The icy southern wind swept through the worn wooden cabins of Gilgal Village, carrying the scent of dry earth and the quiet despair of its people.
That night, under a thunderous stormy sky, debating noises rose up: whether a savior would be born or not.
In one of the most distant collapsing cabins, a woman with short blue hair gripped the tied bamboo bed, her face a mask of gritted agony.
"I can't! Just let me go and save the child!" she pleaded, tears streaking her cheeks. An old woman with white hair held her arm fast as others in long white dresses fled the room.
"Push!" the midwife urged, her voice a harsh command against the storm's roar. Then, the lady's grim face shifted as a tiny head crowned.
A scream was torn from her, sharper than the wind, as the final pain crested. The old woman severed the cord, and a spear of white-hot lightning answered from the heavens.
The walls of the cabin shook after the lightning vanished.
Trembling and exhausted, the new mother wept silently as the baby was placed in her arms.
Footsteps echoed just beyond the door, as the old woman joined those outside.
"He's a beautiful boy," she whispered, a gentle smile breaking through her tears. "His name will be… Kai. Just as his father would have wished."
She traced the curve of his cheek, his head of curious black and blue hair, willing him to cry. But he was silent.
A deeper dread seeped in as she saw his eyes to be sealed shut, the lids fused as if by some unseen force. Her tears fell anew upon his still face.
Then, the baby moved. A small hand closed around her finger with shocking strength, the pulled it to his mouth.
He suckled with a pressure that felt vampiric, a pull that seemed to drain the very warmth from her bone. She tried to withdraw, but his grip was unbreakable.
"Oh my… my baby... Is he blind? No, no. God! Why?" Her shout was swallowed by the storm, a cry of pure, abominable despair.
Beneath the thin skin of his eyelids, a flicker pulsed—a phantom light, blue and red. With each thunderclap, the glow intensified.
As the rain broke in a torrent, his eyes flew open. Outside, five bolts of colorful lightning stabbed the earth, striking the points around their cabin, bathing the night in a terrifying, day-like exposure.
Kai blinked up at her. His eyes held no pupil, no iris—only twin orbs of brilliant, distinct light: one the cold blue of a winter moon, the other the fierce red of a dying sun.
Her heart fractured. In this harsh land, imperfections were culled; only strength was spared. A child marked was a child doomed.
She saw the strength in his grip, yet pitied the life he would endure. "Forgive me… Kai," she breathed, before steeling herself. She looked through the holes in the wall at the furious sky, then back at her son.
"It's just you and me. So, no matter what happens, I won't let anything happen to you. Even if I have to die to protect you, I will." Her smile was real now, fierce with love as she brushed his hair. Slowly, his impossible eyes closed, and he slept.
…
Two months passed. The wind in Gilgal Village still carried despair. Kai's mother, Ayra, hid her son whenever she ventured out.
Her husband, the village's vanished protector, had left a stock of food, and the priestess brought occasional gifts. But the offerings dwindled as villagers, curious to see the hero's heir, were persistently turned away.
Ayra knew the truth. If they saw those luminous, pupil-less eyes, nothing good would follow. The risk was hers alone to bear.
…
On the morning of Kai's first birthday, Ayra awoke to cold fingers patting her cheek. "Mommy… wake up, I'm hungry," a tiny, clear voice said.
Her worry had melted over the months. Kai never cried. While other infants wailed, he observed in profound silence, his large, glowing eyes missing nothing.
He navigated their hut flawlessly, slipping over or under obstacles as if he sensed them. "Kai… you can see, right?" she whispered, hope wailing in her own eyes.
He smiled. He saw perfectly. But his vision was a secret tapestry none could fathom. He saw the shadows that danced in the very air, threads of darkness intertwining around all things.
He would grasp at them with small hands, a sight that filled Ayra not with fear, but with a fierce, protective awe. Her son was not a curse; he was a hidden treasure.
He walked within days, spoke in months, conversed by half a year. He was a quiet genius. "Mommy… I can't breathe," he'd protest, smothered in her hugs.
When she released him one day, she gasped. "Kai. Your eyes… they've dimmed!"
The radiant orbs had softened, the light receding. And Kai saw something new: not just shadows, but a strange, faint luminescence clinging to his mother and to the walls themselves.
…
By a year and a half, a faint, sketched ring—a ghost of a pupil—appeared in the now purely blue iris of his left eye. His perception deepened.
He felt the vibrations of life, could distinguish human from object blindfolded. With his eyes open, every living thing—human, bird, insect—was crowned with a unique, shimmering aura.
Believing the obvious mark gone, Ayra finally took Kai outside. It was a disaster. Children screamed, calling him a monster.
Friends recoiled. And then, the disappearances began. First a few, then more. Ten children, five youths—vanished.
The village whisper became a roar. "It's his fault. The cursed child is a monster! He must be cast out, thrown to the ocean graves where the old monsters lie!"
Ayra was slapped, shoved out of homes, utterly abandoned. Seeing her pain, Kai took a strip of cloth and tied it over his eyes. 'Maybe if I hide them… Mommy will suffer less.' But the isolation only hardened into a permanent frost.
Kai remembered everything: his mother's first gentle smile, the names of every child who taunted him. His world was the space beside her.
One day, hidden in the bushes, he watched two warriors train, their swords moving with a pulsing, living rhythm. He absorbed every step, every arc.
At home, he replicated the forms perfectly with a strip of broom. "Where did you learn that?" Ayra asked, breathless, seeing echoes of her lost husband. "I saw men in metal suits dancing," Kai said innocently.
She laughed, but a fierce hope blazed in her heart. "You will be strong. You have to be."
That night, dried leaves scraped against their door. Fires guttered in windows against the pressing dark.
Beyond the village palisade, in the ancient trees, shadows thicker than the night began to coalesce and leap from branch to branch, moving with a terrible, silent purpose.
A profound silence descended, broken only by the creak of wood and the relentless sigh of the wind.
The moon shone brightly down on Gilgal Village, on both the strong roofs and the wretched, collapsing ceilings, as something old and hungry drew near.