Darkness.
It was heavy, warm and claustrophobic.
My first sensation wasn't pain. It was confusion.
Then came the crying.
Not someone else's. It was I who was the one crying. Loud, raw and uncontrolled. The kind of crying that doesn't need a reason, only a trigger. And yet I didn't know why I cried. My body moved on its own, as if I'd been dropped into a foreign vessel that responded to a language my mind didn't understand.
The world felt muffled, like my ears had been filled with cotton. Everything was warped. I couldn't open my eyes. Couldn't speak. My limbs were stiff and curled. My chest heaved with sharp, tiny breaths, and something about it all—this weakness, this fragility—terrified me.
Then I felt it.
Warmth.
Arms. Holding me. Steady but gentle. I was pressed against something soft, rhythmically thumping. A heartbeat maybe? It was strange. Foreign and intoxicating.
In the labour camp, the only time someone touched you was to pull, push, hit, or punish. Never to hold. Never to embrace.
I cried louder, not out of fear now, but something else. Something I couldn't describe. Maybe my body remembered something my mind didn't. A kind of grief... or relief. Maybe both.
The arms pulled me closer. I felt a cheek press against my head. Then, a sound came.
A hum. A melody. No words—at least none I knew—but it wrapped around me like a lullaby from a forgotten world.
No... this wasn't the prison.
No one in the camp ever sang.
My cries softened. My throat still ached, but the trembling in my chest started to ease. My body, small and uncontrollable, relaxed against the rhythm of that heartbeat.
What is this? Am I hallucinating? Is this what death feels like?
I tried to stay awake, to make sense of it. But then something was brought to my mouth. Something warm. Round. Soft. Instinct took over before thought could intervene.
I sucked.
Sweet. Is it... milk?
My eyes would've gone wide if they could open. What the hell? My heart pounded. Nothing made sense. I had never tasted milk like this. Only the powdered kind they gave to the sick workers, and only if you weren't too far gone. This was... different.
I wanted to pull away, to think, to scream—but that instinct, that buried hunger, took over. My mind swirled with questions, but my body knew only one thing: comfort.
And comfort was dangerous. Comfort made you weak. In the camp, comfort got you killed.
But my body didn't listen.
It drank. It relaxed.
And then, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, I fell into a sleep that wasn't lined with dread.
Time became strange after that.
I didn't dream. Or if I did, they vanished the moment I woke. I couldn't tell day from night. Every moment bled into the next like ink in water.
But slowly awareness returned.
First, the sounds. The voices. Different from the harsh barks of the guards or the lifeless murmurs of the other labourers. These voices sang, whispered and laughed.
I couldn't understand them—words like wind, light and foreign—but they weren't cruel. They weren't angry. They didn't threaten.
Next came the touch.
Fingers brushing over my forehead. Callused, but careful. A cloth wiping my face. Hands lifting me, adjusting my position, rocking me gently. My body responded on its own. A coo here. A kick there. I hated how helpless I was. But I didn't hate them.
Then, blurry light.
I started to open my eyes in short bursts. Blobs of color. Movement. Shadows passing over me. A warm ceiling above. Wooden beams. Light filtering through cloth curtains.
Days passed like this. Or weeks. I didn't know.
Sometimes, panic would bubble up in me like acid.
Why am I still like this? Why can't I move properly?
The fear was familiar—the same kind I used to feel when I overslept and feared the warden's cane. When you live your life digging holes for people who'll never care to fill them, you wake up afraid something will hurt you.
But nothing hurt me here.
And that, somehow, scared me more.
Eventually, I began to hear a name.
"Arile."
At first, I thought they were calling for someone else. But they only said it when looking at me. Smiling. Touching my hand. Lifting me.
It didn't feel real.
Someone had given me a name.
A name. Mine.
Not a number. Not "you." Not "boy" or "filth" or "bastard."
I didn't know what to make of it. I wasn't ready to accept it. And yet... hearing it stirred something deep inside me.
"Arile," the woman whispered one night, holding me close, rocking me to sleep.
Her voice was soft and full of something I'd never once tasted in the air: affection.
One morning, the man—my father, I think—lifted me from my crib.
I recognized him now. Strong frame. Fair skin. A low voice that rumbled when he laughed, though he often tried to sound stern when talking to others.
He said something I couldn't understand. But his tone was playful.
Then, he took me outside.
The moment the light hit me, my body stiffened. The sky... the sky. It was so wide. So blue. Clouds like ships floating above. Wind brushing my skin like invisible hands. The scent of pine, grass, something wild.
I couldn't breathe.
We were on a small hill overlooking a field of tall grass. Flowers dotted the landscape like drops of paint spilled by a careless god. A dog barked in the distance. Birds chirped, flitting between tree branches.
This was it. The world.
The real world.
The world they told us about in books but never let us see. The world they said we didn't deserve. That people like us—born from criminals, grown in filth—would never reach.
My chest tightened.
My lips trembled.
I cried again.
But not like before. This time the tears came from a place too deep to touch. The kind of pain that only surfaces when hope dares to show its face.
This was what I had dreamed of all those years while picking at walls with a rusted pickaxe. While chewing stale bread in the dark. While watching other children drop from exhaustion before they ever had a chance to live.
This world was real.
And I was in it.
Even if this was some lie—some hallucination cooked up by my dying brain as my body bled out in the dirt—I didn't care.
Even if this was a dream crafted by a cruel god to mock me one final time before oblivion—I would live it.
My new father looked at me, puzzled by my tears. He said something again. Rocked me gently. His hand patted my back.
He looked worried.
He didn't understand that I was mourning the boy I used to be. The one who never saw this sky. Never touched this grass. Never had a name.
If this world wanted to give me a second chance... Then I would take it.
Even if I didn't deserve it.
Even if I didn't understand it.
Even if it was a lie.
Because this lie... was the most beautiful thing I'd ever known.