A long time ago—so long ago that memory itself had turned to dust—far away in a sun-scorched land where dark forests bowed to mountains and rivers surrendered to the ocean, there stood a small town, isolated from the great cities of its continent. This town was called Falun.
In that secluded town, skin and race held no meaning. Its people lived in harmony with one another, with the earth, and with every living thing under the blue sky. In the name of God, they had learned love, truth, forgiveness, and joy. Absolute peace reigned over the town and its borders.
All citizens shared a sacred bond they called The Children of God, uniting them as one great family. All but one. A young man by the name of Octavio Von Sixth.
Octavio was born into a family of migrants who had come to the valley settlement when he was five. Though outsiders, the Von Sixths were of noble European descent, and it was not long before Octavio's father rose to prominence, eventually becoming mayor of the community.
From childhood, Octavio was marked by brilliance. His intelligence eclipsed his peers by leagues; by his twenties, his grasp of science—particularly human biology—surpassed even the most celebrated minds of the age. At twenty-eight, he knew he had reached the edge of known science. The only way forward was to push into the forbidden.
Yet the townsfolk mistrusted him. Though many were saved by his medical breakthroughs, most—including his father—condemned his methods, clinging instead to traditions passed down through generations.
On Octavio's twenty-ninth birthday, tragedy struck. His father collapsed, felled by a heart attack. At the hospital, the diagnosis came: coronary artery disease. Octavio begged to treat him, swore he could cure him. But his father refused, placing his fate in the hands of another physician.
Wounded and enraged, Octavio abandoned his home that very night. He took refuge in an old warehouse at the edge of the town, burying himself in research, far from his father's scorn.
A month later, his father was dead. Grief hollowed him, and alcohol filled the space where hope had been. Friends and former patients came to console him, but he had changed. He grew violent, withdrawn, incapable of speech without anger. One by one, people stopped coming. Eventually, there was no one left.
Years passed. Octavio disappeared from public sight, his mother waiting alone in their residence, clinging to the hope that her son would return.
Then came the rumors. Dark whispers that corpses were being delivered to the abandoned warehouse by night. Authorities investigated, but the day they moved in, the warehouse erupted in flames, collapsing into ashes before their eyes. That same night, several witnesses—including a neighbor of the Von Sixth residence—swore they saw the late mayor walk through his front door.
News spread like wildfire. The man who had been dead for three years had returned. Journalists flooded the once-peaceful town, crying of a miracle. The Council declared him a revenant, but this revelation tore at the heart of Falun's doctrine. The Children of God believed in the sanctity of the life cycle; to return from death was blasphemy.
The town split in two. One side denounced the Von Sixths as heretics who had defied God, demanding that the mayor be returned to the grave. The other hailed him as a messiah to be protected at all costs.
The city of peace became a city of unrest. Protests erupted daily, walls scrawled with death threats. Anarchy gnawed at its heart, and even the authorities could not keep order.
Then, as the settlement spiraled toward chaos, a lone figure appeared at its gates: Octavio Von Sixth.
Before the gathered masses, he unveiled his truth. What he had created was not the beginning, but the culmination of knowledge that defied heaven itself. He had forged a new kind of intelligent life—a being born of human flesh and neuro-robotics.
At the climax of his speech, Octavio summoned his father, whom he called the Replicant, and without hesitation raised a pistol and shot him through the head before the world.
The gunshot cracked like thunder across the stone walls. For an instant, time itself seemed to halt. The wind ceased, the river stilled, even the flowers held their breath. A ribbon of blood crept down the Replicant's forehead, traced his lips, and dripped onto the path below. The kneeling creature lifted its gaze to its master in silence.
Then Octavio tossed him a napkin. "Wipe it away," he commanded.
The Replicant obeyed, dabbing the wound, and rose to its feet. When it turned to face the public, its eyes glowed with a violet light not of this world.
The crowd gasped. The entire world stared.
And in that moment, mankind knew: nothing would ever be the same again.