Thomas Blackwell inspected the young slave marked for disposal in front of him.
At first glance, the child appeared perfect. Defined musculature, clear skin, tall for his age. Then Thomas saw it. The boy was missing an eye. A shame that he was marked for disposal, but Blackwell products can only be the best.
"What happened with this one?" he asked the caretaker of the young slaves.
"Patriarch," the caretaker replied, "the mother died during pregnancy. A farming accident pierced her belly and damaged the fetus's eye. The child survived, but not without defect."
"So it is not a genetic defect. Rather, accident induced. Good. Other than that, is there any other issue with this one?
"He's otherwise perfect, Patriarch. He passed every mental and physical test with flying colors."
Thomas studied the boy for a long moment. Such a fine specimen, wasted by chance.
"Give him Nostria to regrow the eye," he said. "If he survives the procedure, keep him. His worth far exceeds the cost of the cure."
"Understood, Patriarch."
Thomas Blackwell left soon after, returning to his wife and home. Work and rest had to remain in balance, after all. Another day of stewardship had ended.
In the infirmary, the one-eyed boy lay motionless on the table. Beside him, a healer shaped a lump of grey clay into a smooth, rounded form. The piece was roughly the size of an eye.
Carefully, the healer pried open the boy's empty eyelid and pressed the Nostria inside. The clay pulsed once, then began to drink. It absorbed the boy's blood greedily, changing from grey to crimson. The child convulsed. Sweat poured from his skin. His limbs locked in agony.
"Breathe, boy," said the healer. "Breathe as you were taught."
He obeyed. His chest rose and fell in slow, measured rhythm even as pain wracked him. Gradually, the Nostria turned from red to flesh. Hours passed before the eye was whole again.
The healer examined his work and nodded. "You will be weak for a while. Rest here tonight. Report to Inspector Chester in the morning."
The boy nodded silently. The healer left, and the room fell still.
The boy stared at the ceiling, his veins swollen from strain. His breathing steadied, each exhale softer than the last.
Then, despite the pain and exhaustion, a strange expression crossed his face—an expression no other slave had ever worn.
He was grinning.
The years passed and the boy grew splendidly. Like every other slave, he was assigned a role. Most were sent to hard labor in the fields or the smithy. The boy was assigned to the butchery. He was handed knives and taught how to break down animals with exactitude.
He learned to slice meat, keep his station clean, document inventory, and preserve flesh by every practiced method. He learned quickly, as he had been bred to do. But the butchery was not the subject he mastered fastest. In the mornings, the young were taught a different discipline. Breathing techniques. They were taught to breathe with the world. Their masters taught them exercises that mimicked the sky, the sun, the seas, the mountains and the forests. The lesson was always the same. Breathe as you were taught and you will wield the powers of the world itself.
The boy obeyed and learned faster than the others. He earned a brief nod of approval and was sent back to his work after mastering the breath of the forest. As a butcher, he was exposed to blood and disease. The forest breathing made him more vigorous, more resistant. When no eyes watched, he breathed like the forest in his free moments. He breathed while he ate, while he worked, while sleep approached. The rhythm settled into him until it felt like second nature. He grew lively, healthy, full of a strange energy. For a time, that energy felt like enough.
One morning, carrying a large fowl for slaughter, he passed the instructor teaching the smiths. The smith slaves were taught the sun breath. He watched from the edge and copied what he could. He had missed parts of the lesson. The next day he came by again with a different carcass. He learned another fragment. He made this pilgrimage for weeks until, at last, he had the whole sequence of the sun breath.
When he practiced it, heat rose under his skin. His knife cleaved through bone with new ease. His muscles carried weight as if they were newly wired. He began to alternate forest and sun, and for a while his hunger for more was stilled.
Months passed and hunger returned. He listened, then, to breaths of mountain, sea, and finally the sky. Each technique took him longer to learn. Each demanded integration and patience. Ten years slid by and the boy was a young man. He could leap to tree tops, run faster than a gazelle, survive falls that would shatter lesser bones. Work that once took hours was done in half the time. He never fell ill and never slowed.
