Miracleborn Saga

The morning sunlight crept lazily through the shutters, but it did not bring warmth. It spilled across the floor in long pale stripes like the ribs of something lifeless. Dust floated through the light, swirling slowly—too slowly, unnaturally so—like time itself had begun to warp.

Henry sat on the edge of his bed, unmoving.

His face was pale, eyes bloodshot, lips slightly parted as he stared at nothing in particular—just the cracked edge of the wall where shadows writhed like insects in the corner of his vision.

He hadn't slept.

His hands trembled as they reached for the water jug.

It spilled.

He didn't care.

The moment he stood, the room tilted.

Not physically, but in essence—like the space around him stretched, as though the walls breathed. The books on the shelf looked older than they were yesterday, spines cracked in impossible ways. Mimi's ball was no longer a ball—it had too many sides.

He staggered to the cupboard, pulled out a coat, and threw it on over a wrinkled tunic.

Still trembling, he took a small tin of salted meat and scraped it into Mimi's bowl. The meat looked darker than usual. Almost… pulsing.

Mimi sniffed it, confused.

Henry didn't wait.

He grabbed his fedora, shoved it on crookedly, and made for the door without a word. Not a goodbye. Not a glance.

Mimi meowed softly, watching him go.

The door slammed, and the room fell still.

---

The streets outside were bathed in a gentle sun—but Henry saw none of that.

The sky above shimmered like stretched skin. The clouds twisted unnaturally, coiling into spirals that never sat still. People walked past, but their faces blurred, mouths moving too wide, eyes too long, voices too muffled.

He blinked hard.

They remained distorted.

Was it the dream still clinging to him? Or was the world breaking beneath him?

A man sold bread at a corner stall—but when Henry passed, the loaves bent like clay. A child skipped rope—but the rope hissed as it slapped the ground, like snakes coiling with every swing.

He couldn't breathe properly.

They see me now, a voice whispered behind his thoughts.

They've always seen me. I was just too blind to see them back.

He gripped the brim of his hat tighter.

His boots echoed too loud on the cobbles. The town stretched longer than it should. Doors seemed farther apart. The buildings looked taller, the shadows too deep.

Something peeked from an alley.

A limb, or maybe just a shape. Gone when he turned.

Henry didn't speak.

He just kept walking, fast, urgent, desperate.

Up toward the hill.

Toward the Church of Hazaya.

Only one thought burned clear through the madness:

"The Father. He must know what's happening to me. He has to."

Behind him, somewhere far off, the wind laughed.

Or maybe it was never wind at all.

....

Step by step, Henry climbed.

One hundred and thirteen. His mind counted them instinctively, but the numbers bled into nonsense—eighty-two was after sixty, then came twelve again. The world spiraled. His legs burned, but he didn't feel them. The voices in the air followed him up the slope—familiar, unfamiliar, and then inside his ears.

By the time he reached the summit, his eyes were wide, sweat poured down his face, and his breath came in short, shaking bursts.

And there he was.

The Father.

Sitting at the top of the stone stairway on a cheap plastic chair—a mundane, out-of-place object amidst sacred stone and divine silence. A chipped teacup rested in his palm, steam rising calmly as if the world wasn't unraveling behind Henry's eyes.

"You're late," the Father said, sipping.

Henry staggered forward, staring at him like a man on the edge of collapse.

"You… you knew, didn't you?! You knew this was coming! They're everywhere—everyone's wrong—the town's changing—I saw shadows in bread, I heard words in my blood—"

He reached to pull at his own hair but stopped halfway, laughing under his breath. A horrible, sharp laugh that cracked his throat dry.

The Father stood slowly.

He gave no look of surprise. No pity.

Only the kind of stillness that understood.

"Inside," he said gently.

Henry blinked. "What?"

"I'll explain. But not here." He turned, calling over his shoulder to two nearby nuns—both in hazel robes, tending to the front garden of the chapel.

"Sisters, I'll be in the lower chamber. Tend the church."

The nuns bowed silently, not even sparing Henry a second glance. Perhaps they had seen others like him before.

Henry stumbled after the Father as he opened a heavy metal door behind the altar, revealing a narrow spiral staircase that sank into the stone earth below the church.

