The rain didn't fall—it clawed at the windows like it wanted in, like it knew the storm inside was worse. The apartment stank of burnt leftovers and something older: bitterness. Stale, stubborn, and woven into the walls. Damián stood still, his hands clenched at his sides, as if he could hold his breath and disappear. His mother didn't look at him. She looked through him, like he was a smear on the mirror she couldn't scrub off.
"You are so fucking useless," she spat, each word sharpened with years of disappointment. "Look at you. Just look at you."
"I… I tried my best, Mum," he whispered. It wasn't a defense. It was a flickering candle in a hurricane.
She laughed. Short. Sharp. Like glass breaking in a cathedral.
"Your best? Your best got you thirty-two percent?!" Her voice rose, filling every dead corner of the room. "I worked my bones into dust for you. Paid your fees. Bought your books. Trusted you. And this is what I get? A parasite who games, eats, shits, and sleeps like a king of rot?"
Each word struck him—not across the skin, but somewhere deeper. Somewhere more sacred. He flinched, barely, but the cracks inside him widened.
"Get out of my sight," she said, quieter now, which somehow made it worse. Cold. Surgical. "You're a disgrace to this family. I should've left you with your father."
The silence that followed wasn't empty. It was a grave. Heavy, breathless, brutal. Damián didn't cry. He didn't beg. That had all been burned out of him long ago. He just stared at the floor, at the muddy footprints leading in from the door—his own, still wet, still unwelcome.
Then he turned. And walked.
Not out of defiance. Not to make a point.
But because he could no longer remember what it felt like to stay.
Damián walked into the forest of Kuzmin, where even the wind seemed unsure of its path. Trees loomed like silent judges, twisted and ancient, their leaves whispering secrets to one another far above his head. With every step, the suffocating weight of his mother's words faded—but not the wound they left.
What had Mum ever done to help me live?
The question surfaced in his mind like a corpse rising from still water.
Was I ever truly living… or just moving along the rails she laid?
The forest grew denser, more tangled, but Damián barely noticed.
Who am I?
That question struck deeper than the cold.
Not a son. Not a student. Not even a failure.
Just… nothing.
A name without meaning.
As the light bled from the sky and shadows claimed the underbrush, Damián kept walking, his legs numb, his thoughts louder than the wind. Hours passed. Time bent strangely in the wild. When at last he collapsed beside the roots of a gnarled old tree, the sky above him was a deep indigo, bruised and starless.
His head leaned back against the bark. He let the silence press against him.
And then, quietly, bitterly, he thought:
"Are these deities we praise even real?"
He remembered the stories. The chants. The painted windows in old chapels.
"Lord of Truth," they called one of them.
As if truth had ever answered his prayers.
He scoffed.
"Lord of Truth"… as if."
A sudden squeak snapped his thoughts.
The bushes rustled. His pulse quickened—but it was just a squirrel, its small eyes gleaming for a second before vanishing into the dark. He exhaled, heart slowing.
Then the thought returned. Not loud—but steady.
"I will find out," he whispered to himself, eyes glinting with something fierce.
"I will find out if any of these gods are real… if humanity was made or simply crawled out of mud. I've always wanted to know the truth."
He looked up at the sky, now devoured by night.
"Even if curiosity kills me."