Zayto, now three years old, sat alone. His small fingers, thin and dirty from the dust accumulated on the ground, traced slow circles, shapes that intertwined into patterns only he could understand. A boat. A sword. A bird with broken wings. The drawings appeared and vanished under his fingers, as fleeting as the peace he found in those rare moments of silent solitude.
The dust clung beneath his nails, mixing with the cold dampness of the stone floor. Each movement of his fingers was meticulous, almost ritualistic, as if by creating those transient forms he could, for a moment, control something in his shattered world. The larger circle became a sun. Radiating lines turned into thorns. A distorted human figure, with one shorter leg, emerged before being swiftly erased by the palm of his hand.
Across the courtyard, a group of children ran about wildly, their high-pitched voices slicing through the air like sharp knives.
"Tag! Tag!" they shouted, their bare feet slapping against stones polished smooth by time.
The sound of their laughter made Zayto lift his eyes for a moment. His fingers paused mid-drawing what might have been a tree—or perhaps a gallows.
The tallest boy—Loran, seven years old with hair the color of dirty straw—led the game with the natural authority of someone who had never known rejection. The other children followed him like lambs, eager for his approval. A little girl with red braids—Elmira, the baker’s daughter—tripped over her own excitement and fell to her knees on the hard ground. The whole group stopped, surrounding her with exaggerated concern, laughing as they helped her up.
Zayto glanced at his own legs, uneven even under the worn tunic he wore. His left foot, wrapped in a shoe adapted with layers of fabric to compensate for the difference, rested at an odd angle. His fingers contracted involuntarily, digging into the dust until his knuckles turned white with tension.
A shadow crossed his field of vision, briefly blocking the rays of sunlight that had been his only companions that cold morning.
"Stay away from the cripple," muttered Sister Margot, her voice as harsh as a blade scraping against stone.
The temple’s oldest nun passed by him as if he were part of the furniture, her wooden water bucket swinging dangerously and spilling a few drops onto the floor. The drops fell near Zayto’s drawings, creating tiny craters in the dust that distorted his creations.
The novice accompanying Sister Margot—a girl not much older than the children playing, perhaps fifteen—hesitated for a second, her dark eyes falling on Zayto with something that might have been pity if not for the visible fear that made her recoil a full step.
"His deformity is a punishment from the gods," continued Sister Margot, pulling the novice by the arm with enough force to leave white marks on her pale skin. "A warning not to disobey sacred laws."
Zayto slowly lifted his eyes, his neck sore from being hunched over. He did not cry. He did not frown. He was already used to it.
The novice—whose name Zayto did not know, for no one ever introduced themselves to him—opened her mouth as if to say something, her pink lips trembling slightly. But Sister Margot gripped her arm even tighter, her yellowed, thick nails digging into the girl’s soft flesh.
"You are new here," the nun growled, her breath reeking of garlic and vinegar as always. "Learn quickly: this child is untouchable. Not by our cruelty, but by divine will. Look at him. Look closely."
The novice, with a small shiver that ran through her thin body, obeyed.
Her eyes, a brown so light they almost looked golden in the sunlight, met Zayto’s.
He held her gaze, his own eyes—too large for his thin face—green with strange amber glints under certain light, seeming to absorb the very sunlight streaming through the cracks. There was something in them that made the girl visibly shudder.
It was not the empty stare of an abandoned child.
It was something older, deeper, as if behind that mask of youthful innocence there was a conscious darkness, watching, calculating, remembering every insult, every look of disdain.
"He…" the novice swallowed hard, her Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. "He looks so small."
Sister Margot let out a humorless laugh, a sound more like the grunt of a sow than any expression of joy.
"Even a baby viper carries deadly venom," she said, pulling the novice away with a sharp tug that nearly made her stumble. "Come. There is work to be done, and your foolish sentimentality will not feed the poor."
They walked away, Sister Margot’s sandals dragging with their characteristic scraping sound across the stone floor, while the novice’s light footsteps barely made a sound.
Zayto watched them until they disappeared into the dark corridor that led to the nuns' quarters, where he was never allowed to enter.
Then, slowly, he returned to drawing in the dust, his fingers now trembling slightly—not from sadness, but from a cold rage beginning to take root in his chest.
This time, his fingers traced something different.
A snake.
Coiled around a cross.
And when he finished, he blew gently over the drawing, sending the dust flying and erasing any evidence of his small, silent rebellion.