Celestial Descendant

Chapter 1: The Bloom Amidst Ruin

I was born into silence, and into that silence, I scream.

Outside-in, the godless world stares back at me, painted by brushstrokes of despair. Before me lies a battlefield that once teemed with life and now had been transformed into a barren landscape of death and sorrow. The air is rancid with cadaverous decay, further reminding me of lives that had been sacrificed in the name of war. It is among that chaos that one flower blooms-delicate petals shuddering against the roar of destruction-a beacon of hope in a world drowned in darkness.

I look around me-my heart bleeding in pity for the innocence that yet walks this cursed land. My eyes fall on a little boy, no more than five years old, stumbling around the wreckage. His feet, bruised and bloody from days of aimless wondering, barely support him upright; his tattered clothes cling no more than rags upon his piteous form. His lips, cracked and with devoid of moisture, revealed days he had survived without water. Still, in his desperation, he finds strength for one haunting cry that cuts through the silence.

"Brother! Where are you?" His voice stuttered and the words cracked with the weight of his fear. "I am thirsty... My feet ache so much... Why can't you hear me?"

A few more excruciating steps, small bloodied hands clutched around his stomach as the hunger pangs gnaw, the little boy presses on, his mind fading, desperately struggling to hold onto reality, but one thought keeps him going-I've got to find my brother. He'll know what to do. He'll save me.

But hope can be one cruel bloke.

As he stumbles forward, the world freezes. Amidst that wreckage, he finds only his brother's head severed-a thing that would brand itself into his memory. On his face, shock, trauma, and regret mix with one another in a second, as if each of a thousand knives cuts deeper into the heart of this boy: he was too late.

"No! No! No!" he screams, his voice rising to a wail. "Why did you leave me? I thought you'd come back! Please, wake up!"

He falls to his knees, his quivering fingers reaching to touch his brother's face. The boy clasps the head close, his body wrenched with sobs. It is as though he felt that by holding his brother, he could feel some trace of warmth, of life.

A flicker of movement, a ways off: an enemy search party driven to eradicate whatever little life was left by the desperate screams of the young boy. Their voices echo across the battlefield.

"Did you hear that?" one says, his eyes narrowing. "Sounds like we've got a survivor."

"Let's get it over with. Tired of chasing shadows," chimes another, as he slowly readjusted his weapon and smiled cruelly.

The third chimes in, "Let the little brat scream. It'll be easier to find him," he says, chuckling as they close in.

My heart is racing. "Run, boy! Run!" I scream, but my voice is swallowed by the abyss, silent and powerless. He does not move; his conscience is elsewhere in the aftermath of his storm, and in his sadness, he cannot see the danger.

The boy clutches the decapitated head of his brother, quivering. His voice hushes to a whisper as he says, "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry...

Far off, the soldiers are closing in. One is an archer who draws his bowstring, squints to test the distance-just far away enough that he can distance himself from the act, yet near enough that he can make out the boy's small frame kneeling amidst the dead.

"Waste of life," the archer mutters to himself, almost. He readjusts his hold on the instrument, his fingers grazing the slick string of his bow. "No use in letting the brat suffer too much more."

His companions all nod in silence.

The air held tension as taut as a bowstring, taut with deadly precision. The breathing of the archer slowed, keen as a blade. Time almost stretches in that moment; the unspoken pause before the inevitable.

He is just a child, I scream inside, desperate that my voice would find its way to the boy, but my words are swallowed whole by the void.

His eyes never wavered, his will unshakeable. He exhaled slowly, and the stillness of indifference swept over him. "Sleep tight, little one," he whispered as he loosed.

The bowstring slices through the air at near whisper of death, the arrow cutting across the field of conflict. Silent, unwaivering, sure.

For that one brief, shining moment as the arrow flew to its mark, the world held its breath.

It struck him right between the eyes with an awful-sounding thud and buried deep. His frail body crumpled to the ground, lifeless. His fingers, even in death, did not let go of his brother's beheaded head, clinging onto the last remnants of love and loss.

I cry for him, for the world he shall never know; I cry for the brother he sought in vain. Oh, how it hurts to have to watch this-to see a world without hope, where cruelty will snuff out innocence.

O heavens, hear my prayer! Where is the justice in this? Where are the gods that shield the innocent, and succour the oppressed? I Pray for a god to be born into this forlorn existence-to bring hope to this pitiful world, to soothe the hearts that break. Let light be wrought in darkness; let a spark be seen to gleam as bidden in its womb, to remind this world of its right to hope!

In a moment that defies the law of the heaven, a god bowed its head. A phenomenon that rarely takes place in a millennium, for the first time, a prayer fell from the lips of a god. A taboo that shakes the upper realms. For gods do not pray-gods do not plead.

To pray is to admit weakness. It is the acknowledgment of helplessness, an attribute of humility that gods, by nature, do not have. The heavens are built upon pride, power, and silence. But for this boy, and for this forsaken world, I break that sacred law.

A prayer for the fallen, a cry for hope in a world which no longer deserves it.

And the pride clings to them with every ounce of power, to silence. They do not bend. They do not abase themselves before the chaos of the mortal realm. But on this day, disregarding all consequence, I weep—a tear falling from the celestial heights.

It is no ordinary drop of a tear, but golden, shining with divine essence, impregnated with the prayer of a god. For in that drop lies the essence of hope and sorrow, divine longing for the birth of salvation where none is due. Within it lies my agony and my plea, a manifestation of my despair for this cursed land.