Mina Ostrohaya

Destinații: Unknown

None of us are.

Mina raised himself from the makeshift bed, his eyes scanning the desolate space around him—empty, cold, suffocating in its silence. The apartment bore the marks of abandonment: peeling wallpaper that curled like dying leaves, furniture covered in a fine layer of dust that caught the morning light like ash. He moved mechanically toward the stove, his footsteps echoing in the hollow chambers of his dwelling. With practiced indifference, he turned the dial and began heating the meager remains of food he'd discovered lurking in the back of his pantry—a half-empty can of soup, some stale bread, the scraps of a life barely lived.

Outside, a brilliant sun bathed the neighborhood in the deceptive warmth of late September. The golden light poured through the grimy windows like liquid honey, painting false promises across the cracked linoleum floor. Mina stopped mid-motion, spatula suspended in air, and stared. It was odd behavior, this sudden fixation—to stand frozen at the window as if somewhere in the bottom of your heart there existed something worth living for, some ember worth fanning into flame. Yet, that is only my opinion.

I have witnessed humanity's strange trajectory across millennia. I have seen humans endure miserable lives, gray and heavy with suffering, only to be transformed by some insignificant spark one ordinary day—a child's laugh echoing down an alley, the way autumn light catches in a lover's hair, the unexpected kindness of a stranger. Some small, unremarkable thing that makes them smile, that makes them believe, however briefly, that existence holds meaning.

So peculiar these beings are, so frustratingly, maddeningly likable. And yet The Tree Entity—that incomprehensible consciousness that weaves the fabric of existence—treasures them above all. It has constructed different facets of reality, entire dimensions populated by these fragile creatures, worlds where they ascend to become like gods. Little gods inhabiting perishing worlds, divine sparks in dying flesh, and somehow they are always, always forgiven.

Unlike us.

Humans have caused wars that consumed continents in flame. They have orchestrated massacres so profound that the earth itself wept blood. They have committed impossible-to-classify monstrosities, horrors that should have earned them obliteration, damnation, eternal exile from grace. And yet—The Tree forgives. The Tree loves. The Tree reaches down with branches of infinite mercy and cradles them still.

How strange! How damningly, infuriatingly strange for me—a natural-born god, formed from the primordial essence of creation itself—to find myself so limited in power by these mortal beings who are so constrained in both mind and lifespan. Their brief existences flicker past like candle flames in my eternity, entire generations born and buried in what feels to me like an afternoon. But lately, inexplicably, they have become beloved. Cherished. Chosen.

And I... I remain what I have always been: observer, chronicler, immortal witness to their blessed ephemerality.

Ah, but Mina is moving now. I have observed him these past few days, this particular human who carries darkness like a second skin. He walks somewhere down the street with that peculiar determination I've noted before—not quite purpose, not quite resignation, but something suspended between the two. His footsteps lead him through neighborhoods that shift from derelict to respectable, through streets where the architecture speaks of old money and older secrets.