The Anomaly's Path

The world around me began to shift as the snow stopped falling and the grey sky cracked like a mirror dropped on stone, the pieces falling away into darkness and leaving nothing behind but empty space.

The house with the smoking chimney dissolved into shadows, and the frozen pond turned to black glass beneath a sky that no longer existed.

I stood in the middle of nothing, suspended in a void that had no floor and no ceiling and no walls, and then something new began to form around me like paint spreading across a blank canvas.

A memory took shape, pulling me into its current like a river dragging a drowning man downstream.

I was standing in a dirt courtyard behind a crumbling stone building with walls that were stained yellow and brown from years of neglect. The windows were boarded shut with rotting wood, and the door hung crooked on its hinges, frozen in a permanent state of collapse.

Children sat in clusters on the ground, their clothes torn and dirty, their faces thin in ways that spoke of empty stomachs and longer nights.

They looked at the ground or at the sky or at each other, but never with hope, because hope had died in this place a long time ago, buried under years of cold and hunger and the silence of parents who never came back.

A little girl sat alone against the far wall, her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them.

She had black hair that fell across her face in tangled knots, and her eyes were amber, bright and clear even in the grey light of the courtyard. Tears ran down her cheeks, leaving tracks in the dust that had settled on her skin, and her lips moved silently with words that no one was there to hear.

...This is Mia, I realized, watching her from the edge of the courtyard. This is her life before Wayford. Before she started living with Marta and the other kids.

Three older boys approached her, their faces hard with the casual cruelty that children learn when no one teaches them kindness. They stood over her, blocking the weak sunlight that had been warming her shoulders, and their shadows fell across her like a shroud.

"Where are your parents, orphan?" one of them said, his voice loud and mocking.

The girl did not answer. She stared at the ground.

"Probably dead," another sneered. "Like all the parents who didn’t want them."

They laughed, and the girl flinched as if the sound were stones being thrown at her head. I watched, frozen in place, unable to move, speak or do anything except stand there like a ghost trapped in amber.

One of the boys kicked dirt into her face, and she coughed, tears mixing with the dust on her cheeks, her small hands rising to wipe her eyes.

"Leave her alone."

The voice came from across the courtyard, sharp and firm. I turned to see a younger Marta standing at the edge of the courtyard with her arms crossed and her eyes hard. The boys scattered like leaves before a storm, their cruelty evaporating in the face of someone who would not tolerate it.

Marta walked to the girl and knelt beside her, her weathered hand reaching out to brush the dirt from the girl’s hair.

"You are stronger than them," Marta said. "Do not let them see you cry."

The girl wiped her eyes and sniffled. "....I miss my mama."

"It is okay, kid." Marta stood and offered her hand. "Come with me. There is bread in the kitchen and food for you."

The girl hesitated for a moment, looking up at Marta’s face with eyes that had learned to be cautious. Then she took the offered hand and stood, and the two of them walked toward the crumbling building with the crooked door.

The memory dissolved around me like smoke.

_

I stood in a small room with a low ceiling and walls lined with shelves filled with jars of herbs and dried flowers. A single candle burned on a wooden table, casting flickering shadows across the floor that danced like living things. The air smelled of lavender and thyme.

Mia was older now. Eleven, maybe twelve. She sat at the table with a book open in front of her, her fingers tracing the words as she read, her lips moving silently with the shape of each sentence. A strand of black hair had fallen across her face, and she tucked it behind her ear without looking up.

Marta sat across from her, stirring a cup of tea with a silver spoon. Her eyes were fixed on the girl’s face, watching her read with an intensity that I had not expected.

"You have a gift, dear," Marta said, breaking the silence. "A very rare one. You must be careful with it."

Mia looked up, her amber eyes curious. "What gift?"

"The ability to heal," Marta said. "Not just bodies but souls. You have something that I have never seen before in all my years of research."

Mia’s eyes widened. "Is my power like yours?"

Marta was quiet for a long moment, her spoon pausing in the cup. When she spoke again, her voice was softer, weighed down by something that might have been memory or regret. "Different, but similar." She set down the spoon and leaned forward, her elbows on the table. "...Yours is stronger than mine ever was and it is more dangerous. You must promise me something, Mia."

Mia asked, "What?"

"Never use your power to hurt others. Only use it to help." Marta’s eyes were hard now, sharp as glass.

"Your power can heal, yes. It can mend wounds and ease pain and pull someone back from the edge of death. That is giving. That is what it was meant for. But it can also do the opposite. It can drain. It can steal. It can pull the life from someone else and keep it for yourself."

