The village went on as if nothing had happened.
Children ran through mud streets, shouting and slipping.
Dogs barked at them, teeth clashing against frozen puddles.
Roosters crowed from distant rooftops.
Smoke rose from chimneys, curling into the pale sky.
Life moved in its small, stubborn rhythm, and he did not belong to it.
He walked through the streets.
Bare feet on frozen mud.
Thin clothes stiff with frost.
His stomach growled. His hands were empty.
Villagers glanced at him. Whispered. Stepped aside.
It made no difference.
The elder's words stuck in his mind.
"Perhaps… never meant to exist."
For a moment, he had looked at the sky.
He had wondered if there had been a mistake.
Then he had realized it did not matter.
No root. No color. No destiny.
The heavens had refused him.
It was not failure.
It was simply the way things were.
He scavenged what he could.
Stale bread abandoned near the market.
Frozen vegetables left in the fields.
Water from the river, grey and still.
He ate because he existed, not for hunger or pleasure.
At night, he slept beneath hollow trees or broken carts.
Snow drifted over him.
Wind cut through his thin coat.
He did not move.
It did not matter.
Sometimes, he noticed small things shift around him.
A stone trembled.
A puddle rippled before his foot touched it.
A dying bush shivered in the frost.
Not light. Not warmth. Not life as others knew it.
Something else. Something impossible.
Something the world did not recognize.
He did not question it.
He did not name it.
That night, he wandered past the fields, past the frozen river, into the hills.
The moon hung pale above him, distant and cold.
Then he felt it.
A faint pull.
A presence.
A familiarity.
It was not sound, not color, not heat.
It was intent. Quiet, persistent, insistent.
It drew him forward. Step after step.
He followed it.
The path led him down the winding slope toward the lake at the edge of the forest.
Moonlight spread across the water, thin and silver, stretching into stillness. The trees stood bare around it, their branches like black veins against the sky.
He stopped.
The pull was stronger here.
Not louder.
Not brighter.
Just closer.
The surface of the lake was unmoving.
Then it wasn't.
A ripple formed at the center.
Not from wind.
Not from falling snow.
It spread outward in perfect circles, smooth and deliberate. The water did not splash. It did not tremble. It responded.
He watched.
The moonlight on the surface began to distort, bending inward as though drawn into something beneath it. The reflection of the sky twisted — stretched — thinned.
The lake was no longer reflecting the heavens.
It was swallowing them.
Darkness formed beneath the surface.
Not shadow.
Depth.
An absence so complete it did not seem like water at all. It was as if the lake had opened into something that did not belong to this world.
The air grew still.
The wind stopped.
Even the snow paused in its descent, suspended between sky and earth.
He did not step back.
He did not feel fear.
He simply observed.
The darkness beneath the water shifted.
For a brief moment — a single fragment of time — something vast moved within it.
It had no clear shape.
No defined edges.
But it was immense.
Ancient.
Older than the trees. Older than the hills. Older than the quiet village that rejected him.
It was not a creature.
It was not spirit.
It was presence.
A pressure that did not press against the body, but against existence itself.
The surface of the lake trembled.
Then a line appeared.
A thin fracture across the moon's reflection.
And from that fracture, something looked back.
Not eyes.
Not light.
Awareness.
It did not search the forest.
It did not sweep across the land.
It found him immediately.
As though it had always known where he stood.
The pull he had followed did not feel like a call anymore.
It felt like recognition.
The snow resumed falling.
The wind returned in a slow exhale.
The fracture in the reflection sealed itself.
The darkness beneath the lake receded.
The moon returned to its place on the surface, whole and untouched.
The water became still again.
Silent.
Empty.
As if nothing had happened.
He remained standing at the edge of the trees.
His hands were still empty.
No light.
No root.
No color.
Nothing.
And yet—
The faintest tremor moved through the ground beneath his feet.
Not outward.
Inward.
As if something had acknowledged him.
As if fascinated or surprised.
He did not feel chosen.
He did not feel blessed.
He did not feel cursed.
He simply understood one thing.
The heavens may not have given him a place.
But something else had noticed.
He turned away from the lake.
The pull was gone.
Or perhaps it had settled.
He walked back toward the hills.
Snow crunching softly beneath his bare feet.
Behind him, the lake remained still under the moonlight.
But deep beneath its frozen surface—
Something ancient did not sleep.