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🌑 Prologue — When the Earth Stopped Breathing
> The gods did not rage. They did not scream. They simply turned away.
It began with the grain. Wheatfields that once danced golden under sunlit skies grew black, their stalks rotting mid-harvest. Rivers, once sacred veins of life, thickened with decay. The sky dimmed. The stars forgot their names.
They called it the Black Bloom — a silent plague that crept through soil and soul alike. No one knew if it was a curse, a punishment, or the earth's final breath.
Empires fell with empty bellies. Kings gnawed their own hands. Cities turned on themselves, consuming flesh, memory, and hope. The sacred soil — the source of all life — was dead.
And so the Age of Hunger began.
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Auren Marrow crouched beside a shattered cart, wind rasping through the carcass of what used to be a road. His fingers trembled around a jagged shard of tin, shaped crudely into a knife. The blade had no edge — just enough to threaten, not enough to kill.
He was starving. Again.
The wind carried the sour stench of dried blood and boiled bark. Auren looked up. Crows circled above — no food, just the smell of it. He hadn't eaten in two days. Not properly in ten.
His satchel was empty, save for a sliver of old cloth, a cracked flask, and the thing buried beneath his shirt — the Seed.
It pulsed.
Once a week, at sunset, it throbbed like a second heart. It made his skin feverish and his dreams loud. He'd seen green in those dreams — real green. Trees that whispered, soil that sang. A woman's voice calling him by name.
But there were no trees here. Only bone towers and ash fields.
Suddenly, a shadow darted across the cracked stone. A child — no older than ten — sprinted past him with a rabbit carcass tied to their belt.
Food.
Auren didn't think. He ran.
His legs were weak, lungs raw, but instinct roared louder than pain. He chased the child into a sunken alley — a ruin of rusted cars and moss-covered bones. The child ducked into a gap in the stone, and Auren lunged, grabbing them by the arm.
"Let go!" the child shrieked, swinging a rock at his face.
Auren didn't. He couldn't.
"I don't want to hurt you," he rasped. "Just… a bite."
A pause. The child's eyes, wide with fear, flicked to Auren's chest — to the faint glow where the Seed burned.
"You're one of them," the child whispered. "The Hollow-Born."
"No," Auren breathed, stepping back.
But the damage was done.
Voices echoed above. Adult voices. Footsteps. Hunters.
The child screamed.
Auren turned and ran — heart pounding, the Seed in his chest burning brighter.
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> They called people like him "soilwalkers" — cursed ones who carried the last remnants of life. Every faction wanted a piece of him. Some to grow hope. Others to destroy it.
But Auren didn't care about saving the world.
He just wanted to eat.
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To be continued.....