❖ Chapter 1: He Just Did It Anyway
People don't name places like this.
Not because they forget.
Because they never cared to begin with.
It's just a scatter of homes — if you can call them that — thrown together on land so dry it might as well be dust pretending to be dirt.
The old folks call it the Mortal Wastes. Not out of poetry. Just habit.
It's the kind of place where people survive. Not live.
And even then, just barely.
Jio was born here, maybe.
Or maybe someone left him here and didn't bother to come back.
No one remembers. No one asked.
He grew up the way weeds do. Quietly. Without anyone watering him.
He sleeps behind the baker's shed. Or under the half-broken awning behind the smithy. Depends on the wind. Depends on who's angry that week.
He's not hated. Not liked.
Just... tolerated.
A quiet boy. Pale skin. Dust in his hair, same as everyone else. But his eyes—his eyes always look like they're trying to remember something that hasn't happened yet.
---
Every morning, he walks to the dead tree at the edge of the village.
It's gray. Barren.
It probably died before he was born.
Still, Jio brings it water.
A few drops from his cracked gourd. That's all he has most days.
He could drink it.
But he doesn't.
No one's sure why he does it.
"Waste of effort," someone says every morning.
He hears them.
Never answers.
He just does it anyway.
---
That day, like any other, started hot.
By midday, the air shimmered like it was trying to escape.
Jio was walking back from the well when he saw him — a man, maybe in his thirties, staggering from the direction of the cliffs.
His robe was torn. Skin raw from sunburn. Lips dry like parchment.
The man collapsed right at the edge of the village.
People looked. Then looked away.
"No one sane comes from that side," muttered the merchant.
"Probably cursed," someone else added.
Jio stepped forward.
He crouched beside the man, offered his water, and gently wrapped him with his own faded scarf.
The man flinched, confused.
"…Why are you helping me?"
Jio looked at him like the question was strange.
"You're bleeding," he said, like it explained everything.
It did.
---
Later, some villagers shook their heads. Others sighed like they'd seen this kind of thing before.
"He's too soft," said the baker's wife. "This world's no place for soft."
But Jio didn't care what kind of place the world was.
He only cared that someone had fallen.
So he helped.
No reward. No idea what would happen next.
He just did it anyway.
---
Far away, in a place no one knows how to name, something small cracked open.
Not loudly. Not with thunder or light.
Just a whisper.
As if something that had been forgotten for a long time… remembered him.
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End of Chapter 1
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