His prowess attracted attention. Some of the Blackwell children noticed his strength and made him a favored target. They took turns with him in ways that scarred him deeper than the meat cleaver ever could. They ordered inhumane acts, and did things so shameful that the boy would not speak a word about them.
The other slaves offered no refuge. They moved through their tasks like automatons, obedience etched into every step like they were bred to. While the others were also abused, the boy was the favorite. He could not risk outcry. He had seen how defective products were dealt with. Those who displeased the Blackwell family simply vanished.
He endured. The wounds healed on their own, but his mind kept tally. He has always remembered. From the moment he was born. From the moment he was in the womb, he remembered.
He endured until he understood everything this place would teach him. He never stopped breathing. Even in sleep he cycled through techniques, logging them into memory like a machine testing its routines.
He learned the masters' schedules, their little habits and slips. He learned names, tones, favored liquors. He watched when they celebrated and when they fell into stupor. He catalogued all of it.
One night the hunger that had quietly lived beneath his learned rhythms erupted. Not the hunger for breath or skill, but the hunger for blood. He crept from the compound under cover of darkness to a cabin where the rowdier Blackwells kept their entertainments. He had watched those boys for months and knew the pattern. On the sixth day of the week they grew dangerously drunk.
He slipped into the wooden house. They lay snoring and slumped, drunk as he had predicted. For a moment he stood above them, the moon glinting on a cleaver at his waist. He could have ended them there, quick and clean, but he stopped. Slaughter like that would be obvious. Whoever found their bodies would understand at once that murder had come.
It had to look like an accident. He carried hay and stuffed it in the doorway. He soaked the windows with gasoline and soaked the floor, and then the sleeping forms themselves with whiskey. At midnight he smashed a lantern and threw it through the glass.
The cabin burned bright and hot.
In the morning the masters muttered of tragedy. An accident, they said. Four young Blackwells were dead. The boy returned to his work with the same practiced motions. He butchered carcasses, inventoried goods, salted meat. No one suspected him.
How could they suspect him? The Blackwell slaves were bred for perfection—strong, hardy, beautiful. Above all, obedient. Their minds lacked the spark of selfhood. No matter how much they were beaten, worked, or debased, they always returned to their masters, eager to serve, eager to please.
Their souls had been bred out generations ago by the first Blackwells. Now their descendants reaped the rewards.
Those who showed unwanted traits were disposed of or sold to the highest bidder. Even the imperfect ones fetched a high price beyond the family walls. The perfect ones stayed within.
Whether by chance or oversight, the boy's mind was different. He questioned. He thought. He felt.
But most importantly, he knew how to stay silent.
So the hunger ebbed—for a time. It would return, whispering day by day. Until it did, he breathed and waited.
A year passed after the fire. The boy remained faithful in his duties, learning, absorbing everything. The abuse continued. Some of the tormentors had died in the blaze, but most remained. The boy studied their habits, their routines but it seems that the Blackwells didn't become this successful with them being so careless. They had enemies from the outside, and the death of four Blackwells set their alarms off. Guards patrolled every corner. Even the slaves were conscripted to search for intruders.
The only mercy was that their suspicion pointed outward, not within.
And as with all things, a year was enough for vigilance to fade. Especially among those who believed themselves untouchable—masters in their own home, surrounded by thousands bred to obey.
Eventually, they slipped.
On a cold winter morning, before anyone stirred, the boy rose. He carried a sack and walked toward the infirmary.
The season had been harsh. Accidents were frequent, and the healers were overwhelmed. The head healer, an aging man, had taken to sleeping in the infirmary itself.
The boy entered quietly. He knew the building well, every loose board and every creak. He moved through the dark with practiced grace until he reached the bed where the old man slept, wrapped in blankets, snoring softly.
He opened the sack.
A scaled head rose from the shadows—a bright green snake, its fangs glistening. The boy gripped it just behind the head, lowered it gently toward the healer's throat, and let go.
The strike was quick. Venom sank deep into the artery.
The healer's eyes flew open in terror. The boy clamped a hand over his mouth and nose, holding him down. The snake was flung aside, hissing. The head healer resisted with surprising strength, but he was a poisoned old man, and the boy was bred to be strong.
