Once, in a story no one read, I wrote about a boy who fell from the sky.

  He didn’t remember where he came from. Not his name, not his sins, not even his prayers. Only that the world below was colder than the stars he used to dream about.

  When he landed, he lay on the cracked, indifferent ground and waited for a miracle. None came. Instead, he felt the pull of his own weight settle into him—heavy, ordinary.

  The kingdoms he found were dying quietly, rotting from within, and the gods the people still prayed to had long since grown too tired to weep.

  It was never a story of a hero. Just a boy with empty hands and a heart still foolish enough to hope.

  I thought I had made him up. A lonely little ghost, stitched together from scraps of stories better men had told.

  I thought he was just another failure no one would ever care about.

  I didn’t realize then—

  I was writing myself.

  Somewhere beyond the last shuddered breath, beyond the final scattered words that slipped from my mouth, the weight I had carried for so long finally let go.

  And then—nothing.

  There weren't piles of papers, cracked walls or even cold windowpanes and flickering lights to tether me.

  I had expected death to be loud. Violent, maybe. A tearing away. Instead, it was quiet.

  It felt like a hand, brushing the crown of my head—an old, familiar gesture, the kind you only remember from someone who once loved you without condition. A mother, maybe. Or someone even older than memory itself.

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  I floated. Weightless.

  The pain that had once wrapped itself around me like a second skin was gone. Not healed. Simply... left behind.

  Detached from the world that had spent its years peeling me down to the bone.

  If there was a heaven, I thought, it might feel something like this.

  But sometimes, noises slipped through.

  Laughter, sharp and scattered. The grind of a blender that was actually a familiar laugh. The clatter of keyboard keys. The restless hum of the neighborhood at night. The distant pulse of insects. And thick on my tongue, the sharp metallic taste of blood.

  Fragments of life, scattered and broken, and I couldn't seem to hold onto any of them.

  I couldn't tell if I was moving, or if the darkness itself was shifting around me. It didn’t matter. Either way, whatever curiosity I had left was cut short by something new.

  A pressure.

  It wasn’t against my body, or even inside my mind. It was something heavier, deeper—a crushing weight that closed in from every side, like invisible walls pressing inward, cornering something that had no flesh left to defend itself.

  I tried to push back. To scream. To run.

  But my body—or whatever was left of it—refused to answer.

  The darkness tightened.

  Tighter.

  Tighter still.

  Until it felt as if my bones might break, if I still had bones to break.

  Just when I thought I would be crushed into nothing, the darkness shattered.

  It broke apart like glass struck by a hammer, scattering into a thousand invisible pieces.

  Blinding light poured through the cracks. It came from every direction, overwhelming, searing across my vision. Sounds followed—sharp, unfamiliar—too loud after the heavy silence I had been wrapped in for what felt like forever.

  I gasped without thinking, and for a brief, stunned moment, I realized I could.

  Pain answered me a heartbeat later, sharp and raw. It told me, clearer than anything else could, that I was no longer floating in some heaven-touched void.

  I gasped again, chest heaving, but the only sound that came from me was a helpless, broken wail.

  The world spun around me in a rush of colors and shapes, blurred figures shifting at the edges of sight. Hands found me—one cradling the back of my head, another steadying my lower back. They felt rough, strange, but warm.

  I tried to speak. To ask where I was, what was happening, why my heart was hammering so hard it shook my ribs.

  But no words came.

  Only another thin, desperate cry.

  The world tilted as I moved, though I wasn’t moving by choice. Someone was lifting me, slowly but surely, a hand was steady beneath me.

  A voice broke through the thick blur of my senses. A woman’s voice, soft and low, speaking in a language I couldn’t understand.

  Her hand pressed gently against my back, the touch careful, almost reverent.

  Through the tears clouding my vision, I caught a flicker of light above. There wasn't any bulbs, nor cold electric hum. Just the warm, steady glow of a candle, caged inside glass etched with strange symbols that shimmered faintly in the flame.

  "Aech knowe... thou'lt groweth stronge…"

  She spoke again, the words strange and rough-edged. When my eyes finally managed to focus, I caught my first real glimpse of her. She was slender, dressed in layered robes of dusky blue, wine-red, and aged gold. The fabrics folded and pooled around her like a painting brought to life. High cheekbones. Dark, piercing blue eyes. Hair the color of ravens' wings, woven into intricate braids.

  She looked like someone important. But what truly unsettled me wasn't her, or the strange language, or even the firelit room that smelled faintly of resin and old wood.

  It was the smallness of myself.

  I realized then, through the haze of movement and confusion, that I had become something else entirely.

  A child. A body too tiny to defend itself, arms and legs no bigger than twigs.

  And in the shock of it—

  I peed.