The afternoon sunlight, filtered through the forest leaves, painted golden patches on the ground. Azelion, a young boy with disheveled black hair and simple leather clothes, ran swiftly across the cold earth.
His heart pounded in his chest, racing with excitement and concentration.
"Azelion! over there, quickly!" The voice of his cousin, Kael, rang loudly as he flanked the animal from the right.
The two's hunt was going well. A young male wild boar was cornered against a cliff. Azelion's spear was ready in his hand.
But suddenly, as he took a step…
He didn't see the small crack in the ground, hidden beneath a thin layer of dry yellow leaves.
His right foot sank immediately. A loud crack echoed, the ground and stones beneath his feet split. Before he could even scream, the ground beneath him completely collapsed.
"AZELION!!"
He heard Kael's distant, horrified scream as he quickly moved away while Azelion fell.
Azelion plunged into darkness, the fall wasn't very long. But it ended with a dull, icy impact.
The light from the entrance of the hole didn't seem very far. He felt his body hit something. But the pain one would expect didn't come.
Instead, he felt something press against the back of his neck and then his entire body.
He tried to rise, but his body wouldn't obey.
Absolute panic took hold of him. He wasn't paralyzed from an injury, it was as if every muscle, every tendon, every cell of his body had been trapped by an invisible, instantaneous net.
He couldn't blink. He couldn't draw in air to scream. His eyes, half-open, were fixed on the ceiling, from where the only ray of light came.
But soon his vision began to darken. The last sounds he heard were of falling stones, and then… absolute silence.
The light seemed to have been buried by some landslide.
But true darkness came a few seconds later. Azelion, who thought he was dead, soon realized that…
Despite the darkness and his imminent end, unconsciousness did not come.
His mind, himself, seemed to still exist somehow. He was just trapped within his body and within something else he could not comprehend.
He was fully and horrifically aware. His panic and confusion were his only companions for…
He had no way to measure it. Days, perhaps weeks, or years.
Time, in fact, completely lost meaning for him at a certain point. Gradually, despair gave way only to empty resignation. He was a prisoner in his own body, beneath the earth, with no apparent end.
It was then, amid that dark and silent void, that Azelion suddenly noticed.
It was tiny. Almost imperceptible. A single line. A thread so small it seemed like an illusion. It was a simple, repetitive pattern that made no sense.
He didn't know when it appeared. But it was like a miracle after countless ages. That line became the sole reason for his existence from that moment.
His consciousness, having nothing else to do, focused entirely on that single line. He observed it. Studied its flow. It was, in truth, like a puzzle.
The only thing to do in a universe of darkness is silence.
And then, eras passed. Kingdoms fell, continents moved and sank, without him having any notion.
The cave, sealed by earth, somehow remained intact, despite now being near the surface.
Azelion had no idea what was happening outside, his mind was far too occupied during this time to consider it.
Gradually, he began to understand. Not with words, but with a feeling. The pattern, the line, was not random. There was logic. A language of power, something that screamed incessantly.
His hair, unmoved in the same position for billions of years, began to lose its original color as he comprehended the line.
Strand by strand, as if his essence were being changed and replaced by what he learned. Until it became completely silver.
And it was at that moment that Azelion fully understood what that line meant.
His eyes, half-open, fixed on the same point for countless ages, absorbed the invisible glow around him. The dark iris gave way to a metallic silver color, the round pupils gradually adjusted, geometrically, to the pattern he had long been deciphering, becoming square.
Azelion could feel it, he was almost there. The final piece of the puzzle fit in his mind at last. He couldn't move his mouth to speak, nor draw air into his lungs. But the will, after so long, was more than enough.
Like a whisper from his mind, the last movement to free himself.
'Undo!'
The silence shattered.
A translucent white crystal enveloping his body shattered with a single noise. And then, the fragments, instead of flying away, flew toward him. The countless lines he had spent billions of years deciphering, just one…
The natural seal fused with his body, his mind, his soul, and his existence.
And then the pain came.
Not physical pain. It was pain as if thousands of needles pierced his brain. Like a cup of water trying to contain the water of an ocean.
Millions of pieces of information about the concept he had just scratched invaded his mind.
He understood, in an instant of extreme agony, that what he had learned was only the first letter of an infinite library of books.
Raw and absolute knowledge. But it was so vast that his mortal mind, even molded under the seal, began to unravel under the weight of the pain it brought.
When he reached the limit, the knowledge destroying him also gave the solution. And, like a survival instinct, his voice emerged.
'SEAL!'
His voice was a rough, hoarse roar coming from lungs unused for ages.
The flood of information did not disappear. But the pain it caused, the overload tearing his consciousness apart, was cut. Sealed. His perception of pain was stored in a massive book, completely closed.
At that moment, his already weak body suddenly began to lose weight. All fat vanished, along with most muscles. His skin clung to his bones. All energy in his body had been used to prevent his existence from disappearing.
Air. He drew a deep breath into his lungs. His body was finally free, but Azelion felt as if he were only a shell.
He was weak as long-forgotten memories surfaced. He remembered. Remembered his name. The name of his cousin. Remembered turning eighteen. Remembered the taste of the bread his mother baked. He had no idea how much time had passed.
Be it one, a thousand, or millions. It was irrelevant now.
He pushed himself to sit. His bones creaked, seeming fragile.
His vision was now completely different. The world was enveloped in small, infinite lines. All singing to him and showing something that probably only he understood.
But at that moment, none of that mattered. There was only one thought in his mind. A primitive desire that surpassed even the newly acquired knowledge and power.
It was hunger. And the will to survive.
He crawled out of the rubble where he had been. His weak body dragged itself over the stones. Ahead, there was a small crack with a sliver of light entering.
He pushed it aside, tossing loose earth out, until the true sunlight touched his face.
Azelion collapsed outside, gasping, seeing a world he hadn't seen for a long time. He was dirty, with long silver hair and eyes that shone with a mysterious silver light.
He felt reborn, and then his first words to the new world emerged.
"I'm… hungry."