When Smiles Were True
Chapter 1
He was born during the quiet hour before dawn, when the world still held its breath and the sky blushed pale blue. The midwife swore the air felt different that night — as though Heaven leaned close to watch.
A newborn's cry pierced the stillness, not weak or startled, but strong, clear, and bright.
A cry that sounded almost like laughter.
"Look," his mother whispered, voice trembling, "he's smiling…"
And he was.
Tiny hands curled, eyes barely open, lips forming a soft, innocent smile — a smile untouched by the weight of life.
His father held him next, chest rising with pride.
"He's going to change the world," he declared, as though the universe had told him a secret.
The baby cooed gently, reaching tiny fingers toward the sunlight peeking through the window. Like he wanted to touch the light — or claim it.
Neighbors came to see him, whispering blessings.
Women touched his cheek softly.
Old men placed lucky charms in his cradle.
A stray kitten wandered into the house and curled beside him, as if protecting him already.
Everyone who saw him smiled back, unknowingly mirroring the gentle hope in his face.
For in those days, his world was warm.
His mother hummed lullabies every night — delicate melodies that promised safety, dreams, and forever tomorrows.
His father kissed his forehead and said his name with pride.
The wind outside their home seemed kind.
The moon always lingered a little longer above their house, silver and patient, as though guarding a child meant for more than mortal life.
He giggled often.
He slept peacefully.
He believed the world was good.
And for a little while…
It was.
But fate never leaves miracles untouched.
For far beyond the quiet village — in a place where light could not reach — cloaked figures lit black candles and whispered a single prophecy:
> "The Smiling Child has been born."
And just as the baby closed his eyes, the flame of one candle flickered violently and died…
As if something ancient had finally found him.
To be continued…
---
When luck began to fade
Chapter 2
For five years, life felt simple.
He learned to walk, to speak small words, to laugh at butterflies and dust floating in sunlight.
His mother tied tiny ribbons in his shirts.
His father carried him on broad shoulders and pointed at clouds, saying,
"One day you'll touch the sky, son."
They weren't rich anymore, but they were together.
That was enough.
Then... things started going wrong.
Quietly, at first.
It began with his father's job.
They lived in a time before mobile phones - just old telephones with cords twisted like tired roots.
One afternoon, while work was slow and machines hummed in the factory, a call came through that changed everything.
Someone accused his father of stealing company funds.
A lie - planted neatly, cruelly, by a jealous coworker.
No camera proof.
No digital trail.
Just whispered words and the boss's cold stare.
His father tried to defend himself, voice shaking, but back then truth didn't matter as much as reputation.
By evening, he was escorted out, humiliated, carrying a small box of his belongings.
When he came home, he didn't lift his son onto his shoulders.
He didn't smile.
He just sat on the call-worn sofa and stared at the floor as if it had betrayed him too.
Days passed.
Then weeks.
Money thinned like old cloth.
His mother pawned jewelry she once wore proudly.
They sold furniture.
They rationed food.
Neighbors stopped visiting - because misfortune had a smell, and people avoided it.
And the boy?
He didn't know the word "difficult."
He only noticed fewer toys, quieter nights, and how his parents held each other less.
He still smiled.
Every morning, every night.
Because he believed - truly believed - that everything would get better if he stayed cheerful.
That's what his mother once taught him.
But now, when he smiled and tugged at her dress, she sometimes walked away, hand pressed over her eyes.
His father, once proud and steady, returned home smelling of cheap alcohol and regret.
And the house, once filled with warm voices, began to feel cold in little corners.
Like something invisible was moving in, room by room.
Nothing dramatic.
Nothing loud.
Just life, slowly unraveling - thread by thread - while a clueless child, all bright eyes and innocent faith, kept offering smiles like bandages to wounds too deep to fix.
And somewhere in the quiet, something watched him try.
Something patient.
Something old.
Waiting.
---
When Smiling Started to Hurt
Chapter 3
School was supposed to be a place for learning,
for chalk dust and laughter,
for little dreams and clumsy drawings.
He tried to believe that.
He woke early every morning, shoes scrubbed clean even when his socks had holes.
