The world returned to him slowly, like morning mist receding from the mountain's brow.
His eyes opened—not torn wide by terror nor salt, but stirred gently by the sun, whose warm fingers touched his cheeks without burning. It was a strange light, not like the pale cold glow of cursed moons or the cruel brilliance of fire. This light was soft. It asked for nothing.
He did not cry. He did not flinch.
His mind was quiet—not from despair, but from peace, unfamiliar and light as drifting pollen.
He lay upon a mat of straw and cloth, his small frame wrapped in white bandages, crisscrossing his chest, his limbs, even his face. The pain was there, but dulled, like a whisper fading into the distance. Each breath he drew was met with clean air, filled not with rot or blood, but the faint scent of wood, of paper, and something green—like leaves after rain.
The room around him was unlike any place he had ever seen.
The floor was made of smooth wood, dark with age yet polished by use. Tatami mats lined the room in gentle, golden squares. The walls were not stone nor cloth but seemed made of wood frames filled with paper—thin, delicate, and pale as the inside of a seashell. They let the light through in quiet hues, as if the sun had been filtered through silk.
Above him, the beams of the ceiling stretched like the ribs of a ship turned upside down. No ornament hung, no color screamed. Everything here was plain. Measured. Clean.
There were no chains.
No blood.
No monsters.
Just a room.
And silence.
His eyes wandered—slowly, carefully—until they found the window.
It was open.
Outside, a breeze stirred the curtain just slightly, and beyond it, he beheld a sight his soul did not know how to name.
A tree, old and gentle, stood not far from the house. Upon its branches bloomed a thousand petals—pale pink and white, as if the sky had wept flowers instead of rain. Some drifted down even now, like feathers or tiny ghosts, dancing upon the breath of spring. They did not rush. They simply fell.
He stared.
Not with awe, but with stillness.
As if he feared blinking might banish the scene.
Then—softly, as a dream slipping into wakefulness—a sound.
A door.
It did not creak nor groan. It slid with grace, like the hush of cloth upon water. The paper door along the far side of the room had been opened, and light from the outer hall spilled into the chamber like honey.
The boy turned his gaze—not sharply, not in fear—but as if woken gently from a dream. He looked from the window to the doorway, the way a flower turns slowly from sun to shade.
There stood a figure.
But he could not yet see the face.
Only the light.
Only the stillness.
"You have woken up, it seems."
The voice came like the flow of a stream over smooth stones—calm, without urgency, yet firm as something that had known many winters.
The boy's eyes turned to the source.
Through the opened paper door stepped the man from the shore. No longer bathed in sea-mist or shadow, he stood now in full light—though still, he carried with him the quiet weight of one who belonged more to dusk than day.
His hair, long and dark as river reeds, was tied loosely behind his back. The beard that framed his face was thick, streaked with grey like clouds in evening skies. His brows—arched and sharp, like blades drawn but not yet used—rested above eyes that did not pierce, but welcomed. There was wisdom there. peace that had survived sorrow and pain.
He wore Just simple garments, loose and of earth-bound color, folded neatly, bound by a sash. Yet on his left hip, worn as naturally as breath itself, hung the curved blade—the katana—sheathed, silent, but present. Like its master, it needed not to speak loudly.
"…Good."
That was all he said after.
A faint smile crept to his lips—not one of joy, nor pity, but something gentler.
He did not step forward hastily, nor reach out. He stood, watching, letting the stillness between them live.
The breeze stirred the cherry blossoms outside.
The petals drifted past the window, falling like the last notes of an old song, and the man remained there in the doorway—tall, still, and calm—as the boy stared at him from his bed of bandages and straw.
The world had not yet begun to speak.
But something in it had shifted.
The man stepped forward at last, and only then did the boy see that he carried something in his hands.
A wooden bowl—plain, unadorned, but warm to the eye—rested within his steady grasp. Inside it, water. Clear and still, with the faintest ripple dancing across its surface as he moved. No steam rose from it, nor was it chilled. It was the kind of water that waited—not to cleanse, not to burn, but to ease.
The man knelt beside the boy, setting the bowl down with great care upon the wooden floor.
His voice came again—soft, low, as though spoken not to disturb the quiet but to honor it.
"Drink, if you are able."
He did not lift the bowl to the boy's lips. He did not urge, nor command. He merely placed it there, just within reach of a trembling hand, and waited.
The boy looked at it, blinking slowly. His throat, dry and sore, pulsed once in hunger. But his body was still unsure—torn between sleep and waking, between the memory of suffering and this... strange tenderness.
The man saw the hesitation, and rather than press, he leaned back slightly, resting his hands upon his knees. His gaze did not wander. It remained upon the boy—not searching, not judging—only present.
Outside, the breeze passed again through the cherry branches. More petals fell, tapping lightly against the wooden frame like distant footsteps. The scent of old wood, clean straw, and the faintest trace of green tea hung in the air, making it easier to breathe.
