

  Not a dream.

  Not some drifting void.

  This was breath.

  This was blood.

  This was life.

  And though his mind — the mind of a man — twisted and reeled within this fragile infant shell, something beneath all the panic and confusion clenched tight.

  Survival.

  Existence.

  Beginning.

  Kael — newborn — closed his raw, swollen eyes against the burning light and let the sound of his mother’s heartbeat drag him down into the first sleep of his new life.

  A Father's Hands

  Sleep clung to him like heavy mud.

  Kael’s return to waking was not peaceful.

  It was slow — like drowning upwards.

  The first thing he knew was sound.

  Crackling fire.

  A night insect’s distant buzz.

  Wind whispering through wooden beams.

  And then — voices again.

  Low. Careful. Older.

  Garron.

  "*Like this? Am I doing this right, woman?*" Garron’s gruff whisper was close, laced with discomfort.

  Ayra’s voice — rasping from recent labor but edged with weary humor.

  "*He's a babe, not a sack of potatoes, Garron.*"

  There was a pause. The sound of shifting weight. A chair creaking beneath a heavy body.

  Kael felt it before he fully saw it — the sensation of being lifted.

  Large, roughened hands, careful but unsure.

  A hand beneath his small head — huge, calloused fingers bracing his fragile neck.

  Another under his back — warm, steady.

  The arms of a warrior — used to weapons, not infants.

  Garron.

  Kael's blurred gaze managed to catch him — the looming figure of a man built like a fortress. Broad shoulders. Beard bristling like iron wire. Eyes shadowed in the flickering firelight — eyes studying him as though confronting a mystery he couldn’t solve.

  "*Gods help me,*" Garron muttered, "*he's even smaller than I thought.*"

  Ayra snorted softly.

  "*You were smaller,*" she replied. "*Once.*"

  "*Aye,*" Garron rumbled dryly, "*but not this damn small.*"

  Kael lay awkwardly in those massive hands — feeling the rumble of the man's chest more than hearing his voice. Yet... something in Garron's gaze stopped Kael's fragile panic from returning.

  It wasn’t softness.

  Not like Ayra.

  It was steadiness.

  Like stone.

  Like something that simply *was* — unshakable.

  "*You listen here, boy,*" Garron muttered — not unkindly, just...practical. "*You’ve caused enough trouble for one night.*"

  Pause.

  A glance toward Ayra.

  Then back to Kael.

  "*You’ll grow strong,*" Garron said, low and certain. "*Or by the gods, I’ll *make* you strong.*"

  The words settled over Kael like weight — not a threat, but a promise.

  A law.

  A commandment etched in stone.

  Ayra’s tired laughter floated from the bedding.

  "*Don’t frighten him already, husband.*"

  "*Bah.*" Garron snorted. "*He’s ours. He’ll manage.*"

  And for the first time — Kael realized this world was not cruel because it hated weakness.

  It was cruel because it *demanded* strength.

  And Garron — this iron-handed warrior — would expect nothing less from his son.

  This Little Home

  Garron’s rough hands placed him back down with surprising gentleness.

  Kael felt the shift from hard muscle to the softened furs of what must have been their bed — thick wool and animal pelts carrying the scent of smoke, salt, and human warmth.

  The faint creak of the wooden frame beneath his tiny weight. The sigh of his mother nearby, close enough that her breath stirred his hair.

  For a moment, the world held still.

  Kael’s blurred vision caught scattered fragments of the space around him.

  Not much.

  Just color and shadow, blotted shapes softened by the lingering haze of birth.

  A low ceiling of dark wooden beams.

  One wall lined with uneven stone, patched with mortar. Another wall — rough-cut logs, sealed with clay.

  Every surface carried scars — smoke stains, scratches, imperfections. This was a home *lived* in, not decorated.

  The fire burned low in a stone hearth near the center of the room.

  A single, crooked window cut into the far wall showed nothing but the blackness of night beyond.

  Occasionally, a faint brush of wind caused the simple cloth curtain to sway, leaking a sliver of starlight across the floor.

  Outside, the wind shifted — bringing with it the faintest scent of pine and damp earth through the cracked window.

  This was not the city.

  Not the steel-and-glass world of his old life.

  This was wood. Stone. Fire. Soil.

  Alive in a way his past world never had been.

  Alive... and fragile.

  The Quiet Name of Kael

  Darkness returned.

  But it was not the vast, empty black of before.

  This darkness was softer.

  Warmer.

  Heavy with breath and quiet sounds.

  Garron snored.

  It was not loud.

  More like distant thunder rumbling beneath stone.

  But what held Kael in the cradle of this moment was neither the wind nor the wolves nor the heartbeat beneath his ear.

  It was her voice.

  Ayra.

  Still awake.

  Still watching over him.

  She whispered.

  "*Kael,*" she whispered, stroking his downy hair with a roughened thumb. "*Kael, my little one... my stubborn little fighter...*"

  The name slid over him like the warmth of the furs.

  Every repetition of it pressed the other memories — those old life fragments — further away.

  "*Kael,*" she murmured again, softer still.

  And for the first time since death — Kael Varin let himself fall fully into sleep.

  Not with fear.

  Not with regret.

  But with the faintest, smallest thing growing at the edge of his new existence.

  Belonging.