The wind was howling.
Not the wind that refreshes trees or whispers in the ears of lovers...
But the wind that sweeps away ashes.
It digs up bones from the bowels of the earth.
It asks questions that no one dares to answer.
At the bottom of the cliff—where roads end and legends begin—there was a small, forgotten, doorless hut.
Inside the hut, there was silence.
A silence that wasn't natural.
No sound of crying, no moaning, no chanting.
There was the body of a woman lying on the ground, the blood drying beneath her with a stillness unbecoming of childbirth.
And on a gray cloth, he lay.
No name.
No cry.
No light in the closed eyes.
His hands were soft, bluish.
His body was small, but not dead... completely.
His heart was beating, so slowly, as if he didn't know what it meant to be alive.
The midwife who had attended the birth—an elderly woman exiled from the capital decades ago—saw the baby with one eye.
"No inscription..." she whispered, as if reading a prophecy.
"Not a flicker of his soul."
She looked at the wall, where a series of protective charms hung. They all rattled faintly, as if frightened of the infant.
"I haven't seen anything like this since the Great War..." she muttered, reaching out a trembling hand to cover the baby.
But he didn't move.
He didn't cry.
He didn't ask for anything.
"Even screaming doesn't want you," she said, closing her eyes.
Outside, the wind was picking up.
---
Three Days Later
No one had come.
No sorcerer to examine him, no priest to bless him, no sorcerer to ward off the bad luck.
He was buried as strangers are buried.
A small hole in the cliff, amidst the sharp rocks and dry dirt, without a name, without a headstone.
But that night... something happened that shouldn't have happened.
It was no ordinary night.
The sky was starless, the moon hidden behind curtains of black clouds.
Suddenly, a scream was heard.
Not the scream of a hungry infant, nor of a wounded animal.
It was a broken, strange scream, as if coming from the very depths of the earth.
It was as if the rock had breathed... then groaned.
The air changed.
The humidity turned to cold steam.
In a small hole deep in the cliff, the child opened his eyes.
Not slowly... but all at once.
As if awakened from an endless dream.
His eyes were completely black, but deep within them, a small gray vortex moved, contracting and expanding, as if pulsating.
Then, quietly, silence returned.
The child didn't cry.
He didn't scream again.
He just breathed.
And for the first time... it seemed as if the world had stopped moving, not him.
---
A week later
He was found by a villager gathering firewood.
He held him in his arms as if lifting something strange, unfamiliar, but he didn't know why he was afraid of him.
"He was cold... but he was breathing," he told the villagers.
"No inscription, no soul. But his eyes... made me vomit."
They sent him to the foundling home in the nearest border village—"Aster III," an old, abandoned building inhabited by children with nothing to do but wait.
He was given a simple name, concocted by the governess from a combination of dead words:
"Eden"—which in the ancient spirit languages means "the void waiting to be filled."
---
Life in the Home
The days were long, the nights even longer.
The other children had simple spirits: fire, wind, water, some earth.
When they smiled, the prints on their skin glowed.
When they got angry, the little spirits swirled above their heads like tiny stars.
As for Aiden, he didn't even have a shadow.
The candles blew out if he sat too close.
The air felt heavy if he stood too close.
Nanny watched him from a distance, always wearing a bracelet that protected him from lost spirits.
"He doesn't cry... he doesn't laugh... he doesn't play..." she'd say.
"He's like a hole... he sucks everything in."
And yet, he wasn't evil.
Just... strange.
So strange.
At the age of nine, while other children were bragging about their little spirits, Aiden sat by the window, staring up at the cloudless sky.
His eyes were dead, but they still watched.
In his chest, not just a heart beat...
but something else.
Something still asleep.
Waiting.
And waiting.
And waiting.
---