He breathed the Sun, and his muscles flooded with power.
He breathed the Mountain, and his skin grew unyielding.
The struggle ended within minutes. The old man went still.
The boy's arms were streaked with blood from the healer's desperate scratches. He breathed the Forest, and the pain dulled, the wounds slowly mending beneath his skin.
He looked at his work beneath him, and he felt a new emotion bubbling from within. Pride. It was messy and bloody, but he had done this one perfectly according to plan. He left some evidence, but he had enough time for a clean up.
First, the fingernails of the old man. There was skin and blood underneath. He cleaned them as best as he could. There was the slightest bit of bruise on his face from being pushed down by his hand. He can't do anything about that. He just had to hope whoever finds the body will think it's from the old man struggling and accidentally hitting himself.
Lastly, the snake. He hid the snake underneath the blankets. Perhaps if he's lucky, it will manage to bite and kill another Blackwell. He found himself smiling at the thought.
"Be good snake. Bite masters." The boy whispered to the snake as he laid it down underneath the sheets. The snake obeyed willingly, finding comfort in the dark, warm place.
The boy left the infirmary, cleaning up his tracks as he went.
Dawn broke. The boy continued with his duties. He heard the Blackwells talking about how the old man had finally died. It seemed they were not too upset about his passing. Pity, however, that he did not hear news of more Blackwells being bitten by a snake.
The boy learned a lot from this hunt. He learned that planning well pays off. He learned that patience and studying yield great results. He was eager for his next hunt.
More years passed. The boy successfully took down many targets over this time. The Blackwells were not idiots. The increasing death toll alerted them that something sinister was going on. They became more guarded and paranoid, afraid of being the next victim. They continued looking for gaps in their security, seeking ways their enemies might have snuck in. Some even put traps in their homes.
The Blackwells became more guarded, but the boy also became more skilled. He found increasingly creative ways to hunt the Blackwells down. Falling and drowning in a pond, tripping and breaking a neck, a heart attack via poison. The Blackwells did not make it easy for the boy. They also practiced the breath, so the boy could not risk a direct engagement.
Despite the Blackwells being aware of the possibility of these deaths being caused by a third party, keeping the deaths looking like accidents always kept doubt in their minds. Was it actually enemies? Or perhaps a curse? Their paranoid faces always gave the boy a feeling of pleasure.
The boy's hunger grew, both for knowledge and for blood. He eavesdropped at the reading lessons for librarian slaves and learned how to read. Over the years, he learned enough by himself that he snuck into the libraries at night. He learned many things, things that did not make any sense. Countries, cultures, and other people. Still, despite not being of immediate use, he kept them at the back of his mind. He learned about different animals not native to the Blackwell compound. He learned names for many things he saw. He learned about the breath that made him as strong as he was. He learned about the Blackwells, their history, and how he and the other slaves were made.
He learned about their scale, and he learned that at this rate he would never hunt them all. He needed something bigger, something that would kill every single Blackwell. The gears in his mind turned, and he made a plan. A plan that would brew until the right time presented itself. Discipline and patience, he read, were the virtues that the Blackwell family stood upon. He liked that. He would steal it. He believed he had been applying those virtues more than the Blackwells themselves.
And so the boy breathed. He worked and consumed. On the twenty-seventh winter he experienced, he got careless. A usual hunt. A sleeping Blackwell, a man of many vices and indulgences. His trophies lined the walls — heads of wild animals, lifelike statues of women he conquered, weaponry of all sorts displayed proudly. He even spotted traps made to take care of someone like him. But the boy knew those tricks already. He patrolled, investigated, and prepared for them. He expertly avoided and disarmed the traps.
He planned to take the spear from the wall and make it look as if it had accidentally fallen and pierced the man.
He grabbed the spear and readied his plan, but an unexpected element presented itself. One of the statues was not a statue at all, but a slave ordered to act like one. One of the man's sick pleasures. The slave stared at him and screamed. That woke the man. He immediately sprung into action, grabbed one of the swords that lined the walls, and attacked the boy.
