The world had always been certain.
The rising of the sun followed a rhythm that never faltered, the rivers carved their ancient paths with precision, and the stars never strayed from their ordained constellations. Life, death, growth, and decay, all were dictated by the will of Nomos, the Absolute Law. Every creature, from the smallest insect to the mightiest ruler, lived within a harmony that could not be broken.
To live in this world meant to live without questions. There was no "why," only "because it is so."
But one night, in a remote village far from the gilded temples of the Guardians, something happened that should never have been possible.
The village of Carrowfield was small and quiet, a cluster of wooden houses resting by a crystal lake. Its people were humble farmers, living their lives with the calm certainty gifted to them by Nomos. Every harvest yielded the same, every sickness followed its destined course, and every birth unfolded as written in the cosmic ledger.
That evening, the sky trembled.
At first, the villagers thought it was only a storm, the kind that passed once every cycle. But when they looked up, they did not see clouds. They saw the firmament itself ripple, as if reality had drawn a breath it was not meant to take.
Within one of the huts, a woman cried out in labor.
Her name was Selian, wife to Darien the farmer. Their first child had been fated to die before his first year; the second, a daughter, had been destined to grow and wed into another family by her seventeenth cycle. The people knew this, because the priests of Nomos knew every thread of destiny before it even unfurled.
But the third child, the one Selian struggled to bring into the world that night, was different.
No seer had spoken of him.
No prophecy had accounted for him.
And when he came forth, crying with a voice that split the silence, the fire in the hearth guttered and flared, and the villagers outside gasped as the stars above bent ever so slightly from their places.
The midwife froze. She had delivered many children in her lifetime, but never had she felt this kind of resistance. The boy's pulse beat twice within her hands, as if two lives were coursing through one body.
Selian, pale with exhaustion, whispered, "What is wrong with him?"
The midwife swallowed hard, staring into the infant's eyes. They were gray, yet in certain glimmers of light, they seemed black, as though they carried the void itself.
"He… is here," the midwife stammered. "But he is not here."
Selian, bewildered, tried to take her son into her arms, but the baby's body flickered, solid one moment, blurred the next. For a heartbeat, she felt nothing but empty air where the child should have been. Then the boy returned, wailing, as if nothing had happened.
Outside, the rippling sky calmed. The stars aligned again. But the villagers whispered.
A birth without prophecy was impossible. A child who shifted between presence and absence was unthinkable.
They would later give him a name: Eiran.
At dawn, word reached the nearest shrine.
The priests of Nomos were not ordinary men. They were guardians of certainty, chosen to interpret and preserve the Absolute Law. They wore white robes marked with golden lines, each thread symbolizing a law of reality itself.
When they arrived at Carrowfield, they carried with them the Book of Edik, a tome that contained the written destinies of all living things.
The eldest priest, a man called Seraphion, opened the tome and spoke the ritual words.
"Let the law reveal the truth. Let the script declare his path."
The villagers gathered, tense and silent. Selian held Eiran in her arms, his tiny body wrapped in cloth. His eyes, still unsteady, darted around the crowd as if searching for something beyond them.
The pages turned.
But they were blank.
A hush fell over the people.
The Book of Edik had never been blank before. Not once in the history of the world. Every creature, from birth to death, was accounted for. Yet Eiran's page showed nothing, no name, no fate, no end.
Seraphion's hands trembled. He closed the book and stared at the child as though he were staring into a crack in the world.
"This one," he whispered, "is a paradox."
In the weeks that followed, the priests remained in Carrowfield. They observed the boy, waiting for Nomos to correct the anomaly. But nothing changed.
If anything, the paradox deepened.
One day, Eiran laughed at nothing, yet when the villagers looked to where his eyes were fixed, they swore they saw a shadow that should not exist in daylight. Another time, Selian laid him to sleep in his cradle, only to find him moments later crawling outside near the lake, though no door or window had been opened.
The priests tested him with sacred rites. Blessings slipped from him like water off stone. Curses failed to bind him. When they tried to weigh his soul in ritual, the scales shattered.
By the end of the month, Seraphion knelt in prayer every night, begging Nomos for an answer.
But the Absolute was silent.
The silence of Nomos was more terrifying than thunder.
Because silence implied uncertainty.
And uncertainty… was not supposed to exist.
Far away, in the radiant halls where the Guardians of Order gathered, whispers began to spread. The great archons, beings half-divine and half-law, convened in judgment.
Some argued the boy must be destroyed, lest his paradox unravel creation. Others hesitated, for if Nomos had willed this anomaly, then to act against him might be blasphemy.
But one thing was clear: the existence of Eiran could not be ignored.
The world that had always known certainty had, for the first time, encountered doubt.
And doubt, once born, could never truly die.