The Amazon stretched below like molten gold, rivers so wide they seemed like highways to another world, serpentining through infinite green. Belém emerged from that vastness like a half-kept promise — skyscrapers piercing a canopy that still breathed with life.
Gabriel pressed his forehead against the cold airplane window, the reflection of his dark eyes blending with the landscape below. His hands trembled slightly as he reached for his phone — the same device that had survived the last four months between graduation and... this.
First day. New life.
The camera's click captured the moment: a city born from forest, suspended between the ancient and the impossible.
…
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
The voice came from the woman beside him, cradling a baby about eight months old. The child's small eyes were glued to the window, tiny fists opening and closing against the glass as if wanting to touch everything, taste everything, understand everything.
Gabriel watched the pure curiosity on the baby's face — that insatiable hunger for discovery he'd lost somewhere along the way. "He looks like a born explorer."
"Do you have children?" she asked with a tired but genuine smile.
"No, I..." Gabriel hesitated. A strange expression crossed his face, a flicker of something older than his twenty-four years. The silence stretched for one very long second. "I'm not very good with kids. They usually ignore me. I only know a friend's son sometimes, but that one is... different."
Lying again, whispered a familiar voice in his head. To her. To yourself.
A cold shiver ran down his spine. The words had come with the automatic fluidity of someone who'd spent years molding truths to fit polite conversations.
Could have said something better. Look how awkward it got. Idiot.
Gabriel fought against the growing tension, forcing his breathing to slow. It was always like this — moments of genuine connection interrupted by the internal monologue that insisted on cataloguing his inefficiencies.
"I came here to study," he added quickly, almost robotically. "New beginning. A place that reminds me of... where I used to stay. The city of promises, trees, and sustainability, right?"
The wheels touched the runway with a soft impact. The cabin shuddered once. The captain's voice echoed through the speakers, announcing arrival and temperature.
"So it's your first time here," she said, ending the conversation with maternal kindness. "Good luck! Maybe we'll see each other again."
Her smile was brief but warm — the kind of casual goodness that reminded Gabriel there were still decent variables in the world.
…
The airplane doors opened, and Belém's air invaded the space — hot, heavy, and thick with the smell of streets wet from recent rain.
It stuck to his skin instantly, like a second shirt.
So this is it, almost at the equator... he thought, loosening the collar of his dark jacket that had made sense in São Paulo but now seemed like unnecessary armor.
The terminal buzzed with movement — luggage wheels rolling across polished floors, voices overlapping in diverse accents, airport announcements echoing over the constant hum of arrival. Gabriel walked slowly, eyes scanning faces, signs, and the lush green plants decorating the glass walls.
He stopped for a moment by a large window, watching raindrops streak down the glass in hypnotic patterns. In the distance, thunder rolled softly across the heavy sky.
A city of water... let's see what you do to me.
When he finally reached the exit, the heat outside was unlike anything he knew — sun piercing through dense clouds, steam rising from wet asphalt, humidity that seemed to have a personality of its own. He breathed deeply, filling his lungs with air that felt heavier, more alive than any air he'd ever breathed.
Somewhere in his chest, the voice whispered again: You're here. Don't waste the data.
…
Belém's streets embraced him like a half-forgotten but insistent memory. Giant bamboos — over three meters tall — leaned over the uneven sidewalk as if bowing to welcome him. Drops from recent rain still gleamed on green leaves, and the air carried that unique scent of wet earth mixed with pulsing urban life.
Gabriel walked with hands buried in the pockets of his dark overcoat, shoulders slightly curved. Not from the weight of his backpack — he carried that effortlessly, with a posture suggesting years of practice carrying heavy equipment. It was something more subtle: the weight of always being the one who observed first, who analyzed before acting, who preferred adjusting backstage to occupying center stage.
One day, he thought while walking, I hope to look back and not regret anything. To have built things. Changed. Maybe enough to finally believe in the me who's here now — and leave everything that came before buried where it belongs.
The sound of his footsteps echoed on the uneven cobblestones, each step finding its place between puddles and patches of moss growing in protected corners. There was an unconscious precision in how he avoided obstacles, as if his reflexes had been trained on terrain far more treacherous than Belém's urban streets.
Not far away, laughter — the kind of sound that belongs to families, to people who've known each other for years.
But here, everything and everyone was strange to him.
That's when he saw it: a small craft stall on the corner, a splash of color against the gray asphalt. Carved wooden objects, colorful fabrics swaying in the breeze, and small souvenirs hanging on hooks like offerings to tourists. Something gleamed in the middle of the organized confusion — a simple keychain, made of aged metal, shaped like a sword.
