Village of Namaras, border settlement of Surabhan
---
Rain slammed the rooftops like it was trying to crack the village in half.
Buckets overflowed. Roads vanished. The only thing louder than the storm was the screaming.
Not thunder.
Labor.
Inside a crooked house at the village's edge—where the roof leaked and the walls slanted like they'd given up—a woman was trying to bring something into the world.
Or maybe…something was dragging its way out.
The midwife barked orders. The assistant cried more than the patient. Blood mixed with water on the floor, and the wind outside howled as if mocking them.
Then—stillness.
A baby's cry rang out. Followed by the silence that came with death.
"She's gone," the assistant whispered, voice cracking.
The old midwife didn't look surprised. She had seen this kind of trade before.
But when she turned to the child, swaddled in soaked linen and mucus, her face twisted.
Something was...off.
She didn't coo. Didn't smile. Didn't even pretend to feel holy.
Instead, she asked without looking up,
"Where's the father?"
The assistant wiped her nose. "No one came."
The midwife clicked her tongue, leaned close to the crying thing, and muttered:
"Bastard."
Then she stood, opened the back window, and—without ceremony or hesitation—
tossed the newborn into the sewer ditch.
---
He didn't die.
He should have.
But he didn't.
His cries echoed, high and helpless.
Water splashed. His limbs thrashed.
Then—nothing.
No sound.
No movement.
Just rain.
---
Until a single, shaking hand broke the surface.
Like a weed. Like a curse. Like a middle finger to every law of mercy.
And someone saw it.
---
Varunath had been closing up his dhaba—"Salt & Smoke," one of the few places in Namaras where the food didn't taste like boiled despair.
He was halfway through dragging the tables in when he spotted something in the ditch.
He squinted. Then cursed.
"Please be a dog," he muttered. "Or a rat. Hell, I'll take a dead rat."
But it wasn't.
He walked over, peered in—and saw a sewer-drenched newborn clutching the stone like it owed him money.
Varunath stared. Blinked once.
Then, flatly:
"You've got to be f***ing kidding me."
He reached in, lifted the thing up like it was made of spikes and disappointment.
"Smells like you fought a war with your own birth canal," he muttered.
The child whimpered. Sputtered.
Varunath grumbled the whole walk home, holding the kid away from his shirt like a cursed ladle. He dumped him into a tin basin, poured warm water over him, scrubbed with one hand, stirred curry with the other.
"Gods above, you smell like philosophical failure," he muttered.
The baby just sneezed.
He toweled him off with something that may have been a kitchen rag. Sat down across from the bundle.
And stared.
---
Long silence.
The storm still hadn't let up.
The infant blinked at him.
"…You're a stubborn one," Varunath said finally.
The kid cooed, or maybe growled.
"Fine. Rudrasar. That's your name now. Don't like it? File a complaint when you learn to write."
He reached out a finger to adjust the cloth.
The baby's hand snapped around it like a trap.
Varunath raised an eyebrow. The grip was…tight. Too tight.
This wasn't a thank-you. This was a claim.
"…Alright," he said, narrowing his eyes. "Let's see how long you hold on."
---
Outside, the gods looked elsewhere.
Inside, a name was given.
And from a sewer ditch at the edge of Surabhan, something impossible began.