With every step down, the noise above—birds, wind, bells—faded.

Only silence waited in the dark beneath the house of the goddess.

And whatever truth Death had tried to whisper into Henry's soul.

The staircase wound deep into the hill, its walls carved with forgotten prayers. As they descended, the stone grew colder, the air tighter, like the mouth of the earth slowly closing behind them.

At the bottom, the corridor opened into a small, circular chamber, lit by a ring of lanterns hanging from the ceiling like fireflies suspended in orbit.

Two red velvet sofas sat opposite one another, framing a round wooden table carved with faded symbols—some sacred, others… stranger.

Henry stumbled in first.

His steps were uneven now. His fingers twitched as if grasping something unseen. Sweat had soaked through the back of his shirt, and his eyes glimmered with a glassy sheen—half awake, half dreaming.

He laughed softly, then louder, wobbling in place.

"So this… this is where you keep the holy secrets? The whispers? The little gods with their crooked teeth?" His voice took on a singsong tone. "I like it. Cozy. Smells like… burnt honey and guilt."

The Father closed the chamber door quietly behind them. He said nothing, only moved to the far corner, where a low stone shelf held clay jars, bundles of herbs, dried roots, vials sealed in wax, and a grail made of dark bronze.

As Henry began pacing in slow circles, muttering to himself about shadows hiding in the corners, the Father moved with precision—mixing.

He added a pinch of crushed green lichen.

A drop of ink from a glassy black bottle.

Three pieces of what looked like bone—no larger than fingers.

And something that sizzled violet when it hit the grail's base.

He stirred it all together with a thin iron rod, muttering words beneath his breath, not prayer, but binding.

Henry flopped onto one of the sofas, laughing again. "You going to bless me now, old man? Feed me fire and call it truth? Shall I walk on water next? Or is this when I grow wings and speak backwards?"

The Father didn't look at him. But his brows furrowed in quiet worry.

He's close… too close, the Father thought grimly.

If he waited longer, if the words in Henry's mind sank too deep, he wouldn't just lose himself.

He'd become something else.

A Miracle.

Uninvited. Unshaped. Born from fractured thought.

And that… would be irreversible.

The grail began to glow.

And the Father prayed—not to Hazaya—but to time itself.

That he wasn't already too late.

The Father approached slowly, grail in hand, its liquid now a deep, shimmering gray—like molten silver soaked in shadow. It pulsed faintly, humming with a pressure that wasn't sound but feeling. Like standing too close to a storm before it breaks.

Henry laughed weakly, his eyes darting. "You gonna baptize me in that muck?"

The Father didn't answer.

He merely knelt, tipped the grail to Henry's lips, and whispered, "Forgive me."

The potion touched his tongue.

And the world imploded.

Henry's spine arched violently. His scream was swallowed by silence. He was falling in a supermassive blackhole, but not through space—through pressure, as though the weight of the entire cosmos pressed into the shape of a man and hurled it into a hole darker than night.

His ribs crushed. His thoughts splintered. There was no body, only pain. No pain, only witnessing.

Then—

The fall stopped.

He floated.

Before him rose a creature that defied comprehension.

It had no face, only a massive eyeball, its iris ringed with dozens of spirals. Around it rippled a sea of fur-covered tendrils, matted with slippery black ichor, dripping in slow motion like a leaking moon. Millions of tentacles twisted behind it—some disappearing into invisible space, others coiling into geometric shapes that made Henry's mind ache.

The eye blinked.

And stared.

Henry's thoughts snapped—

....

He gasped, violently.

Back in the chamber.

The red sofa beneath him. The potion cup on the floor, still steaming. The Father standing over him, breath held.

Henry sat up slowly, chest heaving. His body was still his. But something was different.

"I saw it," he whispered. "I… I know now."

The Father stayed silent.

Henry's voice cracked, yet steady. "Am I a Miracle Invoker? Or something worse?"

The Father looked away, pretending to tidy the table. "There are many roads—"

"No," Henry said. "Don't deflect. Tell me what I am. What I'm supposed to do now."

The Father didn't answer at first.

Then softly, he said, "We never choose to invoke miracles. They choose us. All the things you are going to suffer from now, I am not the one guilty for that. "

Henry stared, the weight of that truth sinking deep.

