His blood dripped onto the stone floor before he heard her scream.
Physician Lyosha Kozlov did not lift his eyes from the boy lying on the wooden bed. His hands were steeped in blood up to the wrists. The boy did not move. His heart did not beat. It had been three hours since he began trying.
"Linya… Linya, look at me…"
The mother's voice, Anna's, was hoarse, as if she had been weeping for days. She stood two steps away, her hands trembling over her mouth, her eyes fixed on her son's pale face.
Lyosha pressed his fists against the boy's chest again. Once. Twice. Three times.
Nothing.
He raised his hand, touched the neck. No pulse.
He withdrew his fingers gently and looked at the mother. His gray eyes were tired, unsure how to say what needed to be said.
"Anna…"
He did not finish the sentence.
The mother knew. She fell to her knees as if her tendons had been severed. She did not cry. She screamed. A loud, piercing scream, like someone stabbed in the heart. The sound echoed off the stone walls, slipped outside, and cut through the silence of the village that had gathered beyond the wooden door.
Lyosha stood. His fingers were stained with blood that would never leave his memory. He looked at his hands. They trembled for a moment. He clenched them.
The door opened before he reached it.
---
Five men. The eldest was Ilya, the village blacksmith, his hands like rocks. His blue eyes were not angry. They were worse than anger. They were judgment.
"The soul has left, physician?"
Lyosha did not answer. He took a cloth from the table and began slowly wiping his hands. Every movement measured. Every second precious.
Ilya stepped forward. Behind him, the others filled the doorway. Their shadows on the wall were like black mountains.
"We heard her scream from the center of the village." His voice was calm. "We heard her calling to you. Saying: 'He killed him. This physician killed my son.'"
Lyosha raised his eyes. Tired. Not afraid. Just tired.
"He was dead before I carried him here."
"She says otherwise."
"She is a mother who lost her son."
Ilya turned to the men behind him. They exchanged glances. Then he turned back.
"The village wants an answer."
"The answer is before you. The boy is dead. Nothing would have saved him."
Ilya looked at the bed, at the boy's pale face, at his small outstretched hands. He looked at the blood on the floor, on the physician's clothes.
Then he looked at Lyosha again.
"You will come with us."
Lyosha tossed the cloth onto the table. He did not argue. He did not ask to stay. He knew this moment had been coming since the first day he set foot in this village.
"Let me take my bag."
Ilya shook his head.
"You will come as you are."
---
They led him out under the overcast sky. The entire village was there. Fifty faces, maybe sixty. Women holding their children, men with clenched fists, elders watching in silence.
Anna stood at the front. Her eyes were red, her gray hair loose over her shoulders. She did not raise her voice. She was no longer screaming. She was simply watching. The look of someone not seeking justice. The look of someone wanting a price.
Ilya pushed him gently. Lyosha walked. Each step made a sound on the muddy ground. He did not look at their faces. He knew what they saw: a stranger. An outsider. One who did not belong. One who had come from nowhere and claimed to know.
"Where to?" he asked.
"To the field. Where we decide."
The field lay outside the village, where the men gathered for their judgments. A wide space with red soil, surrounded by bare trees.
Lyosha stopped at the first tree. He turned to face them.
"I will not run."
Ilya's eyebrows rose.
"Did we think you would?"
"I will not run because I have done nothing wrong."
Silence. Then a faint laugh from one of the men at the back. Lyosha did not know who.
Ilya stepped forward.
"The boy died under your hands. His blood is on your clothes. His mother accuses you. What do you want us to tell her? That the physician is innocent?"
"I want you to remember that I arrived after he collapsed. That I tried to bring him back for a full hour. I did not kill him. The illness killed him."
"The illness you could not cure."
Lyosha was silent. He had no answer to that.
Ilya turned his back. He walked toward the men. They whispered among themselves. Lyosha stood alone under the tree, waiting.
He did not wait long.
Ilya returned. His face was like stone.
"The village wants you to leave."
"I had left. You brought me back."
"Leave for good. Tonight. Do not return."
Lyosha looked at the sky. The clouds were thick; there were no stars. Night was coming.
"No problem."
"And there is a price."
He stopped. He looked at Ilya slowly.
"A price?"
