Now, dear reader, allow me... Elar, to take over the narration.
10 p.m. Bonfim Cemetery Morgue.
There he was. Stretched out on a stainless steel table, brown skin already losing its color, lips dry and purple. Low fade haircut. Five holes in the chest. Precise. Cold. No chance to defend himself.
They killed him without mercy.
But the bastard who dropped him? Got hit with nineteen bullets right after.
If that's any consolation...
"So young…"
The voice came out low, almost a sigh. It was the medical examiner: blonde, blue-eyed, rectangular glasses. Gloved hands gently pressed one of the wounds on his chest.
"My age… just another one thrown into the tally of urban violence."
Beside her, an older man let out a dry cough. No mask, grimy shirt, and eyes that had seen more corpses than rainy Mondays. This was Mr. Hermes.
"Feeling sorry, Doc?" he said with a near-mocking tone. "This kind's the most common around here. Never make it past twenty-five."
"That's a horrible thing to say, Mr. Hermes…" she rolled her eyes, already annoyed. "He didn't even have a record. Just delivered pizza…"
"Yeah… but with that face, even the gangs probably thought he was competition," he chuckled dryly, picking up a scalpel like it was second nature. "Now let's dig out these bullets, or are you writing poetry? Still got bodies in the queue."
Hours passed.
The clock on the wall had circled three full times. And on the steel tray beside them, five bullets rested — freshly pulled, still drenched in cold blood, dripping slow, rhythmic droplets onto the metal.
Plop… plop…
The doctor stepped back for a moment, removing her gloves, exhausted. She was about to start filling out the report when she noticed something odd… a subtle, almost imperceptible movement in the corpse's chest.
She frowned. Took a cautious step closer. Watched intently.
The chest moved. Slightly. Then again. And again.
Her eyes widened. She staggered back a step.
"He… he's alive!" she gasped, trembling.
The old man, scribbling nonsense in a tattered notebook, laughed.
"What? Are you crazy, Doc? That's just the body releasing air. Cadaveric reflex — happens all the time. I've even seen one piss himself…"
But he didn't even get to finish.
The dead man sat up.
All at once.
Yawning.
His eyes half-dazed, looking at the two of them like he'd just woken from a nap on the couch — not from an autopsy table.
His chest… was healing. Ribs clicking back into place like invisible hands were stitching flesh together, bones realigning on their own. The bullet wounds now just pale lines. Sewn shut by something neither scalpel nor thread had touched.
"What the fuck is going on?!"
His voice came out hoarse, scratchy — alive.
He looked down. Just a sheet covering the essentials. On instinct, he jumped back and landed hard on the cold floor, smacking his ass.
"Holy shit! Did you take something out of me?!"
He touched his abdomen, searching frantically, expecting a hole, a gap, something... But no. Just fresh, clean scars.
He got up fast, still unsteady, pulling the sheet tighter over himself, eyes wide as he glared at them both:
"You better start talking, you miserable fucks…"
Hermes… froze. His eyes rolled back and he collapsed like a rotten tree. Rigid. Dry. Without even a grunt.
THUD.
Out cold.
The doctor screamed — more from shock than fear — and leaned against the counter, hand trembling like it had been dipped in ice.
"You… you died…" she stammered. "We… we were removing the bullets… I saw you without a pulse, no breath, you died!"
"Died?"
The word slipped out dry, more like a question thrown into the emptiness of the morgue than something he truly asked.
Flashes.
Gunshots. The taste of blood. Pain. Darkness.
"…I died."
He blinked. His throat burned with each breath. His chest rose and fell — something it hadn't done minutes ago. He looked around: bloody tools, formaldehyde stinging his nostrils, the old man sprawled on the ground like a puppet with dead batteries, and the doctor… frozen. Trembling hands. Dilated pupils.
The white lights on the ceiling flickered, as if even they were afraid.
And then, he felt it.
Something inside. Something wrong. Or… different.
Like his heart beat on another frequency. Like his bones were made of something that didn't belong in a human body.
It wasn't fear.
It was presence.
Something was there. Breathing with him. Inside him.
Cael was real. He was there.
But he wasn't supposed to be alive.
The air felt heavier around him. Like the whole universe held its breath. Like the world tilted slightly just around his existence — like something greater had noticed.
And in that moment, he understood.
He was an anomaly.
---
❍❍❍ ᨖ ❍❍❍
"An… anomaly!?"
The voice echoed through the higher planes — beyond the veil, above the in-between, where time folds and spirit unravels.
There, on the immaterial throne of the spirit world, an entity rose, eyes like abysses.
Tháenar.
Deity of the End. Judge of Paths. Weaver of Departures.
He wore a white robe that floated without wind. His long black hair spilled like waterfalls of ink over his shoulders and beyond. His eyes swallowed stars. The silence around him was the same that haunts cemeteries and dead galaxies.
In his hands rested the Harp of Life, an instrument crafted from his own Echo, strung with chords of time and fate. With every pluck, a thread of existence was cut, ending another mortal story.
But in that moment...
He did not play.
And so, he stared into the void where Cael's judgment echo should've been.
"How?" he whispered, fury beneath the calm. "How does a soul dare to perish… without my consent?"
The harp's strings vibrated on their own, restless, as if the instrument itself could feel the error.
Because if there was no pluck…
There was no judgment.
And if there was no judgment…
The soul had not departed.
Trapped between worlds, without guide, without path, without the right to cross — it returned.
Not as man.
Not as spirit.
But as something else.
Something new.
Something that wasn't meant to exist.
Something even he had not foreseen.
An anomaly.