This world is called Zerathis — The Origin of All Things. A land shaped by the hands of gods, yet scarred by their silence.
On a night when the heavens were dark and the winds carried no song, a child was born. He had no eyes. Blind from the moment of his first breath, he was a life wrapped in shadows.
To his parents, it was not a blessing, but a curse. "The gods have abandoned us," they whispered with trembling voices.
The father's heart filled with bitterness. "We must abandon this child. He will bring us nothing but misery," he thought.But the mother clutched her newborn to her chest, tears spilling freely. "Please… don't abandon him," she begged. "He is still our son."
Her pleas fell on deaf ears. Cold and unmoved, the father took the child from her arms. Without another word, he walked into the night, toward the Slave Forest.
The Slave Forest was a place of despair — where the gods turned their gaze away. It was where broken servants, discarded slaves, and those too weary to live were thrown to rot. It was a cruel place where hunger devoured morality and life was cheaper than ash.
Beneath the twisted roots of a dying tree, the father laid his blind child. The boy's small body trembled, and his cries echoed into the hollow night. Yet the father did not look back. His voice was cold, almost relieved."We never asked for this cursed child. Life is already cruel enough — we cannot carry more burden."
And with that, he vanished into the shadows, leaving his son behind.
The child cried until the morning sun touched the dead branches above. His wails carried through the forest, a helpless sound in a place where mercy did not exist.
By chance, a starving slave stumbled upon him. Gaunt, with wild eyes sunken by hunger, the man licked his cracked lips. In this forest of despair, where food was scarce, even the unthinkable became temptation. He bent down, reaching for the child, intent on silencing those cries forever and devouring his tiny body.
But before his hands could touch the boy, a shadow moved. A stone cracked against the slave's skull with brutal force, sending him to the ground in a spray of blood. A woman stood there, her chest heaving, her eyes blazing with rage.
She had once been a mother herself. And in the blind child's fragile face, she saw the ghost of the son she had lost.
Without hesitation, she struck again and again until the man's body lay still and broken. Then, with trembling hands, she lifted the crying infant into her arms.
"Not this one," she whispered, her voice soft but fierce. "I will not let the forest take you."
Clutching him tightly, she carried the boy back into the depths of her hidden shelter, shielding him from the cruel eyes of the world.