Time dissolves wounds the way rivers dissolve the corpses of fallen leaves.
That was how Laras awoke—or perhaps, she never truly slept. The boundary between dreams and reality had long since blurred ever since the world cast her to its forgotten edges. She found herself in a place unfamiliar, where morning light brought no warmth, and night's shadows lingered even beneath the noonday sun.
A crumbling hut with earthen floors and walls of woven bamboo was her backdrop—Sanggar Srawung, they called it. But to the children who lived there, it was more than a shelter. It was limbo, a purgatory for souls discarded, abandoned, flung from the womb of the world like spoiled scraps from a noble's plate.
In a dim corner, upon a mat of browning banana leaves, sat little Laras—silent and still, like a weathered stone statue. Her right eye was swollen, dry yet forever weeping. Beside her fragile frame lay an old book with a cracked leather cover and a letter, worn thin by countless foldings and unfoldings, as if the reader could never bear to truly read it:
"Keep this...
It's your mother's legacy. Keep living, even when the world rejects you. You'll find your happiness."
Her small fingers clutched the letter, trembling. No sound passed her lips, yet her face screamed. Her cry wasn't a wail—but a silence that killed slowly, like a wounded creature too broken to make a sound.
She searched for her mother.
For the warmth that once felt like a blanket on a cold night.
For answers.
But the answers had long since died.
All she found was ash.
The village of Kalandra, once her home, had vanished without a trace. No ruins. No flame's remnant. Not even a cinder dared remain. The land was flat and blackened, as if spit upon by the gods themselves. No name survived it—like the world had chosen to forget it ever existed.
God was gone.
Or worse—God was dead.
Across her brow stretched an old wound, twisted like a poisoned root. It wasn't merely a scar—it was a relic of the night that stole everything from her. A fragment of memory—of a mother's embrace as the world collapsed. A love that now smoldered in her chest like dying embers.
Each time her fingers brushed that scar, Laras felt as though she touched a past that refused to die. Yes, it was a mark of pain. But also a symbol—a reminder that love had once existed... and that even love could be incinerated by the hatred of the world.
She wanted to believe her mother's message.
To live, and to be happy.
But every step felt like a new snare. The world offered no hands—only pointing fingers, mocking lips, and stones thrown without mercy.
The other children laughed at her.
"Long ears! Cursed child!"
She belonged to no one. Not to them. Not to anyone.
And in the quiet bruising of her hardening heart, two poisons began to grow—each hurting the other:
Hatred for the world.
And guilt for hating it.
She wanted to hate humanity.
But her mother's blood was human, too.
She wanted to destroy the world.
But it was the same world that had once been her mother's home.
In the stillness of night, on a straw mat that creaked with every breath, Laras asked the rotting ceiling:
"If God ever lived... then surely, we killed Him long ago."
Days passed like gray clouds that refused to scatter.
Years turned, yet the wounds never healed—she simply learned to live beside the pain.
In the dim corridors of Sanggar Srawung, where children were taught to forget their futures, Laras came to understand something bitter, yet true:
"It is not love that sustains this world... but the will to dominate it."
Those words weren't taught to her. Not from a teacher, nor a sacred text. They were whispered by her wounds—like thorns growing inward, slowly piercing the heart that once dared to be soft.
Laras stopped crying.
She stopped apologizing for existing.
She stopped believing in miracles.
All that remained was one path:
To become strong.
By any means necessary.
To use whatever remained.
Even pain. Even hatred.
One night, under a cold and indifferent moon, Laras opened the old book her mother had left behind. Her heart pounded. Her hands trembled—not with fear, but with something new stirring inside her: fervor.
The book seemed ordinary. Its leather cracked, its pages yellowed by time. But when her fingers touched it, it felt alive. There was a current within it—subtle, ancient—like an underground stream whispering forgotten secrets of the world.
The Maheswaran script shimmered faintly in the moonlight. Not everyone could read them. Not everyone was meant to understand. But the Ardhian blood in Laras made the glyphs sing within her mind.
Incantations. Mantras. Lost arts of the Kadeyan and Kwisenan—forbidden to mere mortals.
This book wasn't just a legacy. It was a weapon.
And that night, for the first time, Laras no longer felt alone. Not because she found hope, but because she found power.
Even if she still doubted—whether the book truly came from her mother, or from a god who saved her and brought her here—she made a vow in her heart:
"The weak created gods so they wouldn't have to face their own suffering.
But God is dead. All that remains is me—and my will.
And I shall become that power."
That night, Laras stopped hoping.
She stopped waiting for a hand to reach out.
She stopped looking to the heavens for answers.
She became the sculptor of her own fate—
With blood.
With tears.
With every insult and every stone hurled her way.
She embraced hatred—not as a burden,
But as a companion.
She would climb the world that had rejected her.
And from its heights, she would force it to look back.
Not as a cursed child.
Not as a victim.
But as the fire that would rewrite the fate of the world.
The God is dead.
And from His death, Laras was born.