Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
• • •
Calamity. It's a word that captures his essence perfectly.
Destructive, wrong, and steeped in chaos, he embodies turmoil in every form.
The day he was born was already a calamity, manifested in the form of a baby human. On the sacred day of the sun, when light was meant to symbolize hope and joy, his arrival only brought forth dislike, hatred, and disgust. The air, once filled with celebration, turned heavy with the weight of their discontent.
Whispers of ill omen curled through the air, wrapping around the hearts of those gathered. His tiny cries echoed like a warning, a sign of the strife he would bring.
In a land steeped in tradition, where every life was meant to be a blessing, his birth felt like a wound to the very fabric of fate.
A bad omen. Ryomen was a bad omen from the start.
Before he entered the world, he devoured his own twin brother in the womb, consuming him as if driven by a hunger that knew no bounds. Slowly, he began to feed on his mother's body like a parasite, draining the life from her as he grew.
By the time of his birth, his form was a twisted mockery of what should have been—a child nearly unrecognizable. Two sets of arms and a pair of lower eyes that disturbed anyone who looked upon him. He was born malformed, disfigured, a creature that didn't belong in their world.
Eyes that should have sparkled with love, with the innocence of new life, were instead clouded by fear. His mother's joy had withered into dread long before he ever drew breath, and the sight of him only confirmed what the whispers had foretold.
He was a storm. A destructive calamity from another realm, a force that should never have graced the earth. Yet his mother was cursed with the burden of giving birth to such a child—so unlikeable, so horrendous, so evil.
It was no surprise that they feared him. The villagers all had one thought: kill him.
Kill him before he could grow into something even more terrifying. Kill him before the world suffered under his wrath. Kill him.
But no one dared to lay a finger on him. Though his existence horrified them, fear gripped their hearts even tighter. They believed that killing the baby would bring them an even greater curse. Their god, already angered by his birth, might intensify their punishment if they took his life.
Instead of laying a finger on the boy, they cast him away, throwing him into the care of monks who resided in a distant shrine, far from the village.
Isolated, Ryomen was left to be raised in a world of silence, cut off from the life that rejected him.
