The evening wind swept softly through the pine trees, whispering across the forest floor. The boy walked alone, his footsteps light, uncertain. The fading sunlight painted golden patches on the moss, turning the woods into something dreamlike.
He was lost.
He didn't know exactly when it happened—only that he had kept walking, trying to escape something heavy back in the village. Now, everything was quiet. Almost too quiet.
A sound broke the silence.
Not just leaves rustling—something deeper. Something that moved with intent.
He turned just as a green snake lunged from a low bush, heading for a small nest perched on a short tree. Two pale blue eggs trembled in the nest.
He didn't think.
He moved.
Throwing himself between the snake and the tree, he swung out an arm to shield the nest. Pain exploded across the left side of his face as the snake struck—right into his eye.
He fell.
The world tilted. One side went dark. He felt blood and leaves beneath him. Before everything went numb, he heard something.
A sound like the sky tearing open.
A massive shadow dove from above—wings stretched wide as a storm. A hawk, too large to be real, glided down in silence. Its feathers shimmered with bronze and gold. Its eyes, glowing amber, locked onto the boy.
The hawk didn't know him.
Had never seen him.
But it had seen what he did.
And somehow, it knew—this child was not meant to die here.
It landed beside the boy, wings folding in like a great cloak. Then, as if moved by something ancient, it leaned forward and gently touched its beak to the boy's bloodied forehead.
A soft blue light spread from the hawk's eyes, flowing into the boy's wound.
That night, when the boy awoke beneath the stars, he found that his left eye—though still clouded with pain—could see something strange.
It could see things others could not.
The breath of the wind.
The flicker of unseen paths.
The whisper of spirits.
It was no longer just his eye.
It was The Eye of the Sky.