"Your bag. Your tools. Whatever remedies remain."
Lyosha smiled. A brief, bitter smile.
"You want what remains of my knowledge after you have killed my knowledge."
Ilya did not respond. The smile displeased him. The men behind him began to move closer.
Lyosha sighed. He took the leather bag off his shoulder and threw it on the ground between them. It hit the dirt, opened slightly, and small bottles and flasks scattered out.
"Take it. All of it."
Silence. The men looked at the bag, then at one another.
Ilya gestured to one of them. The man stepped forward, bent down to pick up the bag.
At that moment, another scream came. Not Anna's. A man's voice from the midst of the crowd.
"The blood."
Everyone turned.
The man was pointing at the ground. At the red soil stained with the boy's blood from Lyosha's hands.
"We want a price for the blood."
Ilya did not move. He said nothing. He was waiting.
Lyosha understood.
He understood that the bag had not been enough. He understood they did not want only what remained of his knowledge. They wanted to feel the price. To see it. To have blood drawn from him as it had been drawn from their son.
He looked at Ilya. His gray eyes did not gleam.
"You want me to pay a price with my body."
Ilya was silent. Then he slowly shook his head.
"We want you to leave. That is all."
"But they want something else."
Ilya turned to the men. Their voices began to rise. Fragmented words: blood for blood, stranger, killed, a price.
The physician knew that this was a moment when judgment was no longer Ilya's.
He did not wait.
He turned his back. He walked toward the forest. He heard footsteps behind him. He did not run. He walked quickly, but he did not run. He knew running would start a chase, and the chase would end with him dead.
He walked.
The footsteps behind him grew louder. Their voices became clearer. Someone shouted: "Seize him!"
He ran.
---
The forest was darker than he remembered. The tree trunks looked alike; the branches tangled above his head like a closed ceiling. He ran without direction. He heard his own breath. He heard theirs.
He fell.
His foot slipped on mud, and he found himself sliding face-first downhill. The pit was deep, narrow, with the roots of a large tree blocking its mouth. His left leg was wedged between two stony roots. He tried to pull it free. It would not budge. It was trapped as if the earth had seized him.
He heard them approaching. Their voices grew louder. One torch, then two, illuminated the forest from above.
He raised his head. He saw them. Six or seven. Ilya was not among them. That was worse.
"Here!" one of them shouted.
He looked at his leg. The bone beneath the skin, where the foot met the shin. He knew that spot well. He knew that if his leg remained trapped in minutes, he would be dead.
He drew the small knife from his belt. The blade was short, suitable only for cutting herbs and dressing wounds.
He raised it.
A moment of hesitation.
Then he struck.
He did not scream. He bit his tongue until blood ran. He struck again. He felt the blade cut the skin, pass through the muscle, reach the bone.
Bone does not cut easily.
The men were above him. One of them descended to the edge of the pit.
"He is here!"
Lyosha struck a third time. The bone cracked. The pain shot up his spine like fire. He held his breath. He struck a fourth time.
It severed.
He did not feel it. He only felt his leg free itself. He rose on half a leg. Blood gushed profusely.
He grabbed a thick branch from the ground and leaned his weight on it. He jumped.
The man at the edge of the pit shouted, but Lyosha did not hear him. He leaped forward. He fell on his face. He got up. He jumped again. The branch slipped from under his armpit, but he clung to it.
He jumped. Jumped. Jumped.
The forest rushed before him. The blood left a clear trail behind him. He knew that. He knew they would follow him like dogs.
He stopped. He heard it. A river nearby. The sound of water.
He pushed his body toward the sound. The grass gave way to smooth stones. The water was cold, reaching his knees. He walked against the current. Each step opened his wound. Each step left blood in the water, but the water took it, dissolved it, concealed it.
He walked. Minutes. Perhaps an hour. He did not know. He no longer felt his severed foot. He only felt the branch under his armpit, the cold water, and the sound of his pulse in his ears.
When he emerged from the river, the sky had begun to brighten.
---
He reached his village at noon. He walked along the forest edge until he was sure no one was there. Then he entered from the back, where the old abandoned houses stood.
His house was the last one. It was not a house. It was a small hut, a single room with a thatched roof. He had left it as it was weeks ago. He had thought he would not return.
