I was twelve when I heard the first wail in history.
It did not come from lungs or throats. It came from the sky itself,a low, endless cry that split the air and bent the ground beneath us. The moon rose too suddenly, the sun folded into itself, and noon fell into dusk.
People screamed eclipse! Priests called it prophecy. Scientists called it collapse. But I knew better. The sun had died, and the world was dying with it.
Then they came.
Not myths. Not storms. The elements themselves, alive. Rivers shaped into creatures that roared in the voices of the drowned. Fire rose as walking infernos, flickering faces in their heat. The earth split and birthed giants with molten veins. And the air,it moved like a predator, circling and choosing.
I saw my family collapse. My father’s lips split as he gasped for nothing. My mother’s eyes bulged, her chest seizing as she dragged my brother into her arms. Their hands reached out, clawing for me. For air. For life.
And still, I breathed.
The wind curled around me like a crown, like chains, feeding me while the world starved. My father’s eyes locked on mine—pleading, breaking—as his breath rattled into silence. I wanted to give him mine. I wanted to fall with them. But the air refused to leave me.
It was mine.
And mine alone.
That night, the voice came. Cold. Merciless. Inside me.
You are mine. You are Air. You will breathe, and they will not.
And so I watched them die. The villagers staggering, clutching their throats, faces blue and broken. Children crumpling beside their mothers. The strong collapsing beside the weak. All of them fading as the air coiled itself inside my lungs and nowhere else.
By dawn, I stood in silence among bodies that would never rise again. My family. My people. Everyone I had ever known.
At first I screamed at them “Don’t breathe! Please, don’t breathe!”—my voice tearing in the chaos, this was the only way I could save you’ll. But they couldn’t hear me. Or maybe they wouldn’t. One by one they gasped, clawed, collapsed, their faces turning blue as the air clung only to me.
And when my voice broke, when there was no one left standing, I could only whisper into the stillness……
Please… don’t breathe.