She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a whisper.

"The moment you use it to take, you will lose yourself. You will not even realize it is happening. The hunger will grow quietly, in the dark, like a seed that has been planted and watered and fed until it is too big to dig out. One day, you will wake up and you will not remember who you were before the hunger began."

Mia stared at her, her small hands pressed flat against the pages of the book.

"So promise me," Marta said. "Promise me you will never use it to take. No matter how desperate you are. No matter how much it hurts. Because once you cross that line, you will never find your way back."

Mia nodded slowly, her small hands pressing flat against the pages of the book. "...I promise."

Marta smiled. It was a sad smile, the kind of smile that knows something the other person does not.

_

Once again the scene shifted and I stood in a dark corridor with walls that were wet with moisture and floors that were slick with something. The air smelled of old blood and chemicals and the sweet, cloying scent of rot that had been painted over but never removed.

I knew this place. I had walked these stones before.

The Crimson Mines. Voss’s laboratory.

Mia was strapped to a metal table in the center of the room, her arms and legs bound with iron cuffs that had been tightened until they bit into her skin.

Her dress was torn and stained, and her face was covered in bruises that had not yet begun to heal. Her eyes were open, fixed on the ceiling, and her lips were pressed together in a thin line of pain.

Voss stood over her, a scalpel in his hand, the blade catching the green torchlight and throwing it back in sickly flashes. His face was calm, almost serene, like a gardener admiring a flower he was about to prune.

"You are special," he said, his voice soft and gentle, the kind of voice a father might use when speaking to a daughter. "...Your soul is more flexible than the others I have studied. It bends without breaking, no matter how much pressure I apply."

"..."

"I am going to push you to your limits," he continued, running the scalpel lightly across her arm without breaking the skin. "...And then I am going to push you past them. One day, you will thank me for it."

He pressed the blade into her arm and dragged it downward.

She screamed and I could only see the horror in front of me.

I tried to move. I tried to reach for her, to stop him, to do anything at all. But I was frozen in place, a ghost in her memory, forced to watch as he cut her arm open from shoulder to elbow.

Blood poured onto the table, the floor, his hands, and he watched her bleed with the detached interest of a scientist observing an experiment.

"Heal," he commanded.

Mia closed her eyes. Her hands glowed with a faint light, knitting the flesh back together. The scar that remained was thin and pale.

"Good," Voss said with a dark smile.

He cut her other arm. She healed it. He cut her stomach. She healed it. He cut her face, a shallow line from her cheekbone to her jaw. She healed it.

He cut her fingers, one by one, starting with the smallest and working his way to the thumb. Each cut was precise, deliberate, made with the care of a surgeon removing a tumor. Each time, her hands glowed, and the wounds closed, and the fingers grew back.

...And each time, she screamed and begged for death.

I stood in the same laboratory, but time had passed. Days? Weeks? Time became a blurred map of scars.

Mia lay on the table, her body a map of scars that had not yet faded. Her eyes were half-closed, unfocused. Her chest rose and fell with shallow, ragged breaths.

Voss stood over her with a branding iron, the tip glowing red and orange, so hot that the air around it shimmered.

"Your soul and power are extraordinary," he said, holding the iron close to her face so she could feel the heat. "...I have never seen anything like it in all my years of research."

He pressed the iron into her shoulder.

The skin hissed and crackled. The smell of burning flesh filled the room, thick and acrid.

Mia did not scream. She did not have the strength left to scream. Her mouth opened, and a sound came out, but it was not a scream. It was a whimper, thin and broken, the sound of someone who had screamed so many times that there was nothing left.

"...Please," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the hiss of the iron. "...Kill me..."

"I cannot," Voss said, pulling the iron away and examining the wound with clinical interest. "You are too valuable. Your power is the key to everything I have been working toward."

He set down the iron and picked up a small glass vial filled with a dark, swirling liquid.

"You see?" he said, holding the vial up to the light. "Your body heals and your power heals not only the body but also the soul. Even if I wanted to kill you, I could not. You are immortal now. The first of many."

Mia closed her eyes. Tears ran down her cheeks, cutting tracks through the blood and grime.

"Leo will come," she whispered. "He will come and kill you."

Voss laughed, a dry and rasping sound that echoed off the stone walls. "The boy from Wayford? He is dead. I told you many times. He died in the fire that consumed the village. There is no one coming to save you."