He pushed the door. It opened with a creak. He entered. He collapsed on the earthen floor from exhaustion. He slept. He did not know how long.
He woke to screaming.
Not human screaming. The screaming of dogs.
He rose slowly. The branch was still under his armpit. The wound on his foot had stopped bleeding, but it was inflamed. Red, swollen, ugly.
The dogs were at the end of the alley. Five or six. They were eating.
He drew closer. He saw a tattered rag, torn, with traces of blood on it. He saw a small body. He saw a face.
An infant.
The dogs were tearing at its flesh. One was dragging its tiny arm, another barking at the others to stay away.
Lyosha stood watching. He did not move for a moment. Then he moved.
He struck the largest dog with the branch. The dog yelped and fled. He struck another. The dogs scattered in every direction.
He bent down. He looked at the infant.
It was dead. No. It was moving. Its right hand was still twitching.
He bent closer. He touched its face. So small. Its face was covered in blood and dirt. Its eyes were open, blue, looking upward. It was not crying. Only looking.
Lyosha did not think. He picked it up. He held it in his arms. He felt its small, warm body. He felt its heart beating fast. He felt something else.
The infant was bleeding. A deep wound in its chest, another in its belly. The dogs had mauled it in many places. It was dying.
He carried it into the hut. He laid it on a clean piece of cloth. He looked at its wound. Large, deep. He had no tools. He had nothing.
He had only his hand.
He placed his finger on the infant's wound. He touched the blood. Then, without thinking, he put his finger in his mouth.
The taste was not the taste of blood. It was something else. Warm, sweet, piercing his throat like cold fire.
He coughed. He felt dizzy. He held on to the wall.
Then he looked at the infant.
The wounds he had seen moments ago… were closing.
Lyosha sat on the ground. He could not speak. He looked at his hands. He looked at the child. He looked at the blood on his fingers.
The infant did not cry. It was looking at him with its blue eyes. Looking without fear. Without gratitude. Without anything.
It was only looking.
---
Lyosha spent the following days watching the child. He did not leave the hut. He dared not. The village might learn of his return. Or might not. It did not matter. What mattered was that the child did not die.
But the child did not die.
His wounds healed completely after a day. No trace remained. The skin was smooth, as if there had never been a wound. The infant suckled milk borrowed from a neighbor who did not ask many questions, and slept, and woke, and looked.
Only looked.
He never cried.
Lyosha tried. He pinched him gently one day. The infant only looked at him. He did not cry. He did not move a muscle.
He tried again. This time a little deeper. Blood flowed. The infant looked. Nothing.
Then the wound healed.
Lyosha sat before him. He looked at the child. He looked at his own finger, which he had wounded. He looked at the blood.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
The infant closed his eyes. He slept.
---
On the third night, an idea came to him.
There was a woman in the neighboring village, an old woman who had not left her bed for years. They said she was dying. They said nothing worked for her.
Lyosha wrapped the child in a warm cloth. He placed him in a basket. He carried him to the neighboring village under the cover of night.
The woman was alone. Her breathing was weak, her face yellow as wax. She looked at him with sunken eyes.
"Who are you?"
"A physician."
"There are no physicians in this land."
"I came to help you."
She smiled. A bitter smile.
"With what? You have no medicine. You have nothing."
Lyosha opened the basket. He took out the child. He held him in his arms.
The woman looked. She looked at the child. She looked at Lyosha.
"What is this?"
Lyosha did not answer. He took a small needle, pricked the child's finger gently. A tiny drop of blood. He placed it in a cup of water. He stirred.
"Drink."
The woman looked at the cup. She looked at him.
"Madman."
"Drink."
She did not know why she did it. But she took the cup. She drank.
At first, nothing happened. The woman sat looking at him with mocking eyes.
Then she coughed. A strong cough, expelling black phlegm. She coughed again. Then she gasped.
She stood up.
She rose from the bed she had not left in seven years. She stood on her trembling legs. She looked at her hand. At her leg. At the ground beneath her.
"What… what is this?"
Lyosha did not answer. He was looking at the child. The child was asleep, not crying, not moving.
The woman fell to her knees. She wept. Loudly.
Lyosha wrapped the child, placed him in the basket, and left.