The boy, weak and aching, finally shifted. His arm, thin and wrapped in linen, trembled as he reached for the bowl. Fingers touched wood. The water rippled.
He lifted it to his lips—slowly, with effort—and drank.
It tasted like the rain before rot had ever touched it. Like something pure.
And for the first time in what felt like forever, it did not hurt to swallow.
When he set the bowl back down, the man's faint smile returned—barely there, like the last glow before nightfall.
He said nothing more.
He simply watched.
After finishing the water—every last drop—the boy set the bowl down with slow, careful fingers. The warmth in his chest lingered, gentle and unfamiliar. He drew a breath through his nose, steadier than the last, and shifted his gaze once more to the man seated beside him.
He meant to speak. Meant to offer a word—anything, even a whisper.
But before his tongue could move, his body spoke for him.
A sudden, low growl rumbled from his stomach—sharp, dry, unmistakable.
The man blinked.
Then his eyes narrowed, not in anger, but in the way one does when surprised by something almost... endearing. And then he laughed—not loudly, but with the softness of a mountain brook skipping over smooth stones.
"Where are my manners?" he said, shaking his head with a faint smile. "Wait here. I will bring food as soon as possible."
He rose in a single motion—smooth, practiced, without the creak of old bones—and stepped out of the room, sliding the paper door shut behind him with that same whispering grace.
The boy was left alone again.
Yet this time, the silence did not carry the weight of dread. It felt... light.
He looked down at his own small hands—bandaged, thin, but no longer broken. His fingers twitched slightly, and he touched his ribs through the cloth. The pain was still there. Dull. Lingering.
But not fatal.
Not gaping, like before.
And so, the theory returned—one he had nursed quietly through pain and solitude. A question that had followed him since the old man had touched his dying body and cursed—or blessed—him with this unnatural endurance.
He had not become immortal.
He had not become whole.
His voice, when he tried to use it, had become thin, frail, almost ghost-like.
And his skin—though no longer blistered and oozing—still bore the memory of flame. The burns were not gone; they had faded into strange, pale scars. His broken bones no longer jutted, yet the aches lingered beneath his flesh like faint echoes.
The curse—or whatever strange gift it was—did not undo harm. It simply refused death. It healed only the most grievous of wounds, the ones that would end breath and break the soul's tether.
Wounds of death.
جراح الموت.
Fatal wounds.
All else remained. The pain. The suffering. The burn of memory and the bruise of body.
He was not spared. He was preserved.
And just as the thought finished settling in his weary mind, the door slid open again.
The man returned—calm, composed, and holding another wooden bowl in both hands. It looked much like the one that had held the water, but this one steamed faintly, carrying with it the scent of warmth and earth and distant spices.
He knelt again at the boy's side and set it down gently.
The bowl held a clear broth—golden and simple—with thin slices of something like meat, soft strips of vegetable, and long, pale strands of something like noodles coiled in its depths. It was not heavy, nor rich. But it smelled... kind.
And the warmth from it reached the boy before even the steam did.
The man said nothing this time. He merely waited.
The boy looked at the bowl, then up at him.
And for the first time in what felt like forever—
He wanted to eat.
And he did eat.
At first, he reached for the bowl with the hunger of a beast—no hesitation, no thought for manner or grace. Just raw need. His small hand, wrapped in white bandage, dipped into the warm broth, fingers clumsy, trembling, snatching a few strands of noodle and bringing them to his mouth.
But as the first bite touched his tongue, something stopped him.
Not pain.
Not memory.
But salt—not from the food, but from within.
Tears.
Hot, silent, and uninvited, they ran down his cheeks and slipped past his lips, mingling with the broth in his mouth. He did not even notice at first. It wasn't the sobbing kind of weeping, loud and shaking. It was the kind that came like a crack in stone—quiet, slow, and beyond control.
He had forgotten.
Forgotten what warmth tasted like.
What food meant.
For so long now, he had fed only to survive—if it could even be called feeding. The things he had put in his mouth… the torn flesh of beasts twisted by nightmare, the rotted muscle of the dead, sometimes even the steaming innards of half-living monsters that had still moved when he tore into them. There was no memory in those meals. No comfort. Only the dull act of staying alive.
And yet now…
This was different.
This—this simple bowl, this clean room, this quiet man—this was kindness.
And his body remembered what his mind had forgotten:
He was a child.
Just a boy.
Hungry.
Small.
Wounded.
And alone for far too long.
He lowered his head, sniffled once, and continued eating—but slower this time. His hands still shook. The broth spilled down his fingers. But he did not stop. He did not care.
He ate not with shame, but with need.
The man said nothing, watching him with a gaze that held neither pity nor pride—only understanding.
Perhaps he, too, had once eaten like this.
Perhaps he, too, remembered what it meant to be hollow.
But he did not speak of it. He let the boy eat in silence, as the wind rustled gently through the sakura beyond the open window, and the paper walls sighed with the breath of morning.