His mother packed him a small lunch when she could - bread, sometimes rice, sometimes nothing but hope wrapped in cloth.
He walked to school smiling.
He greeted everyone.
He waved at stray cats and helped old neighbors carry baskets.
But kindness doesn't always return home.
Some children whispered when he passed.
They noticed his faded clothes, the patched knees on his trousers, the way his lunch bag looked lighter than theirs.
"He's cursed," one boy muttered to another.
"My mom said bad luck follows him."
Laughter followed the words - small, cruel, sharp.
The boy didn't understand "cursed."
But he understood laughter.
So he laughed too, thinking they were playing.
They weren't.
When recess came, he sat alone on the stone steps, chewing slowly, pretending not to notice when the other kids moved farther away.
Still, he smiled.
Because that's what he knew to do.
Smile, so pain doesn't show.
Smile, so maybe the world smiles back.
But smiles don't protect everything.
One day, a group of boys pushed him outside the classroom.
It wasn't hard - just enough to make him stumble.
He scraped his palm on the ground, skin peeling, blood trembling at the surface.
The children laughed again.
He swallowed the pain and stood up, forcing a grin through trembling lips.
"It's okay," he whispered.
"It's okay if I smile. Everything will get better."
His teacher saw the cut when he returned to class.
She frowned, but didn't ask.
In that time, adults often thought silence was safer than truth.
When he got home, he hid the wound behind his back.
His mother didn't notice - she was staring at the wall again, lost in her own quiet storm.
His father came home late, smell of alcohol stronger, voice quieter than before.
So the boy went to his room alone, sat on the floor, and stared at his hand.
It hurt.
For the first time, he realized smiling didn't make it stop.
It didn't fix anything.
It didn't change anything.
His lips trembled.
His eyes burned.
But he kept smiling anyway-
because if he didn't...
he was afraid everything might fall apart faster.
He pressed his forehead to his knees, and in the dark corner of the room...
something unseen leaned closer.
It didn't touch him.
It didn't speak.
It just watched,
and if shadows could smile,
this one did.
Patient.
Satisfied.
As if pain was a seed,
and it knew exactly what the boy would grow into.
---
Five Years of Quiet Collapse
Chapter 4
And so time moved, not with thunder, but with soft steps no one heard.
Five years passed - slow, heavy, and cruel in their silence.
At first, nothing felt truly broken.
His father still woke before dawn, boots on, heart steady, believing the world would forgive him tomorrow.
His mother still smiled, though it trembled like a candle in a whispering wind.
And the boy - barely old enough to understand sadness, yet old enough to feel it - still chased butterflies in the yard and believed the sun rose for him.
But shadows have patience.
They crawl before they strike.
Rumors came first - cruel, shapeless things carried through telephone lines and careless mouths.
A whispered accusation here, a suspicious glance there.
No smartphones. No internet.
Just voices... and those are sharper than any blade.
His father had not stolen anything.
He had not betrayed anyone.
But the lie grew teeth.
By the time truth found breath, it was already too late.
Work lost.
Name stained.
Friends turning their eyes away like strangers in a cold street.
Bills piled.
Food thinned.
Laughter fell quiet in the house that once felt warm.
Even the walls seemed to sigh under the weight of it all.
Yet through it, his mother held on - turning sorrow into gentle whispers at night:
"It will get better."
Her voice was hope wrapped in exhaustion.
The boy didn't complain.
Children feel pain before they understand it.
He learned not to ask for toys - only warmth.
Not for sweets - only peace at dinner.
Not for miracles - only sleep without nightmares.
And in those years, he grew differently from other children;
not taller, but deeper.
Not louder, but heavier inside.
He began to watch the world with old eyes.
Eyes that wondered why light leaves so quietly and why God listens without answering.
Yet still, he smiled sometimes.
A small, tired smile - like a candle still fighting the night, refusing to die.
But darkness does not rush.
It waits until you begin to hope again...
And just when life seemed to settle into a wounded stillness -
something happened that changed everything again.
The boy was playing alone in the yard - dust on his hands, innocence still clinging to him like sunlight...
When he heard a scream from inside the house.
---
The First Fracture of Safety
Chapter 5
The scream cracked the air open.