---
He did not return to his village. He went to another. Then another. Then another.
In every village, there was a sick person. In every house, there was someone waiting to die. Lyosha no longer carried his bag of tools. He no longer needed it.
He carried a child.
The child did not grow normally. In his first year, he remained small. He did not speak, laugh, or cry. He walked. He only walked. He wandered around the hut, touched things, looked at them, then walked away.
His hair began to appear. It was white. Not gray, but pure white like snow. His eyes had been blue at first, then their color began to change. They grew deeper. They grew redder. By the end of the first year, his eyes were red like dried blood.
Lyosha told no one where the child had come from. He said he was his nephew. A legacy. A secret he did not wish to disclose.
People did not ask much. They were occupied with healing.
The healing that everyone who drank water touched by this child's blood experienced.
The healing that never failed.
---
In the third year, Lyosha heard whispers.
"His blood heals."
"He is not human."
"Where did he get this child?"
It was the first time he fled. He wrapped the child, carried him, left in the night. He never returned to that village.
But the word had spread.
In the fifth year, they found a message under the door of his new hut. Written by a merchant: We want to meet you. We will come tomorrow night.
He did not wait. He left.
In the seventh year, he did not sleep in any place for more than two weeks. He moved from village to village, from forest to mountain, from abandoned house to cave.
The child was growing. He walked behind him silently. He did not ask. He did not complain. He just walked.
When he turned eight, his long white hair reached his shoulders, and his eyes were red like cold fire. His face showed nothing. He was silent. He only watched.
Lyosha did not know what to call him. At first, he called him "boy." Then "you." Then he stopped calling him altogether.
He did not need to call him. The child came when he wanted. Disappeared when he wanted. Returned when he wanted.
One day, Lyosha asked him: "What is your name?"
The child looked at him with his red eyes. A long silence. Then he said:
"Airkaz."
He did not know where the name came from. He did not ask.
---
In the twelfth year, they arrived at a small village at the foot of a mountain. Lyosha was tired. Old before his years. His amputated leg ached every night. His eyes were sunken, his face pale. He was no longer the physician he had been. He had become a shadow dragging a shadow.
The village was quiet. They received him coolly. They gave him a small hut on the edge of the village. They said: "Stay as long as you wish, then leave."
Lyosha wanted to stay. He wanted to die in a place where no one pursued him.
But they found out.
He did not know how. Perhaps they saw Airkaz's blood heal a child's wound. Perhaps they heard the whispers. Perhaps they knew from the way they looked at him, at the child with white hair and red eyes, at the boy who neither laughed nor wept.
On the twelfth night, they came.
It was not Ilya this time. They were simple villagers. Farmers. Women. Elders. They carried torches, axes, pitchforks.
They stood before the hut. They did not shout. They were quiet. They were afraid.
The eldest among them, an old man named Mykola, stepped forward.
"Bring out the boy."
Lyosha stood in the doorway. His body blocked the entrance.
"Why?"
"Because he is not human. His blood heals. It never runs dry. That is not of this world."
"He is a child."
"Not human." He repeated it. This time, the crowd behind him echoed it. Not human. Not human. Not human.
Lyosha did not move.
Mykola took another step.
"Bring him out. Or we will take him by force."
Lyosha looked inside the hut. Airkaz was sitting in the corner. Not crying. Not afraid. Only looking. His red eyes gleamed in the darkness.
Then Lyosha did something unexpected.
He stepped away from the door.
The villagers entered the hut. They seized Airkaz. He did not resist. He did not cry. He looked at Lyosha for a single moment. His eyes asked a question that was not spoken.
Lyosha did not answer.
They led him out to the village square. The torches lit the place. Fifty faces or more. Some were weeping. Most watched in silence.
Mykola stood in the center. He said in a loud voice:
"This child is not human. His blood never runs dry. That is not the nature of humans. This is from the devil. Or from something we do not know. But he is not one of us."
He paused. Then he said:
"We will not kill him. We will not soil our hands with his blood. But we will take what is in him. We will take his blood. All of his blood. Until nothing remains of him."
Lyosha stood at the edge of the square. He did not move. He did not speak. He watched.
They seized Airkaz. They bound his hands. They cut the veins of his right arm.
