They say the sky tore open the night I fell.
Not in a poetic way. Not a storm or a shooting star, not the wind howling through broken trees. No—the sky itself tore. I remember it, though the memory comes in pieces, like half-formed dreams clinging to my thoughts just before waking.
There was light. So much of it that it didn't seem like light anymore—it was something alive, burning, screaming in silence.
And then I was falling.
I didn't understand what I was, or where I came from. I remember the cold air whipping around me, the burning trail of energy that clung to my skin as I plummeted. It felt like I was being torn apart, scattered across the sky like ash.
But I didn't scream. Maybe I couldn't.
And then... everything went white.
The next thing I remember was the smell of soil. Damp earth and the faint scent of smoke. My body ached, every part of me heavy as though I had fought a war in my sleep. I tried to open my eyes, but light stabb into them, and I winced.
Voices rose around me.
"By the stars… what is that?"
"Is it… alive?"
"He fell like a comet! Look at the crater!"
I blinked, slowly. The world came into focus. Blurred figures stood in a ring around me. Old faces. Weathered skin. Eyes filled with both fear and awe. I lay in a shallow crater in the middle of a worn-out village road, the stones scorched and cracked beneath me.
I tried to move, and pain flared up my spines. My mouth opened, but no words came out. Just a rasp breath.
A woman stepped forward. Her hands were calloused from years of work, her shawl patched in too many places to count. She knelt beside me and gently brushed the dirt from my face.
"He's just a boy," she whispered.
Her voice was the first kindness I ever knew.
I don't know how long I lay there while they argued.
"He's not from here."
"Could be a demon trick!"
"Look at him. That mark on his chest—it's glowing…"
I didn't know then what they meant.
A mark.
I looked down weakly and saw it etched into my skin, just above my heart: a radiant spiral, like a sun with wings. Faint, yet pulsing with a soft light. It didn't hurt. It didn't burn. But somehow, it felt… ancient.
Sacred.
They argued more. I heard snippets of words: omen, miracle, danger. But the woman stood firm. Her name, I would later learn, was Mira. She took me in her arms like I was her own child.
"No matter what he is," she said to them, "he's here now. The stars sent him, and we'll not cast him out."
And so, I became one of them.
The villagers named me Aether—after the old myths, the lost breath of the heavens. They said I must have come from the sky itself, and since I could not speak a word of my past, the name stuck. I had no other.
For weeks, I lay in Mira's small cottage, wrapped in linen, healing slowly. She fed me broth, cleaned my wounds, and told me stories by candlelight—tales of the gods, of demons, of the great war that once split the sky.
At night, when I couldn't sleep, I would stare at the stars and wonder who I was.
Why had I fallen?
Why did I feel so… hollow?
The other children in the village were curious about me. Some feared me. Others dared each other to come poke at the strange mark on my chest. But Mira kept them from being cruel, and over time, they accepted me.
I blended in.
Sort of.
I helped with chores, learned to plant and carry water, to fish in the stream just beyond the trees. I stumbled. I bled. I laughed. I lived. The village became a rhythm, a quiet, hidden place tucked between hills and old forests, where the world forgot to look.
But deep inside, I always knew I wasn't truly one of them.
There were moments—flashes—when I touched the soil and it responded. When the wind seemed to bend around me as I walked. When the rain avoided me, or struck a little too hard on those who mocked me. These were small things, strange and fleeting, but they stirred something in my blood.
Something ancient.
Something dangerous.
And the dreams—those were the worst.
I would wake in the night gasping, heart racing, haunted by images I could not understand. A burning sky. Wings made of light. A sword plunging through clouds. A scream that split the world in half.
And
always… that name.
Azrael.
I didn't know what it meant.
Not yet.
But I would.
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