Read The World of the Awakened Gods :: Chapter 9 – More Than a Number

They found him beneath the World Tree.

Rain fell gently that night, not in sheets but in whispers—like the sky was grieving. The roots of the sacred tree curled around him, as if nature itself had sheltered his arrival. A baby, golden-eyed, swaddled in fraying cloth, stared upward through the branches.

No name. No cry. Just breath and silence.

He was delivered to the city authorities by shrine pilgrims before sunrise and processed like any other foundling under the Divine Welfare Bureau’s care.

Assigned location: Sanctum Nine, a high-walled orphanage on the eastern rise.

Assigned designation:

11277002

— Provisional Identity Code

— Race: Unknown God Clan Variant

— Bloodline: Undetermined

— Legal Status: Citizen (Unclassified)

They clipped the tag to a soft metal plate and fastened it around his neck.

That was all the world gave him.

⸻

Sanctum Nine was cold, clean, and sacred.

Spiritual by design, sterile by reality.

Marble floors shone in silence. Light drifted from spirit-lamps suspended mid-air. Caretakers glided like specters in pale robes, tending to children with regulated affection. Nothing cruel. Nothing warm.

It wasn’t a home. It was a system.

Over the years, the other orphans came and went—some taken in by temples or minor clans, others adopted into service houses. Children whispered about where they came from, or what blood might awaken in them.

He had nothing.

He watched, always nearby, never invited. When he reached out, others turned away—not with hatred, just indifference. He was a shadow beside their stories. A ghost in plain sight.

The number on his tag—11277002—was all they called him.

And eventually, he started believing that maybe that was all he was.

⸻

It was during the Temple Moon that everything changed.

Once a year, the outer gates of Sanctum Nine were opened. The children were allowed to walk beneath the garden’s sacred trees under moonlight. A rare tradition preserved more by ceremony than belief.

They laughed, clustered in groups, comparing dreams and pretending to belong to noble bloodlines.

He walked alone. Quiet steps along the edge of the marble path, away from the lanterns, toward silence.

Near the willow grove, he stumbled. A stone caught his foot, and he landed hard on his hands, scraping skin along the edge of a worn shrine platform.

Blood welled up. Not dark red—soft gold. Subtle, faintly glowing.

He stared at it.

And then a voice.

“You bleed like the rest of us,” she said, calm and unbothered. “But you don’t carry yourself like one of them.”

He looked up.

She stood beneath the willow’s hanging glow, framed in silver light. A girl, maybe eleven, with a long violet braid down her back and strange eyes—one forest green, the other shimmering silver.

She wore a traveler’s cloak lined with fine gold stitching. Beneath it, a dark blue mantle bore a silver God Clan insignia: a diamond encircled by two serpents twisting upward toward a rising star. It shimmered faintly with divine trace.

He froze.

She walked toward him and knelt without hesitation. Her fingers were steady as she tore a clean strip of cloth from her cloak and bound the bleeding cut on his palm.

Then she saw the tag.

11277002

Her expression sharpened.

“They gave you a number,” she said quietly. “Not a name. That’s… expected.”

He said nothing.

She studied his face, then leaned in slightly.

“Well,” she said, brushing a strand of hair from his forehead, “if they won’t give you one… I will.”

She tapped his chest softly—just above the tag—and whispered:

“Saiko.”

Her voice was soft, but firm.

“It’s a name I give you. In my language, it means purpose.”

He didn’t know why that word filled the empty space inside his chest like a warm breath.

But it did.

She stood, adjusted her cloak, and turned to leave.

Before disappearing between the trees, she paused and looked back once.

“If they won’t give you a place—make your own.”

And then she was gone.

⸻

The name stayed.

Saiko.

He never saw her again. No one at Sanctum Nine remembered her. But that one moment changed everything. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t salvation.

But it was the first time someone saw him.

And chose to call him something real.

⸻

He held on to that name through the cold years that followed. Through endless days of being overlooked. Through empty meals, lonely birthdays, and silent nights staring out at the World Tree’s distant glow.

By the time he turned eighteen, he had no family. No friends. No recognition.

But he had a name.

And the will to make something of it.

⸻

The Awakening Ceremony came in the spring.

Children from across the district gathered before the Lineage Stone, dressed in their clan colors, accompanied by tutors, elders, or family envoys.

Saiko arrived alone.

He wore the same plain robes given to all unclaimed orphans. No sigils. No escort. No expectations.

When his name—or rather, his number—was called, he stepped forward.

The priest didn’t even raise his eyes. “Place your hands on the stone.”

He did.

The stone flickered briefly, then pulsed with a dull light.