The boy stepped back instinctively, but the man still clipped his leg and his blood flowed freely.
"So it was you! A slave? How? Drop that spear!" the man commanded. The boy felt fear. Is this how it all ends? He looked at the spear in his hands and decided no. This was not the end. One day he might fall and take his last hunt, but today was not that day. Today, he breathed.
The sound of air sucking into his lungs made a sizzling sound. His muscles pumped, ready to pounce. He cycled continuously between the five breaths he had mastered, invigorating his spirit.
"Hooh. So you know the breaths. But it will not be enough!" The man also breathed. In contrast, the man breathed just one. His skin turned red, like iron being forged. Steam rose around him, heating the cold winter evening. Then he commanded the slave behind him acting as a statue, "You! Take a sword and help me slay this abomination!" The woman obeyed willingly. She also breathed, although she did not show any outward signs of change.
The man roared and charged forward with his sword. The woman behind clumsily followed.
The man closed the gap in a split second. To his own surprise, the boy blocked with ease. The spear deflected the blow. The man did not let up and went for another strike. The boy, now getting a hold of his senses, struck back and waved the spear, threatening to stab the man. He did not know how to fight, but using his superior physical capabilities he adapted quickly. A lunge here and a block there. Unfortunately for the boy, he was a novice and the man was an expert. The boy lost ground slowly, superior capabilities or not.
What tipped the scales further in the man's favor was the slave woman. She threw herself at the boy, not knowing how to fight. The boy kicked and disarmed her quickly, but that was enough distraction for the man to take advantage of. With a swift slice, the boy received a deep wound in the arm, and it was all downhill from there.
Moments later, the boy's body was full of wounds. He fell to the floor, defeated.
"I did not expect that the enemy turned out to be just a slave," the man said to the boy bleeding on the ground. "I wonder what secrets you hold. How did you regain your spark of self thought?" He shook his head.
"No matter. Today, your lineage ends." He raised his sword, ready to end the boy's life.
As the blade rose, the boy's eyes held no sadness. He smiled. He did not regret his actions. His only regret was that he had not managed to kill more Blackwells. He welcomed death.
But it never came. The man froze in place. Around his leg, a green snake pumped venom through his veins.
The boy smiled at the snake.
"Good snake."
He breathed. He found the strength to pick up his spear and pierce the man's heart. The man died unwillingly. Another successful hunt.
The boy looked around. They had made a mess. There was no doubt the people would find out that it was the work of an enemy and not an accident. Besides, his wounds were too severe. There was no going back. It was time for the final hunt. There was no better time.
He limped back to the butchery where he slept and did his business. He went to the back of the building and started digging. A few feet into the ground he found a large ceramic jar, large enough to fit a horse.
With a huff and gritted teeth, the boy lifted the jar. Inside was his plan, brewing for many years. It was an amalgamation of human and animal meat fermenting for years, and the secret ingredient, Nostria. A whole chunk of it.
Ever since he had regained his eye with the help of Nostria, he had been fascinated by the material. What secrets did it contain? So he set out to study its mysteries. He observed the infirmary and searched the library.
It turned out Nostria was a mystery to everyone else as well. In fact, he did not find a single book about it. It was never mentioned in any outside texts. The only information he found came from listening to the gossip of the Blackwells. It seemed to be a newly discovered material in their lands. There was plenty of it underneath the Blackwell compound and nowhere else.
They knew it could heal wounds and regenerate limbs, but not everyone should use it. It healed wounds, true, but the pain it induced was too severe. Severe enough that it could leave the one it was used on with permanent brain damage. It was a risk too much for a person with minor wounds.
The boy stole and collected a large amount of Nostria over the years. Some of it he even mined out of the ground himself.
He experimented with it, using it on animals and even on himself. The pain, as always, was enough to leave him immobile for hours. In the process, he discovered many things. The material loved to connect and improve life itself. It tried to fix what was broken and make things whole, even at the expense of life itself.
All the meat inside came from humans and creatures that had died of diseases. The boy found that it improved even diseases, as if it considered disease itself a form of life. He found it fascinating and used it as his grand plan. He piled different diseases in the jar over the years and let the Nostria improve them. Even he did not know what lay inside the sealed jar anymore. But he felt it was alive and eager to come out.
