The world moved like a flash of lightning around Huan, while he remained trapped in a deathly stillness. His struggle was not with his body itself, but with that agonizing temporal gap between what his eyes perceived and what his limbs executed. His sluggish reaction time was not merely a disability; it was a mark of shame in a village that revered nothing but hunters and the strong.
Huan vividly remembered that fateful day at the age of ten. The village boys were hurlng stones around him. He saw the stone launch toward his face, tracing its path clearly as it sliced through the air—yet, his body refused to move. He stood frozen for seconds that felt like an eternity, until the stone collided with his forehead, erupting in both blood and the mocking laughter of those around him. Even a simple stone was something he was incapable of evading.
That night, consumed by the feeling of being a useless burden, Huan crossed the boundaries of the inhabited village. The surrounding forest was abyssal, home to monsters that knew no mercy. When his trail vanished, no one searched for long; everyone was certain that a child with his "condition" wouldn't last minutes. The consensus in the village was that Huan had perished, his fragile bones long dissolved between the fangs of the region's beasts, which never left a trace of their prey.
But what the villagers did not realize was that the boy they presumed dead was just beginning a different kind of journey—a journey that would transform that "slowness" into something far beyond their wildest imaginations.