And he realized—

His old life had just ended.

The tension still hung in the room like the echo of thunder after a storm. Henry sat upright now, eyes sharper, breathing slow—but his mind raced. The vision of that eye… that impossibility… still lingered like a stain behind his thoughts.

Then the Father exhaled and—somehow—smiled.

"Well then," he said, reaching for a kettle near the stone hearth, "you've had your first taste of unraveling reality. Time for the only thing that holds it together."

He poured two cups of tea, steam curling like silver ribbon.

Henry blinked. "That's your answer to cosmic horror? Tea?"

The Father handed him a cup. "Son, when you've seen what I've seen, tea is the only god left worth serving."

Henry snorted despite himself, taking the cup in both hands. The warmth grounded him. His fingers still trembled slightly.

"Any biscuits?" he muttered dryly.

"Not unless you like chewing chalk and regret."

The two sat in silence for a moment. The tea tasted bitter, but oddly… honest.

Then, the Father's expression shifted—light humor fading into the soft gravity of truth.

"Henry," he said, folding his hands. "There's no going back. You've awakened. You're bound now to the realm between miracles and madness."

Henry looked down into his cup.

The Father continued. "We are called Miracle Invokers. Not priests. Not mages. We don't cast spells. We navigate the impossible. And we walk it through what we call the Paths."

"Paths?" Henry asked.

The Father nodded. "There are six. Each Path has six Routes—ways of shaping the miracle within, based on who you are, and who you might become. Each Route is ranked from -5 to 0, climbing with experience, danger, and loss. The six paths are: Gambler, Mystic, Charmer, Strategist, Lucky Charmer and Survivor. "

"You," the Father said, tapping his teacup, "are a Mystic."

"Because I'm curious?" Henry asked.

"Because you listen to things no one else dares to hear."

The Father placed a palm on his chest. "I'm -4, Route of the Peer. One who guides, walks beside, teaches. You, however…"

He looked Henry in the eye.

"You are ranked -5. The Watcher after drinking the recipe."

Henry's throat tightened. "What does that mean?"

"It means," the Father said gently, "that the world will soon begin to reveal things to you… and you'll wish it never had."

The two empty tea cups sat quietly on the table, their steam long faded. The chamber now felt smaller, dimmer—as if the weight of truth had taken up space of its own.

The Father rose slowly, adjusting his robe with a familiar ease, and looked at Henry with a kind, unreadable gaze.

"That's enough for today," he said. "Let it settle. Let the edges blur."

Henry stood too, though a little more stiffly. His legs still remembered the pressure of that blackhole fall. "I have… a hundred more questions."

"You'll have ten thousand by next week," the Father replied with a soft smirk. "But for now, go. Live. The Route of The Watcher doesn't unfold in lecture halls."

Henry blinked. "So that's it? I just… leave?"

"For now."

There was something in the Father's tone—firm, final, but not dismissive. More like a door gently closing behind him.

Henry nodded hesitantly, gave a half-bow out of habit, and turned toward the winding stairwell. The dim firelight cast his shadow long across the chamber wall. He wore his Fedora hat calmly.

He ascended without another word.

The midday sun was gentle as Henry stepped outside the chapel. The breeze up here was still cool, still whispering, but now it sounded… clearer. No voices, no distortions. Just wind. Just light.

He started to descend the stone steps, boots thudding lightly against the ancient stone.

Halfway down the slope, he paused.

A thought struck him, like a pebble bouncing down a cliff.

"…I forgot to ask his name. Again."

He turned back, looking up toward the chapel door.

The Father stood at the top, framed by sunlight, arms calmly behind his back.

"I never caught your name!" Henry called.

The wind carried his voice up easily.

The Father gave a small shrug. "You don't need it yet."

Henry raised an eyebrow. "Why not?"

The Father smiled faintly. His silver hair fluttered in the wind.

"Understand your Route first. Then you'll understand me."

Henry stood there, absorbing that.

Then he gave a small, crooked smile and turned back down the path.

The road into Prada awaited—but now, it shimmered with the weight of something unseen.

He didn't know what lay ahead.

But he knew, at last, that something had already begun.