Gabriel stopped mid-step.
The sword was strange — without elaborate details or unnecessary ornaments, but there was something about its form that made him frown. Familiar. English medieval design, double-edged, simple and practical handle. His fingers contracted involuntarily, as if they already knew exactly what the weight and balance of that blade would be.
"You like that one?" asked the vendor, a middle-aged woman with a welcoming smile that seemed genuine rather than commercial.
"It's... interesting," Gabriel murmured, picking up the keychain. The metal was warm to the touch, as if it had been in the sun for hours, though it was clearly in the stall's shade. For a moment, he had the strange sensation that the object had chosen him, not the other way around. An irrational but unshakeable certainty.
"I made it thinking of heroes from ancient stories," she said with a conspiratorial wink. "Ten reais."
Heroes. The word reverberated unexpectedly in his chest, like a musical note played in the wrong key. That's not how he saw himself — never had been, never would be. He was the guy who made heroes shine, who built the stage on which other performers stood out. The Support. The solid foundation on which others built greatness.
Gabriel paid without bargaining, pocketing the keychain. The metal seemed to pulse gently against his leg as he continued walking. Something bothered him — a growing sensation that he'd just taken a step toward something he couldn't name, but that had been waiting for him for a long time.
Three blocks later, he stopped again. This time, to rest at a bus stop and check his phone. The battery was low, the screen cracked at the corners like a map of all the falls and impacts of recent months.
When he unlocked it, the default wallpaper appeared: a generic landscape, without personality. Without thinking much, he opened the gallery and began searching for something new, something that represented this moment of new beginnings. He scrolled through the options until he stopped at an image that made him hesitate: an elegant sword against a dark background.
For an instant — just a flash of recognition — the sword on the screen seemed identical to the keychain in his pocket. Not similar. Not alike. Identical.
Gabriel blinked, taking out the keychain to compare more carefully. The proportions were exactly the same, the blade's angle, even a subtle detail on the guard that he hadn't noticed before...
What a strange coincidence, he thought, forcing rationality over instinct. But he set the image as his wallpaper anyway, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
He put away the phone and continued walking. But as the afternoon advanced and the streets began filling with end-of-day movement, Gabriel couldn't shake the growing sensation that Belém was... paying attention to him. As if the city itself had eyes, and all these eyes followed him with silent curiosity.
As if the city knew something about him that he himself had forgotten.
Or perhaps, something he'd chosen to forget on purpose.
…
That night, in the small apartment he'd rented near the university, Gabriel looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. The face staring back was tired but determined — someone who'd decided to start over, whatever the cost, even without knowing exactly what that cost might be.
But there was something more in the reflected image. An economy of movement that didn't match typical university student anxiety. The way his shoulders automatically aligned when he stopped consciously observing himself. As if, beneath the genuine uncertainty about the future, there was a physical competence he preferred not to examine too closely.
He took the keychain from his pocket, spinning the small object between his fingers. The LED bathroom light made the metal gleam almost... magical wasn't the right word. But it was the only one that came to mind.
How dramatic, he laughed at himself, shaking his head. It's just a keychain.
But when he went to sleep and the phone screen lit up with some notification, for a brief moment — just a second — it seemed like the sword on the wallpaper glowed with its own light, pulsing in sync with some internal rhythm he couldn't identify.
[System Check: Initiating...]
Gabriel blinked deliberately, focusing. The screen was dark again.
Jet lag, he told himself, closing his eyes and forcing his body to relax. Just jet lag.
But his dreams that night were filled with golden light pouring like honey, familiar voices calling his name with affection and urgency, and the unmistakable sensation that his true journey was just beginning. He dreamed of water running over ancient stones and the crystal echo of a feminine voice saying: "When you understand the flow, you can shape it without breaking it."
And deep in the dreams, growing like a certainty that needed no proof, an absolute conviction: he wasn't the hero of this story. Never had been. Never would be.
But maybe — just maybe — he was the person destined to help true heroes exist.
Outside the window, Belém slept under a starry sky dotted with moving clouds. And somewhere between sleep and waking, Gabriel could swear he heard someone whisper through the night breeze:
"Welcome back, Hero."
The word echoed in his mind like something familiar and strange at the same time — a title that didn't fit the image he had of himself, but that carried a weight impossible to ignore. As if, somewhere very distant in time and space, he'd been called that before.
And as if, somehow inexplicably, the game had just begun again.