Warmth.
Before light.
Before sound.
Before pain.
There had only been warmth.
It wrapped around him from every direction, surrounding him in a world he neither understood nor questioned. There were no thoughts. No awareness. No understanding of self.
Only warmth.
Steady.
Endless.
Safe.
Then, little by little, it began to fade.
The change was so gradual that he could not notice it.
How could he?
He had never known anything else.
The warmth simply became less.
The rhythm beneath it grew weaker.
Slower.
Fainter.
Until one moment, without warning, it stopped.
And for the first time in his existence
The world touched him.
A sharp cry tore from the tiny infant's throat.
His body twisted instinctively inside the blood-stained white silk wrapped around him.
Cold.
It invaded from every direction.
Not violently.
Not suddenly.
Patiently.
As though it had been waiting.
The silk that had once held lingering heat now felt damp and heavy against his skin. The broken piece of armor surrounding him no longer felt like shelter.
Everything was changing.
The infant cried again.
The sound echoed weakly through the silent wasteland.
No answer came.
The sky above was gray.
An endless sea of clouds stretched across the heavens.
Beneath them lay a landscape of death.
Mountains of corpses.
Broken weapons.
Collapsed siege engines.
Shattered banners whose colors had long ago been stained black with dried blood.
A sword the size of a tower protruded from the earth in the distance.
The skeleton of something enormous lay half-buried beneath the crimson soil.
Nothing moved.
Nothing spoke.
Nothing lived.
At the center of that endless graveyard sat a broken fragment of armor, half-buried beneath dirt and old blood.
Inside it lay the infant.
Alone.
His cries grew louder.
The cold continued to spread.
Tiny fingers clenched.
Unclenched.
His legs kicked helplessly against the silk.
Seeking.
Searching.
For something that was no longer there.
He did not know what he sought.
Only that something was missing.
Something important.
Something his body desperately wanted back.
But the world remained silent.
No arms reached for him.
No voice answered.
No warmth returned.
The wind blew across the battlefield.
The infant cried until his throat hurt.
Then he cried until he no longer had the strength.
Hours passed.
The sky darkened.
Darkness swallowed the battlefield.
For the first time, the infant experienced night.
Not that he understood the concept.
He only knew that the light vanished.
The world became darker.
Shapes disappeared.
The cold worsened.
His body curled inward instinctively.
A primitive effort to preserve what little warmth remained.
Sleep eventually claimed him.
Not because he felt safe.
Not because he felt tired.
Because his body could do nothing else.
When he awoke, the light had returned.
The gray sky watched him from above.
The battlefield remained unchanged.
The towering shapes still stood motionless.
The broken weapons still littered the earth.
The corpses still surrounded him.
The infant stared.
His eyes wandered.
The world was becoming clearer.
Not through understanding.
Through repetition.
His gaze settled on one shape nearby.
It did not move.
He looked away.
Then back.
Still unmoving.
His attention shifted elsewhere.
Another shape.
Larger.
Also unmoving.
Everywhere he looked, things remained exactly as they were.
Still.
Silent.
Frozen.
The infant blinked.
A strange feeling stirred inside him.
Not curiosity.
He did not know curiosity.
Not confusion.
He did not know confusion.
Only awareness.
The beginning of awareness.
His eyes followed the outline of a nearby corpse.
The body wore broken armor.
Its face had long since disappeared beneath dried blood and decay.
One arm stretched toward the sky.
As though reaching for something forever beyond its grasp.
The infant stared.
The shape remained still.
Minutes passed.
Nothing changed.
Eventually his gaze drifted away.
Something inside him had learned.
Not a thought.
Not a lesson.
A pattern.
The shape would not move.
The cold remained.
But now another sensation had appeared.
A dull ache deep inside him.
At first it was small.
Barely noticeable.
A discomfort hidden somewhere within his tiny body.
The infant squirmed.
The ache persisted.
He cried.
The ache remained.
Time passed.
The ache worsened.
His body demanded something.
Something absent.
Something necessary.
The feeling grew stronger with each passing hour.
The infant did not understand hunger.
But his body did.
Instinct screamed where thought could not.
His cries returned.
Louder than before.
More desperate.
The battlefield offered no answer.
The wind carried the sound away.
Nothing came.
Nothing changed.
Nothing cared.
The ache deepened.
His small stomach felt hollow.
The emptiness spread through him.
His limbs felt weaker.
His movements slower.
His cries softer.
For the first time, survival became uncertain.
The second night arrived.
Then the third.
The infant existed between sleep and wakefulness.
Between cold and hunger.
Between life and death.
The silk around him grew dirtier.
The blood staining it darkened with age.
Rain occasionally fell from the gray sky.
Tiny droplets struck the armor fragment surrounding him.
Some reached his face.
His lips moved instinctively.
His body welcomed the moisture.
Though it was never enough.
Never sufficient.
The ache always returned.
The cold always remained.
One day, while staring toward the horizon, he saw something strange.
Movement.
Tiny.
Barely noticeable.
His eyes locked onto it immediately.
Everything else in the battlefield remained still.
This did not.
Far away, near a mound of corpses, something shifted.
The motion lasted only a moment.
Then stopped.
The infant stared.
His gaze never left the spot.
Minutes passed.
Nothing happened.
Then
Movement again.
A twitch.
A faint motion.
Small.
Weak.
But undeniable.
For the first time, he witnessed something other than himself changing.
The infant watched.
His entire world narrowed toward that single point.
Stillness.
Then movement.
Stillness.
Then movement.
A pattern.
Another pattern.
His awareness grasped it instinctively.
Some things moved.
Most did not.
The distinction etched itself into the foundation of his growing consciousness.
Though he lacked words.
Though he lacked understanding.
The lesson remained.
The hunger worsened.
The ache became pain.
The pain became agony.
His cries lost strength.
His body felt heavy.
Even lifting an arm required effort.
The infant lay within the broken armor.
Wrapped in bloodied silk.
Staring at a world that neither noticed nor cared that he existed.
The gray sky stretched endlessly above him.
The battlefield stretched endlessly around him.
An ocean of death.
A kingdom of silence.
A graveyard forgotten by time itself.
And within that endless wasteland
A newborn child continued to breathe.
Tiny.
Fragile.
Impossible.
His eyes slowly closed.
The ache remained.
The cold remained.
The silence remained.
Yet somewhere deep inside his fragile body, something else remained as well.
A stubborn instinct.
A refusal to stop.
He did not understand life.
He did not understand death.
He did not understand suffering.
He did not understand himself.
But something within him clung desperately to existence.
As though the world itself had failed to realize he should not have survived.
The wind swept across the battlefield once more.
The blood-stained silk fluttered softly.
For a brief moment, the fabric brushed against his cheek.
Warm.
Only slightly.
Only for an instant.
Yet something deep within him reacted.
Not memory.
Not recognition.
Something older.
Something buried within flesh and instinct.
The faint echo of a warmth that no longer existed.
His tiny hand closed around the edge of the silk.
Holding it.
Clutching it.
As sleep finally claimed him once more.
Far beyond the battlefield, beyond the invisible barrier he had yet to discover, beyond the world he had yet to see
Life continued.
Unaware.
And at the center of a frozen sea of death, the child who would one day be called Reige slept beneath a gray sky, while the battlefield silently watched the beginning of his existence.