Okwano returned to the heavens with not even a speck of dust on his bare feet. Though he needed no armor, a leather shield hung from his back, worn over a javelin that stretched just short the length of his body. He was covered in thick, dark red fabric that would do no better to protect him than his dark, bare skin. He was faultless, and so was everything that he wore. Truly, Okwano was worthy of the title of god. However, there was a fire in his eyes that contrasted his flawless demeanor. The brown of his dark eyes shown bright, as if they yearned for something, accompanied by a subtle smirk on a face that normally bore no emotion. All of the half-gods that resided in the heavens knew to avoid him. Okwano was the god of destruction, and he was never satiated. Though he could not return to the mortal earth to wreak more havoc, he could easily terrorize the heavens if he chose to do so.

"The boy is dead." The words rumbled out of his mouth, spoken with ease, and yet also with the awesome power of an erupting volcano. You would expect to see these words as the end to a story, not as the beginning to one. But they were the words that Okwano declared to the heavens. Of course, the boy was not dead, and this was the beginning of a legend. In fact, in a way the boy was more alive than he was before the god of destruction descended to the land of the living at his birth. However, when Okwano declared that the boy was dead, nobody questioned him. After all, gods did not lie. On the rare occasion that one of the leaders of the heavens was told what to do, it was known that he was nothing if not thorough. The cattle were gone, alongside the cemetery and even the foundations laid for the houses there. All roads leading to the village had vanished, and all relatives of those who were slaughtered in the village would soon pass away from unknown causes. Any mention of the village would be erased from the annals of history. This is what it meant to be a threat to the god of destruction. 

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The boy was alive for a moment before Okwano touched down at his village. In fact, he could see. He could see his mother, holding him after his birth. And not a moment after, he could lay eyes upon Okwano's unveiled figure, which would burn the eyes of most mortals. He could see how Okwano erased the village with the swipe of a hand. For a second, the boy could smell. He could smell the room in which he was born, and then not a breath later he could only smell the destruction left in Okwano's wake. The smell of burnt hair, of sulfur and acetone, of rotting bodies as they succumbed to Okwano's divine presence before the blink of an eye. He could hear. Hear the cheers of the nursing room as the labor finished, just as they turned to screams in the brief appearance of the god of destruction. The pained cries of cattle, the prayers for mercy, and the single rumbling laugh of Okwano as he bathed in the destruction he caused. He could feel. The loving hands of a mother, and the cruel coldness as his entire world was ripped away in an instant. And then, in the blink of an eye, the boy was dead.

But he was awake. And what a miracle that was! What a strange fate, to die but to be awake. A scenario beyond what divine intervention could accomplish. Truly, the boy was connected to the heavens, just as the oracles who informed the gods had said. If the boy could feel, he would experience an intense burning sensation in his eyes, alongside the feeling of needles on the palm of right hand, as the image of an hourglass imprinted itself upon him, naked to the mortal eye. And there he laid, awake, but dead. Unable to fathom what had happened to him. With no sense of the world and no memory besides those of his village being razed to the ground, except for one, brief moment with his mother after his birth.