It wasn't loud because of volume - it was loud because innocence has thin walls,
and that sound tore right through them.
He froze.
Five years old, dust on his palms, heart suddenly too big for his small chest.
Another scream - sharper this time, desperate, breaking at the edges.
His mother's voice.
He ran.
Feet stumbling over the dry earth, breath shaking, mind too young to understand but body already sensing danger.
The yard that once held butterflies now felt like a border between safety and something darker.
The door slammed against the wall as he pushed it open-
and there they were.
His father, standing in the middle of the room, hands shaking, eyes wild with exhaustion and humiliation.
His mother on the floor, not hurt... but crying in a way that didn't belong to this world.
Not pain.
Not anger.
Something worse-
hopelessness.
And the boy, still tiny and trembling, saw something he shouldn't have:
His father wasn't angry at his wife.
He was angry at life - and life had nowhere else to bleed but here, in this house, in front of the child who still thought heroes did not fall.
"Please..." his mother whispered between sobs,
not pleading to him,
but pleading to life itself to stop crushing them.
His father sank to his knees, not a man anymore - just a shadow collapsing under its own weight.
Hands in his hair.
Breath broken.
Whispering apologies to no one and everyone at once.
The room felt too small for so much sorrow.
And the boy stood there -
a silent witness
to the moment childhood first cracked.
Fear did not scream.
It whispered.
It crawled into him, soft and cold, and settled where comfort used to live.
He didn't cry.
Children cry when they fall.
But when the world falls...
they go silent.
He only reached for his mother's hand.
It trembled against his tiny fingers.
And in that moment, the universe felt unbearably fragile.
Outside, the evening sun still shone,
golden and warm,
oblivious to the fact that inside this house,
a boy had just taken his first real step into the darkness of understanding.
And far away - in a place unseen -
something watched.
Something ancient.
Something patient.
A quiet presence, neither angel nor demon yet...
waiting for the child's heart to break just enough to make space for destiny.
Because fate never arrives without first taking something away.
---
When Happiness Wears a Mask
Chapter 6
Days passed.
Then weeks.
And strangely...
things got better.
Not suddenly, not like magic -
but like morning light sneaking into a dark room
when no one's paying attention.
The whispers that once crawled through the house faded.
The arguments dissolved into tired laughter.
The walls stopped feeling hungry.
His mother patted his head again, her touch gentle like it used to be. His father ruffled his hair and told short stories after supper - not grand dreams, not future plans -
just warm, ordinary things.
Neighbors smiled at him.
Children waved.
Even the stray kittens he fed curled around his feet as if they felt his heart lighten.
For a moment -
for the first time in what felt like his whole little lifetime -
the world seemed to remember him kindly.
And he bloomed under it.
Joy came back in small pieces -
like collecting sunlight with cupped hands.
He laughed.
He ran outside.
He breathed without fear twisting in his chest.
He wasn't sure why the change happened.
He didn't understand it.
But did a child really need to understand happiness to accept it?
He just held it close
because happiness was rare, and he was afraid
if he looked at it too closely, it would vanish.
Yet somewhere deep inside,
a tiny voice - small as a moth beating wings against glass -
whispered:
Something is wrong.
But he pushed it down.
Because right now, they loved him.
Right now, they looked at him like he mattered.
Right now, smiles didn't hurt.
And he wanted it to last.
So when his mother began keeping him home from school,
he only hesitated a little.
"Why?" he asked, head tilted like a curious bird.
She brushed his hair back, eyes bright, smile soft.
"Everything is going to be alright from now on," she said.
That sentence again.
That song he once held like a promise.
And he believed it -
or forced himself to.
Because love felt close again, and he was starving for it.
He didn't see it then.
Didn't feel the ground shifting beneath his feet.
Didn't notice the way their smiles trembled -
like people standing in sunlight while hiding from a shadow behind them.
He was too full of joy to notice
he was walking straight into the mouth of something waiting.
A child can sense wrongness.
But a lonely child...
will ignore every warning if it means feeling loved again.
And so he smiled,
eyes bright and heart wide open -
never realizing the door behind him had already closed.
---
That night, as he fell asleep to what felt like peace,
a single cold whisper crawled across his pillow -
"Almost ready."
