In the Dark Years, When Cannons Sang Louder Than Prayers
In the dark years, when the thunder of cannons was more familiar than the murmur of prayers, a baby cried for the first time in a world scorched by ambition and blood. The city of his birth had long lost the meaning of peace; only dust and the sound of weeping served as lullabies. The child was given the name Alexander, though the world seemed to reject his presence from the very beginning.
His first five years were far from the tales of ordinary childhood. In the midst of an endless drought, the sky refused to shed its tears, and the earth retaliated by scattering dust into every corner of existence. His mother—the only light in the darkness of his life—grew weak, her fragile body tortured by an illness that never healed. By the time Alexander turned eight, the woman who had given him all the love the world could offer drew her last breath—silent, without a warm embrace, her eyes fixed on a sky that showed no mercy.
His father? Nothing more than a shadow in stories, fallen on the battlefield before Alexander ever knew his name. And so, silence fully claimed his world. No direction. No purpose. No strength left to fight. He nearly gave up. But then, a quiet voice deep within whispered: "If you surrender now, no one will ever be there to hold your hand."
Hunger forced him to the town market—a place where lives could be traded for a loaf of bread, and hope was sold beside tattered goods. There, he watched people barter possessions for food. Returning to the dilapidated house his mother left behind, he searched every corner where memories still lingered, and began trading away her treasured belongings for a handful of rice. And from that, life slowly sprouted again, like a small seedling defying the barren soil.
But life, ever unrelenting, stirred the embers of curiosity within him. One day, as his hand brushed against an old wooden box beneath the bed, he uncovered a faded photograph—his mother, standing gracefully beside a man robed like a king. His heart skipped a beat. Who was this man? Could it be… the father he had only known through silence?
He dug deeper, peeling back the layers of secrets his mother had hidden. Among the fragments of the past, he found another photograph: himself as an infant, nestled in his mother's arms, beside the same man. And—most startling of all—another woman stood at the man's side, holding the hand of a child about Alexander's age.
His world shifted in an instant. The questions his mother never answered now loomed like a grand riddle. In the silence, he held the photo tightly in his hand. He knew then—his life was never meant to end in hunger and loss. Perhaps, from these ruins… his destiny was only just beginning.