The blood began to flow. It flowed into an earthenware vessel.
Airkaz did not scream. He looked at the sky. His eyes did not tear. His face did not change.
The blood flowed. Flowed. Flowed.
The vessel filled. They brought another. It filled. Another.
Airkaz's face began to pale. His lips turned blue. His eyelids grew heavy.
He did not cry.
He did not ask for help.
He did not look at Lyosha.
He only looked at the sky.
When the blood drained from his body, he closed his eyes. His head fell. His heart stopped.
He died.
---
They buried him outside the village. They did not give him a grave. They dug a shallow pit, threw his body in, covered it with earth.
Lyosha stood watching. He did not weep. He did not speak. He looked at the pit. He looked at his hands.
Then he walked. He walked out of the village. He walked into the forest. He walked until he fell.
He slept under a tree.
He spent days—he did not know how many. He ate what he found. He drank from the river. He slept wherever he fell. He did not return to the village. He did not return anywhere.
Then one morning, he heard thunder. He looked at the sky. It was clear. The thunder was not from the sky. The thunder was from the ground.
He ran back. He ran on one leg, leaning on his staff. He ran until he arrived.
The village was quiet. The sky was raining. No, it was not raining. The sky was clear. But the ground was wet. Water was emerging from the earth.
He came to the pit. The pit where they had buried him.
The pit was empty.
He looked around. He saw a trace. A mark of a hand emerging from the soil. The imprint of fingers gouging into the clay. The trail of a body dragging itself out.
He followed the trace. He walked. He walked.
At the edge of the forest, under a large tree, he found him.
Airkaz was standing.
His body was new. No wounds. No scars. His white hair was longer than before. His red eyes were deeper than before. He was naked. He did not move. He did not speak. He only looked.
He looked at Lyosha.
He said nothing.
He turned his back. He walked into the forest.
Lyosha remained standing, watching. Rain began to fall. But it was warm. It streamed over Airkaz's new body, washing away the soil.
Then he disappeared among the trees.
---
Days passed. Lyosha stayed in the village. No one dared to drive him out. They were afraid. They looked at the empty pit, at the ground where water had sprouted, at the sky that had not rained.
On the seventh day, a company arrived. Men on horses, their faces covered with leather masks, their hands armed with short swords and strange tools.
They were Bark hunters.
Their leader, a woman named Natalia, dismounted. She walked to the pit. She looked. She sniffed the air. She raised her head.
"Who was here?"
They pointed at Lyosha. She came to him. She looked into his eyes.
"Tell me."
Lyosha looked at her. In a hoarse voice, he said:
"There was a child. His blood healed. They killed him. Then he rose from death."
Natalia showed no surprise. She only asked:
"Where is he now?"
"He walked into the forest. He did not return."
Natalia turned her back. She whistled to her men. They scattered into the forest.
They searched for three days. They did not find him.
On the fourth day, Natalia came to Lyosha. She threw a piece of cloth before him. In it was long white hair.
"We found this. Nothing else. As if the earth swallowed him."
She looked at Lyosha. She said:
"If he returns, tell him the tribe wants him. That Natalia awaits him. And that his emptiness is not an end. It is a beginning."
She mounted her horse. She left.
Lyosha remained seated before the hut. He looked at the piece of cloth. He looked at the white hair.
He knew Airkaz would not return. He knew no one would believe what he had seen.
He knew the child he had found under the fangs of dogs, the child he had carried in his arms, the child whose blood he had used to heal the dying, the child they had killed and drained to death…
Was not a child. He was something else.
---
That night, deep in the forest, under the cold moonlight, Airkaz walked.
His new body knew no fatigue. His red eyes saw in the darkness. His white hair flew in the wind.
He did not weep. He did not rage. He did not think of revenge.
He only walked.
He knew something inside him had changed. He was no longer as he had been. He no longer needed to heal anyone. He no longer needed anyone.
He was empty. Not only of blood, but of everything.
Yet in that emptiness, he felt something. Something he had never felt before.
A presence. As if something was watching him from afar. As if a power was waiting for him. As if the whole world was waiting for him to do something.
He did not know what it was.
But he knew he would keep walking.
At the end of the road, he would find the answer.
Or the answer would find him.
---
End of Chapter 1
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