---
The Day Happiness Died
Chapter 7
The sun rose soft and golden that morning,
as if the world wanted to look gentle one last time.
He woke to the smell of warm bread,
to laughter in the kitchen - real laughter -
and for a heartbeat
he believed he had finally arrived in the future he dreamed of.
A future where everything truly was "alright."
His mother brushed his hair.
His father dusted crumbs from his shirt.
They told him, "Let's go out today. A family day."
His chest filled with light,
so bright it almost hurt.
He'd waited so long for a day like this.
A day where love didn't feel borrowed.
A day where smiles felt like truth.
He held their hands on the walk, skipping a little as he ran ahead,
turning back to flash them his brightest smile -
The smile he used to fix things.
The smile that once kept him alive.
They smiled back...
But something inside him shivered.
Those smiles...
were wrong.
Too stiff.
Too sharp around the edges.
Like masks stretched over frightened faces.
He paused, but his heart - desperate and hopeful -
whispered, Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe I'm just scared of happiness.
They reached a quiet field near the edge of town.
Birds sang.
Wind brushed the grass like a gentle hand.
His mother knelt to tie his shoes - something she hadn't done since life fell apart.
"Thank you, Mama," he whispered.
Her fingers trembled.
His father swallowed hard.
And then...
A black van rolled up from the dirt road, tires grinding like teeth.
Strange figures stepped out - robed, silent, hungry-eyed.
The air itself seemed to kneel before them.
A chill wrapped around his lungs.
He looked at his parents.
They didn't look back.
His mother's eyes were wet.
His father's hands shook.
And suddenly he understood.
This happiness was never his.
It was borrowed.
Paid for.
He wasn't being taken with love.
He was being taken because of love lost.
A sale dressed as affection.
A farewell disguised as hope.
His tiny voice cracked the quiet:
"...You sold me?"
Silence.
Then his mother broke - a sob escaping like a wound tearing open.
His father whispered, voice shaking like old paper,
"We tried. We really did."
The cult members approached.
He stepped back, heart splitting open like thin glass.
His smile...
the one he used as armor...
crumbled.
And something inside him whispered a truth colder than winter:
Love can be the sharpest knife.
They reached for him.
He didn't scream -
screaming was for children who believed someone might save them.
He only watched his parents look away.
Their smiles gone now -
leaving only guilt and cowardice behind.
As the cult hand closed around his arm,
he forced one last trembling smile, tears burning his eyes.
"See?" he whispered to himself, voice breaking, "Smiling doesn't fix everything."
And the world, so heavy and quiet, seemed to agree.
---
As they dragged him toward the van,
the wind hissed against his ear -
"This is only the beginning.
Smile of the Damned
Chapter 8
The van doors opened.
Robes.
Shadows.
Eyes that held hunger instead of humanity.
And suddenly -
something cold brushed the back of his neck.
Then a whisper, not from lips but from the bones of the world itself:
"This is only the beginning."
He jerked, breath catching -
eyes darting -
but there was no one.
The voice came again, sharper, urgent:
Run.
His heart stuttered.
Another whisper - louder, fierce like lightning cracking inside his skull:
Run. Run. RUN.
His instincts flared like wildfire.
Every hair on his body stood.
His vision tunneled.
The world tilted.
He stumbled back, shaking, eyes wide.
His parents stepped forward - smiling.
Not warm smiles.
Not loving smiles.
Hollow smiles.
Dead smiles.
Masks pretending to be mercy.
His mother bent slightly, voice soft like poisoned honey:
"You'll help us be happy again... won't you, sweetheart?"
Her smile stretched -
too gentle, too wrong -
like she was asking him to fetch flowers
instead of walk into his own grave.
"We believe in you," his father whispered,
as if encouragement could polish betrayal into blessing.
Their eyes glimmered with hope -
not for him,
but for the life they could have without him.
A trade.
A sacrifice.
Their son for comfort.
Something inside him cracked -
not like breaking glass,
but like a small toy carefully, quietly snapped apart
so no one would hear the sound of loss.
His little body trembled.
His eyes filled with hurt - raw, new, endless.
