PROLOGUE

In the dimness of the night, the figure of a man wandered through the city streets. His shadow, elongated by the faint glow of the streetlights, was a reflection of the darkness that had invaded his soul. His steps were slow and heavy, as if each one of them carried the weight of a life he no longer wished to bear. Resignation had ensnared him like an invisible noose that ruthlessly strangled him.

Life had stolen his dreams, hopes, and desires. He felt like a castaway in an ocean of despair, struggling to stay afloat in a sea of desolation. Words of encouragement, gestures of affection, and missed opportunities had lost their meaning for him. He had given up on everything, even on himself. The darkness that enveloped him was his only company, his refuge, and his curse.

As he aimlessly walked, his mind was filled with an internal monologue, an incessant discourse of self-condemnation and self-pity. "Why go on?" he thought over and over. "What is the point of this senseless life?" His thoughts were like an endless echo, a litany that repeated the same words ceaselessly. Each day, he woke up with the heavy burden of existence on his shoulders, and each night, he lay down with the hope that, when he awoke the next day, the world would have forgotten him.

The night was cold and silent, as if the entire universe was in tune with his despair. He had no destination in mind, no place he wanted to go. He simply walked, dragging his feet as if they were shackles that kept him a prisoner of his own melancholy. The city was deserted; its inhabitants were sleeping in their warm beds, oblivious to the agony consuming him.

But then, in the midst of the darkness, a sound broke the monotony of his internal monologue. The noise of an engine revving, tires screeching on the asphalt, and the dull impact of metal against flesh and bone. The world seemed to pause for a moment. Pain, sharp and piercing, seized his body. He had been hit by a car.

As he lay on the ground, the warmth of the blood oozing from his wounds was the only sensation he could perceive. The life he had given up on had other plans for him. Death, which seemed to be his only friend in those dark moments, had eluded him once more.

The car's driver, worried and frightened, stepped out of the vehicle to check on his condition. As he listened to the confused voices of the bystanders who had gathered around, the despondent man gazed at the starry sky. It was ironic, he thought, that at the moment he had decided to stop fighting, life had listened to him... as it had never done in his entire life.

But what happened next left him breathless. As the light of the stars faded and consciousness waned, he had the strange sensation of floating in the air, as if his body had become ethereal. The world around him dissolved into a mist of darkness and confusion.

And then, in an instant that felt like an eternity, he found himself in the arms of an unknown woman. He was completely disoriented, unable to comprehend what was happening. The woman who held him with tenderness and affection looked at him with warm and compassionate eyes. It was as if all his suffering, all his sorrows and burdens, vanished in a single moment in the embrace of that mysterious woman.

The man looked around and realized he was in a completely different place. He was no longer in the city or the cold night. He was in a cozy, rustic, medieval-style house.

But most astonishing of all was when he looked down and realized he wasn't the aged and despondent man he had been moments earlier. In his arms, he was now a helpless baby, with eyes that reflected purity and innocence. He couldn't understand what was happening, but the feeling of rebirth and hope overwhelmed him completely.

The unknown woman looked at him with a smile and whispered words he couldn't comprehend. As the baby clung to his new beginning, the man understood that life was giving him a second chance, an opportunity to start anew, to rediscover the meaning of existence, to find the happiness he had longed for.

In that moment, in the arms of the unknown woman, the depressed and resigned man understood that he had been rescued from his own darkness. Life, in its mysterious wisdom, had offered him a chance he had lost hope of ever finding. The story of his rebirth was just beginning, and it was imbued with profound and transcendental meaning.

I SEEK PEACE.

Arc 1: Childhood Journey

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