Aeyra, a world eighteen billion strong, carved from the bones of God-Kings and the tongue-twisting lies of plastic diplomacy. A world too vast for anything to be rare, but even here, in the shadows of towering empires and magic-drunk tyrants, a peasant daring to dream beyond the thatch-roof huts, beyond the clustered villages or the stone forts that stitched this world together like scars on skin, was a rare sight indeed.
But for all its grandeur, for all its celestial kings and gilded empires, the story we tell does not begin in thrones or temples. It begins in a hut. In a forgotten mud of a nameless village, tucked within a minor nation of a distant kingdom, near an old fort. With a woman, in labor, screaming through a storm
This story does not start with Damien, but instead with his mother.
She lay surrounded by midwives, drenched in sweat, trembling, prayers muttered in dialects older than the village. Outside, the wind howled and thunder cracked like the world itself was holding its breath. The storm didn't feel like coincidence, it felt like omen.
Holt stood outside the door, pacing. A rough man with rougher hands, a village blacksmith with kiln-bent arms and a mind that chewed worst-case scenarios. Stillbirths weren't rare in this backwater. He bit at his nails, the fear gnawing louder than the storm.
Then, silence.
No screams. No cries. No midwife's muttering. No cry from mother or child. Just that awful, pregnant stillness. Just silence.
He froze, cold sweat dripping down his spine. He didn't dare ask, didn't dare know. Silence pressed in like a vice. He stared at the door, heart hammering on raw iron. His hand twitched at his side, not toward the handle, not toward the wall, just twitching, useless, as fear hollowed out his chest.
Then it came.
The cry. Oh, the cry.
Thin at first. A wail too soft to be real.
Then louder. Sharper. Piercing. High and raw and unfiltered by the world. The cry of his child hit him like sunrise after a moonless night. And for maybe the first and last time in his life, Holt found joy in the sound of a child crying. He exhaled, gasped, stumbled forward, and flung the door open.
There she was.
Mirya, his wife, the woman he once fought the fort guards to marry, holding a child wrapped in sweat-soaked cloth, eyes heavy but alight with wonder. She looked up at him and smiled, tired, triumphant. The scene before him etched itself into his memory forever, Mirya, his wife, his flame, cradling their child as if he were made of starlight and silk. Her hair matted, her face pale, yet radiant, like a goddess worn thin by war, still divine.
He rushed to her side, voice cracking, "Are you okay, Mirya? Is... is our child okay?"
Amid the clutter of towels and quiet fussing of midwives packing up, Mirya looked up, her voice soft, proud
"He's a boy," she whispered. "Isn't he beautiful?"
Holt nodded, almost forgetting how to. He knelt beside her, calloused hands trembling as they brushed against the child's cheek. Nothing he had ever forged compared.
After a brief, tender moment, Mirya's voice dropped, her tone shifting.
"I'm scared" she said softly. "He'll live a life like ours. Born in the mud, dying in it. I don't want that for him."
Holt looked at her, surprised. "Don't say that. He'll have a good life. He can take over my forge, being a blacksmith is an honorable life."
"No." She shook her head, gently rocking the baby. "I don't want him to survive, I want him to live. I want him to see the world we never could. I want him to carry the dreams we buried."
"…Mirya…"
"I want to name him," she said. "I want to name him Damien. Damien Lucius. A name too bright for this mud. A name that can't be chained."
Holt's eyebrows rose.
"That's too noble a name," he warned. "Too bright for a village like this, a name like that will bring attention. The fort lord won't like it. You know how they see names, like claims. Like rebellion."
She smirked, a spark of the old mischief returning in her sweat-worn face. "What, is the Red Rebel Holt afraid of some attention? I never thought I'd see the day."
He laughed. Loud and full. chest rising with a pride he hadn't felt in years.
"Fine," he said. "Seems like we've found our final act of rebellion, huh? Damien Lucius. I, no, we, will protect him. With everything we have."
She leaned into him, her body heavy with exhaustion, her head resting against his chest.
Their son, their dream made flesh, cooed quietly in her arms.
Outside, the rain fell like applause.