And once more, the invisible voice roared:
RUN.
He turned -
and he ran.
Ran as if the earth itself was splitting behind him.
Ran without thinking, without breath, without direction.
Ran as if God or Devil or something older had pushed him.
Grass tore beneath his feet.
Air burned his lungs.
Tears blurred everything -
not from grief, not from fear alone...
...but from the shattering knowledge
that he would never come back.
He did not look behind him.
There was nothing there for him anymore.
No arms to catch him.
No voice to call him home.
No love left to save.
Only betrayal -
and a childhood collapsing into dust behind him.
And so a boy ran,
leaving the last pieces of his innocence in the dirt,
while the world whispered in his ear:
"Run, child. Run until the world forgets your name."
---
> He did not know where he was running to - only what he was running from.
The Shadow That Watched
Chapter 9
He ran.
Branches clawed his skin.
Stones cut his feet.
His lungs burned like fire trapped in a cage.
But fear kept him moving -
the kind of fear that steals childhood in a heartbeat.
Then...
The wind died.
Silence fell so heavy it felt like drowning in it.
And the world... stopped.
A footstep echoed behind him - but too soft, too deliberate to be human running.
He skidded to a halt, chest heaving.
Someone stood on the dirt road ahead.
A figure in a black cloak and hood, head lowered, face unseen, as if shadows themselves wrapped around their bones.
They hadn't been there a second ago - yet now they were realer than everything else.
The boy froze.
His heart didn't beat - it slammed.
The hooded figure didn't speak.
Instead, something moved beneath them.
A ripple.
A distortion.
Their shadow stretched - not like darkness should, but like it was alive and hungry.
And then it rose.
A nightmare pulled upright from the ground.
Tall.
Too tall.
Limbs unnatural - long, wrong, shaking like wet meat.
Skin (if it was skin) was pure void, not black but the absence of existence.
Its head tilted, revealing a mouth filled with teeth - long, jagged, layered like a shark's but uneven, as if carved by suffering itself.
No eyes.
Just hollow darkness where eyes should be - like the creature saw the world through fear, not sight.
It leaned near the hooded figure, as if cradling their silence.
And when it breathed, the air grew heavy - emotion crushed like glass under its presence.
The boy felt his knees weaken.
Something in him knew - this thing was not born from the world.
It was born from something inside someone.
From fear itself.
And somehow he understood, instinctively:
> This monster lives only because someone is terrified of being hurt.
He staggered back, voice stuck somewhere between a gasp and a plea.
The monster's head snapped toward him - no eyes yet it saw him.
It felt him.
It opened its mouth wider - wider than anything should -
and a sound tore out:
A scream.
Not loud like thunder -
but loud like every fear a child has ever swallowed ripped open at once.
A scream that clawed into his skull, shook his bones, turned his vision white.
His pupils shrank to pinpoints -
then disappeared, swallowed by terror so deep his body forgot how to stay awake.
He collapsed, falling like a puppet whose strings were cut.
The last thing he heard before darkness took him:
A whisper - soft, almost gentle, from that hidden voice in the void:
"Little one... your fear is only the seed."
And then he knew nothing.
---
> In a world where fear creates monsters... this was only the first.
The Price of Fear
Chapter 10
Darkness.
Then pain - dull at first, then sharp, threading through his bones.
He woke to cold stone beneath him.
The air smelled of damp earth... and iron.
Like a place where screams rust instead of echo.
He tried to move - chains answered instead.
Cold metal clamped around his wrists and ankles, biting into skin too young to bleed this much.
He wasn't in a forest anymore.
He was underground - deep, silent, forgotten.
A door groaned open.
Footsteps - slow, heavy, purposeful - approached.
Robes whispered like serpents in prayer.
Torchlight spilled into the cell and painted the walls with flickering, living shadows.
The cult had him.
Hooded faces loomed - eyes hidden, intentions not.
One stepped forward, voice smooth and wrong, like silk stretched over broken glass.
"Welcome, chosen vessel."
His heartbeat stuttered.
He tried to speak - but fear held his tongue hostage.
Another figure knelt beside him, lifting his chin with gloved fingers.
"You will help shape the new world," they murmured.
