He knew something was wrong before the pain arrived.
The sound came first, metal screaming as it twisted, glass detonating into shards. Someone shouted his name. Or they were just shouting. It didn't matter.
Then the impact.
The world lurched. His body was thrown forward and stopped too fast, too hard. Something crushed his chest. The air was torn from his lungs, expelled in a single useless gasp, and no matter how desperately he tried, it would not return.
Pain followed immediately.
It was everywhere. Sharp and absolute. His ribs gave way under the pressure, breaking one after another. His vision smeared, colors dissolving into meaningless light. Blood filled his mouth, warm and bitter.
He tried to move. Nothing responded.
So this is how it ends?
The thought was distant. Calm. There was no room left for panic, no strength for regret. Just the quiet awareness that he was still conscious when he should not have been.
His heartbeat slowed.
The world receded.
Then even that disappeared.
There was no light.No darkness.
Existence simply… stopped.
And then suddenly, it resumed.
Cold air scraped into his lungs.
He inhaled sharply, violently, the breath tearing through lungs too small and fragile to hold it. His chest fluttered, fast, shallow, uncontrolled, each movement driven by instinct alone.
A sound slipped from his throat.
"Ngh… waah…"
Weak. Thin. More breath than voice.
His vision was useless, blurred shapes, light without meaning. He tried to move his hand.
Something tiny twitched in front of his face.
Too small.
Understanding arrived slowly, dread sinking in like a weight.
He wasn't injured.
He was a newborn.
A cry burst from him before he could stop it, loud, broken, helpless.
"Ngh—waaaah—hrrk—"
Footsteps rushed closer.
A woman leaned into view. Her face was tired, its lines etched with worry and exhaustion. Her clothes were worn thin, patched too many times to count. When she lifted him, her hands were rough—but careful.
"So you're alive after all," she murmured.
Alive.
The word lingered.
Exhaustion crushed him. His thoughts slipped, the world blurring again. The last thing he felt was warmth, thin, fragile, but real.
He did not forget dying.
The memory did not fade. It sank deeper, settling beneath thought, where instinct lived. It stirred whenever his lungs burned from running too long, when each breath felt borrowed. It whispered when hunger hollowed his stomach until even thinking became painful.
Pain felt familiar.
As if his soul had carried that ending with it, crossing into a new life already acquainted with suffering.
But this time, he was not alone.
The woman who found him in a dumpster became his only hope.
She could have walked past. Most did. A bundle of rags behind a restaurant, crying so faintly it could have been mistaken for a cat, or the wind. The city was full of such sounds.
People learned to ignore them.
But she stopped.
Not out of heroism. Not fate. Not kindness polished into virtue. She stopped because the sound felt wrong. Too small. Too fragile. Like something that should not have been abandoned.
Her name was Anne.
She was young, no more than twenty-five, but life had marked her early. Fine lines traced her face where worry had lived too long. Her clothes carried the quiet history of too many repairs. Her hands were rough, hardened by labor that demanded everything and returned almost nothing.
They shook when she pulled him free.
He was too light. Too cold.
Life clung to him by a thread so thin it barely deserved the name. Anne swore softly, not at him, but at the world, and wrapped him in her coat, as if stubborn warmth alone might convince him to stay.
From that moment on, survival had a face.
Anne did not save him once.
She saved him every day after.
He needed breast milk to live, and Anne had none. In the slum, mercy was a currency few accepted. Women fed other children for money, or not at all.
So Anne worked more.
Longer shifts. Heavier loads. Hands splitting, healing just enough to split again. Every coin she earned was counted, then counted again, before being pressed into another woman's palm so he could survive one more day.
She skipped meals so he wouldn't. Wore the cold so he didn't have to. Measured survival in copper coins and sleepless nights.
She never spoke of miracles. Never asked why he had been thrown away.
The world had already answered that.
She simply chose him, again and again.
If the world had taught him how to die,Anne taught him, slowly and stubbornly, how to live.
She called him little one at first.
Names, she said, were for those who mattered.
He would earn one only if he survived.
The winter was cruel. Food vanished. He fell sick, fever burning, body weakening, and Anne worked until exhaustion bent her spine. When work failed, she stole.
Only what she had to.
Spring came.
He was still breathing.
That night, Anne sat beside him on the cracked floor, a candle flickering between them.
"You need a name," she said.
He watched her quietly.
"'Little one' won't last forever."
She thought for a long time.
"Arin," she said at last. "It means Mountain of Strength."
He met her gaze, dark eyes steady and unblinking.
Her smile widened slightly.
"Names don't matter here, Arin," she said. "Staying alive does."
She never promised things would improve.
She never lied.
That was her kindness.
Years passed.
Anne fed him when she could. When she couldn't, she taught him how to endure the wait. Cold nights were met with shared blankets and pressed bodies, heat stolen from each other rather than wasted. When sleep wouldn't come, and frustration turned heavy in his chest, she stayed close, silent but present.
Her voice remained soft when she spoke, even as her body slowly gave way.
He tried to walk once, fell hard enough to split skin and smear blood across the dirt. He didn't cry. He just stared at it. In his previous life, he faced more hardships than just some scratches.
Anne crouched beside him and wiped the blood with her sleeve.
"You're stubborn," she said. "That's good."
He sniffed. "It hurts."
She tied the cloth tighter. "So does living."
When she brought home bread, they shared it slowly, tiny bites, counted and careful, pretending it was enough. He once tried to eat too fast, desperate.
She laughed. A real sound, brief and rare.
"Slow down," she said. "Food tastes better when you make it last."
He remembered that laugh longer than the taste of bread.
More years slipped by.
The slums taught him hunger first. Then silence. Then the rules.
Food had to be earned. Kindness expired. Promises cost nothing because they were worthless.
Anne never taught him how to beg.
"Begging makes you weak, Arin," she said, watching him scrub filth from a merchant's floor. "Weak makes you dead."
He nodded and worked until his arms shook.
He labored before his body was ready, carrying loads heavier than himself, cleaning things that made grown men retch, enduring stares that stripped him down to something less than human.
Through it all, Anne stayed.
Not because she had to.
Because she chose to.
By the time he turned ten, he had grown taller.
Anne had grown thinner.
The cough came one winter and never left. It tore out of her chest at night, wet and ugly. Medicine costs more than food. Arin worked longer hours, ran more errands, came home with bleeding hands and empty pockets.
It was never enough.
He hated that more than hunger.
One night, he came back late, breath burning, heart pounding.
The room was dark. Too quiet.
No coughing.
"Mother Anne!" The name ripped from Arin's throat.
Anne lay on the floor, wrapped in the same cloth she had once used to keep him warm. Her breathing was shallow, uneven. Her eyes found him and tried to smile.
"You're late," she whispered.
He dropped to his knees, hands trembling, eyes burning as tears threatened to spill. The words died before they reached his tongue.
She reached up and touched his cheek. Her fingers were cold.
"Don't beg," she said softly. "Don't bow."
Her breath rattled.
"Live."
Her voice was calm. Detached. As if she had accepted this long ago.
Her hand slipped from his face.
Her eyes stayed open.
The silence that followed pressed down like iron. Then he screamed until his throat tore, until the candle burned down to nothing, until his voice broke into wet, useless sounds.
She didn't breathe again.
No one came. No doctors. No healers. Just another night in the slum.
The next day, he buried her outside the walls, hands raw, nails split, earth dark and wet beneath his fingers.
When he walked back alone, the world felt different.
Colder. Sharper. Empty.
He understood then.
This place didn't care if you were kind.
It didn't care if you tried.
It only cared if you were strong.
And he wasn't.