It was the materialization of the first feeling he had felt toward the Blackwells. Hate. Immense hatred. Twenty-seven years of hatred, condensed into his magnum opus. He looked around. The commotion he had made at the man's house did not go unnoticed. They followed his blood trail here, stark against the white snow. He smiled. It was exactly what he needed, a large number of Blackwells to kill.
He continued cycling through the five breaths even as he bled out. The Blackwells formed a perimeter around him.
"Halt, boy!" a man commanded in front. The Blackwell Patriarch, the boy noted. The boy grinned through the pain and the jar crushing him. Whether by luck or divine intervention, everything was falling into place. This was the man he had seen all those years ago. The man he wanted to kill more than anyone else had delivered himself to him. The Blackwells and their slaves accompanied him, blocking any escape.
"Is that who has been killing us all this time?"
"A slave?"
"How did such an error slip through our ranks?"
"You're just a servant boy!"
The Blackwell voices shouted.
The boy grinned through bloody teeth. "Hello, Thomas. I've waited to see you for so long."
Thomas Blackwell felt his blood run cold. They surrounded the slave who had been sowing terror in his family for years. He would have died without their interference, but he felt that he was the one trapped.
"What are you?" Thomas asked in a whispered breath. The boy answered with deep breaths.
"I am no one. But this?" The boy patted the jar. "This is my hatred. The voices of the million souls you neutered."
"Put that down, boy." Thomas Blackwell ordered.
"Gladly," the boy said.
He let go.
The jar shattered and the smell hit like rot and iron. A grey force of flood and cloud exhaled over the snow. It seeped into wounds, into flesh, into breath. It drank at him first, and he laughed as the grey took him into itself. He screamed something that sounded like freedom.
"Ahahaha! I am free! I am free! And I shall free the world of your taint!"
Then it moved outward. The grey crawled across the ground and up into the crowd. Flesh sloughed like wet rags. Skin fell from bone and became part of the rot. Shrill screams ripped the air. Slaves stood frozen, faces slack, and were swallowed. The Blackwells fell and dissolved into grey.
Thomas Blackwell felt his hand eaten away as the color crawled along his arm. He had given the boy an eye years ago. He had never imagined that the boy would be the instrument of an apocalypse. He mouthed a name and the world around him crumbled.
The boy watched the devastation he had set loose. It was uglier and more beautiful than he had imagined. Another emotion rose in him, as sudden as the first. Ecstasy. He closed his eyes. He had made his hatred into an engine and it had run to the end.
And so, the boy closed his eyes knowing he achieved what he was hungering for.
He died, unnamed, but satiated. His hunger will consume no more.
The grey did not stop. It spilled from the Blackwell land into the city, into the kingdom, across the continent, until the world grew quiet beneath its pall. What remained of civilization fell into long silence. For years there was nothing but the grey and the memory of what had been.
That should have been the end. The grey should have consumed everything. But when there was nothing left to consume, the grey evolved. It remade life in its own image—better, stronger, more wondrous.
It began again from the smallest spark. Single-celled organisms. Microbes. Algae. Insects. Fish. Fungi. The grey spun the world anew for an untold amount of years, shaping life through an eternity of change.
Forest. Mountain. Ocean. Sky. Sun.
Forest. Mountain. Ocean. Sky. Sun.
Forest. Mountain. Ocean. Sky. Sun.
An endless cycle of breathing in the dark. It was all that kept his mind intact through the void.
He never thought he would wake again. He had been content. There was no need for more.
But the will of the world had other plans.
The grey released him. Light pierced his vision. Sound crashed into his ears.
When his senses finally returned, he saw the world that had replaced his own.
People in strange, skin-tight clothes surrounded him, shouting words he could not understand. Some floated in the air. Others gathered bright energy between their fingers. Towers of glass and steel loomed high above. Horseless metal carriages circled around him.
"State your business, stranger! You stand before Earth's Shielders!" a man with a body like carved stone shouted from above.
What in the world was he looking at?