the child born in the storm

The heavens wept.

Thunder rumbled through the sky as rain poured over the slums, washing away filth but never the misery. In a small, dimly lit shack, a woman lay on the cold floor, her body broken, her breath shallow. She had once been beautiful, but years of torment had left her a hollow shell.

She was nothing more than a tool for the rich—a plaything discarded after being used. And now, she was dying.

But before her last breath, she gave birth.

A child’s wail pierced through the storm, loud and unwavering, as if defying fate itself. The rain grew heavier, lightning cracked across the heavens, and for a brief moment, the world seemed to take notice.

Then silence.

The mother’s lifeless body lay still, her duty in this world complete.

The slum dwellers, drawn by the cries, gathered around the newborn. But no hands reached out to help. No voices whispered words of comfort. To them, he was another burden—another mouth to feed in a world where kindness had no value.

Then, from the shadows, a figure emerged.

A hunter.

The Man from the Mountains

The hunter stood tall and broad, his weathered skin a deep brown, his face marred by a long scar running across his left eye. He was a man of the wilderness, a survivor of the deadliest forest known to the world. He had no cultivation, no grand power, but he knew how to live where others perished.

He looked down at the child. Weak. Frail. Born from suffering.

He should have left him.

Yet something held him in place.

Perhaps it was the way the storm had raged the moment the boy was born, as if the heavens themselves had marked his arrival. Perhaps it was fate.

With a grunt, the hunter picked up the child and walked away, leaving the slums behind.

Baptized by Poison

The forest of the dead was no place for the weak. It was a land of venomous creatures, deadly plants, and ancient curses. But the hunter had long since conquered its dangers, knowing where to tread and what to avoid.

The boy was sickly, his body barely clinging to life. Without a mother to feed him, his survival was near impossible. But the hunter did not give up.

If the heavens wanted the boy to live, they would decide his fate.

So, he did what no sane man would do.

He fed the child poison.

Each day, Tianze’s small body was given herbs laced with venom, his skin bathed in concoctions that would make even grown men scream in agony. The hunter knew it was madness, but he also knew that in this world, weakness was death. If the child could not endure, then he was never meant to live.

Days turned to months.

Months turned to years.

By the age of five, Tianze no longer resembled the frail newborn from the slums. His body, once weak and sickly, had transformed. His blood had been tempered by countless poisons, his flesh hardened by the cruelest medicines.

And on his fifth birthday, the heavens answered.

His eyes, once dull and lifeless, shone with an unnatural light. His breath, once weak and ragged, now carried a force beyond normal men.

He had been reborn.

A child no longer bound by fate. A child who would carve his own .

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