"He is not dead," Mia said, and her voice was stronger now. "He promised. He made me a promise, and he keeps his promises."

Voss stopped laughing.

"Promises mean nothing," he said, his voice flat and cold. "Only results matter and the result is that you are mine. You will always be mine. Your body, your soul, your power. All of it belongs to me."

He turned and walked toward the door.

"Rest now," he said without looking back. "Tomorrow, we try again."

_

I stood in a cage. Iron bars surrounded me on all sides, and the floor was cold stone, wet with moisture that dripped from the ceiling in slow, steady drops. The air was thick with the smell of unwashed bodies and fear.

Mia sat in the corner with her arms wrapped around her knees and her back pressed against the bars. Her dress was stained with old blood, her hair was matted, and her face was pale. She was rocking back and forth, humming a soft tune under her breath, a lullaby that I did not recognize.

The children were in the cage with her. Lily and Tobin and Sera and others. They huddled together, pressing close to her for warmth, their small bodies shaking with cold and fear.

"It will be okay," Mia said, her voice soft and steady despite everything. "Leo will come. He promised."

"When? When will he come?" Lily asked, her voice muffled against Mia’s shoulder.

"Soon." Mia stroked her hair. "He will come and save us. You just have to be brave a little longer."

"You said that yesterday," Tobin said from the corner, his arms crossed over his chest.

"I know." Mia closed her eyes. "But I believe it. I have to believe it. If I stop believing, then there is nothing left."

The children were quiet after that. The only sounds were the drip of water and the soft hum of Mia’s lullaby.

_

The world shifted and I stood in the laboratory again. Voss was cutting into Mia’s chest, his scalpel tracing a line down her sternum, parting skin and muscle and bone with the ease of someone who had done this many times before.

She was not bound to the table anymore. She was lying still, her eyes open, her lips parted. She was not screaming. She had stopped screaming weeks ago.

"Your Soul Weaving is the key," Voss said, his voice distant and distracted, as if he were talking to himself rather than to her. "With it, I can anchor the soul to the body permanently. Immortality. Eternal soldiers. An army that cannot be killed."

"..."

"I have already created the first prototype," he continued, reaching into her chest with his fingers. "It does not die. It does not stop. It only kills and soon, I will have more. Hundreds or thousands of them. An army that will sweep across the world and burn it to ash."

He pulled something from her chest. A small, glowing shard of light. Her core. It pulsed in his hand like a second heart, warm and bright.

Mia gasped. Her body arched off the table, and her mouth opened in a silent scream.

"...Fascinating," Voss said, holding the shard up to the light.

He placed the shard back inside her chest and closed the wound with a wave of his hand. The skin knitted together, leaving a faint scar.

"Rest now," he said, wiping his hands on a cloth.

_

Voss was standing over Mia, his hands covered in fresh blood, his face split by a wide smile. She was lying on the table, her body broken in ways that I could not describe, her eyes closed, her chest rising and falling in a shallow rhythm.

"I have succeeded," Voss said, stepping back to admire his work. "The first immortal soldier is complete. She will not die. She is... perfect."

He walked away, leaving behind a creature with hollow, empty eyes. The girl I knew was gone, replaced by the "perfect" soldier.

I stood alone in the darkness.

It was a hollow darkness, empty and cold, the kind of darkness that exists when there is nothing left to burn. No light. No sound.

...Just emptiness, stretching in every direction, infinite and absolute.

I stood there for a long time, trying to process everything I had seen. Her childhood in the orphanage, where she learned that no one was coming to save her. Her life in Wayford, where she found a family and then lost them. The torture. The cuts. The burns.

The nights she spent crying alone, praying to gods who never answered, whispering my name into the darkness like a prayer that she was afraid would never be heard.

...She waited for me, I thought. She suffered, and she waited. She believed I would come, even when there was no reason to believe.

I closed my eyes.

I am here now, Mia. I... am here.

A muffled sobbing drew me forward through the void.

The darkness parted to reveal the house from the first memory, but it was cold now, the fire in the hearth replaced by grey ashes. The snow falling outside drifted down like flakes of soot.

The sobbing was coming from inside.

I walked to the door and pushed it open.

The room was dark. The furniture was covered in dust, and the walls were bare. In the corner, a small figure lay curled on the floor, her arms wrapped around her knees, her body shaking with sobs.

"Mia," I said, kneeling beside her. "...I am here."

The sobbing slowed. She lifted her head slowly, her eyes red and swollen, her cheeks wet with tears.

"God...?" she whispered.