The village of Liria was a small, quiet place tucked between gentle snow-covered hills and whispering pine woods. It was the kind of village where days passed slowly, where people knew each other's names, and where the only thing sharper than the cold wind was the warmth in people's hearts.
But peace had cracked two days ago.
It began when a group of traveling sword cultivators—adventurers by trade—passed through the southern trail and stumbled upon Eldenfell. What they found was not a village… but a grave.
Bodies lay still, twisted and broken in the snow. Homes were shattered, blackened by flame. Blood soaked the ground, already crusting beneath layers of ice. It was no natural disaster.
It was a massacre.
The travelers could barely speak. Some vomited, others fell to their knees. They had seen battle before—but this… this was cruelty.
Then they heard it.
Haa… hn… haa… hn…
A sound too fragile to believe. A sound too human to ignore.
Breathing.
They ran toward the noise, moving debris and charred wood, and there—beneath the corpses of his mother and sister—they found a boy.
No older than three.
His body was cold. Bloodied. Face pale like snow. But he was alive. Barely.
His lips were blue. His chest rose and fell in broken, shallow breaths. He was unconscious—no cry, no scream, no word. Just… breathing. As if clinging to life by instinct alone.
One of the travelers, a silver-haired woman named Lena, knelt and wrapped the child in her cloak. "We need to get him out of here," she whispered. Her voice trembled. "No child should wake up to this."
And so, they brought him to Liria.
---
Two days passed.
The child—Eren—had not stirred once. He lay on a straw mattress in the corner of the village doctor's home, covered in clean cloth, his tiny body bandaged with care.
The doctor checked on him day and night. "His vitals are stable," he told the village chief. "But his mind… something's broken. Like a mirror shattered from within."
The villagers didn't know what to say. A three-year-old… the only survivor.
And then, as the morning snow drifted down like feathers from heaven—Eren opened his eyes.
The room was quiet. The fire crackled gently. A young village girl named Arin sat beside the bed, cradling a warm bowl of soup in her lap.
She looked up and gasped softly. "You're awake…"
But the boy didn't look at her.
He sat up slowly, eyes wide open but blank. He didn't speak. He didn't cry. His snow-white hair fell gently across his small face, hiding nothing from the light of the window.
And his eyes—those crystal blue eyes—held something no child's ever should:
A memory of death.
He turned slightly to look out the window, where snowflakes floated down gently. But he wasn't seeing the snow.
He was seeing everything else.
The screams. The flames. The sword that cut through his father's chest. The cold hand that tore his sister from his arms. The cruel voice of the man—Nizen, the Soul Sword Emperor—who laughed as he slaughtered for pleasure, feeding on souls.
Arin placed the bowl beside him gently. "You're safe now," she said, softly, almost afraid. "You're in Liria. No one will hurt you here."
Still, the boy said nothing.
He simply sat there, small legs dangling off the bed, hands clenched tightly in his lap… eyes frozen in a place far away.
The doctor peeked in quietly. He sighed, watching the boy from the door. "The body will heal… but the soul? That takes time."
As the snow fell outside and silence wrapped the room like a blanket, Eren didn't shed a single tear.
He just stared.
Unmoving. Unblinking. Remembering.
And so, the boy with white hair and blue eyes sat in silence, a ghost of his former self.
A child of snow and sorrow.
The soul who had survived.
---