"Your pain... is the key."
Pain
Pain
Pain
The word rang in his skull like a bell soaked in blood.
He looked past them - and saw rows of other children chained.
Weak. Pale. Silent.
Eyes empty or wild, hope long butchered.
His chest squeezed.
He wasn't alone in the dungeon.
But he was alone in the world anyway.
"From this moment," the leader continued,
"your old name is dead."
A quill dipped in blackened ink - not ink, darker, thicker - something that pulsed - touched parchment.
"You are Eidolon."
A name meaning ghost
phantom
the thing that survives after a soul dies
"A vessel with no past," they whispered.
"No family.
No will.
No voice but ours."
He shook his head - tiny, defiant, tremor-filled.
That invisible voice inside him - the one that told him to run - flickered again:
Hold on.
The cultists did not hear it.
But they saw the resistance in his eyes.
So they smiled.
And the room filled with chanting - voices rising, twisting, hungry.
Shadows stretched along the floor - unnatural, trembling, drawn to him like starving beasts.
Fear crawled into his bloodstream.
Pain followed.
They broke him slowly.
Days? Weeks?
Time was a cruel blur.
But even as chains bruised his wrists,
even as his voice cracked from silent crying,
even as hope drained drop by drop...
He clung to one truth:
He had no name now.
So one day, he would take it back.
Not as - their puppet.
But as someone who chose his own fate.
Someone worthy of one person, someday, hearing his true name -
and holding it gently.
The cult thought they owned him.
They only forged the weapon that would destroy them.
---
In the darkness, a whisper rose again - not from outside, but from deep within him:
"They think you are theirs.
Let them believe it.
For now."
His eyes opened.
The first spark of wrath burned in them.
---
The last child
Chapter 11
The stone corridor was silent except for the faint echoes of chains.
The hooded figures came for the children again. Not one, not two, but all five.
The MC's heart thumped in his chest, tight and desperate.
> "Wait! Please! Don't-don't take them!"
His voice cracked. The children clung to him, trembling.
> "Brother, don't leave us-"
"I'm scared!"
"Big brother, run!"
But the cloaked figures did not hesitate. They moved with precision, with a calm that made the air itself shiver.
The MC tried to reach for them. Tried to fight. Tried to scream.
But they were gone.
Hours passed.
An hour.
Only one returned.
A boy. A little boy, barely ten.
He walked back slowly, hand in hand with a hooded figure dressed in black. His eyes... there was nothing in them. Nothing at all.
The MC stumbled forward, breath catching, terror and hope battling in his chest:
> "No... please... tell me... tell me what happened!"
The boy did not answer. He didn't cry. Didn't flinch. Didn't even blink.
The MC fell to his knees, shaking his shoulders.
> "Look at me! Please! Speak to me!"
A voice whispered in the stillness. Soft. Gentle. Almost cruel in its calmness:
> "I'm okay... it will all be fine, Big Brother."
The MC froze.
It was that smile.
The same smile he had seen on a parent long ago - the one who had told their child to sacrifice themselves, a twisted, loving smile that cut deeper than any blade.
The little boy's lips curved the same way. Empty. Cold. Perfect.
The MC's chest tightened so hard he thought it would shatter. He sank further into himself, realizing the truth:
> Something inside that boy had died.
The life, the affection, the fear - all gone.
He watched silently as the boy let go of his hand, the other still held by the black-clad figure.
And then, in a soft, distant voice - almost as if the words were breathed into his soul - the boy said:
> "Before I forget... I finally know my name.
The nice black-dressed people told me... my name is Kaelthas."
The word hung in the air like a death sentence.
The MC felt something inside him crack, small shards of hope scattering into dust.
The door closed behind them.
And the corridor echoed with silence.
---
💭 Notes / Seeds:
Kaelthas becomes a living symbol of the cult's manipulation - child, broken, used, beyond pain.
The MC now experiences his first real taste of loss, helplessness, and despair, which will build toward his eventual break.
The emptiness in Kaelthas mirrors the eventual emotional catalyst that will crack the Eidolon.
The cult name ("Kaelthas") can be tied to their ritual, their prophecy, or their demon-binding ideology.
---