The first thing Rayan heard in this world was his own cry.
Not a soft cry. Not a gentle whimper. It was a scream—sharp, desperate, as if his soul already knew what awaited him. As if his newborn heart could see the future he couldn't.
His mother held him once. Just once.
He doesn't remember her face. He doesn't remember her voice. All he remembers is the warmth of her arms... and then nothing. She left him at the steps of an orphanage on a rainy night, wrapped in nothing but a thin, dirty blanket.
The nun who found him said he wasn't crying when she picked him up. He was silent. Staring at the rain with eyes too old for a newborn.
"He knows," the old nun whispered to the others. "This child knows he was born with nothing."
---
The orphanage was called "House of Mercy," but there was no mercy there.
The children slept on hard wooden beds. They ate watery soup once a day. The older children beat the younger ones, and the nuns pretended not to see. "Life is hard," they said. "You must learn early."
Rayan learned.
He learned that a full stomach was a dream. He learned that tears changed nothing. He learned that no one was coming to save him.
By the time he was five, he had stopped crying.
Not because he didn't feel pain. But because he realized—no one cared when he cried. His tears fell on empty floors, heard by no one. So he stopped. He swallowed every tear before it could fall.
The other children called him "Stone Face." They said he had no heart.
They were wrong. He had a heart. It was just... broken. Broken from the very first day.
---
When Rayan was seven, a couple came to adopt a child.
They were rich. The woman wore a shiny dress. The man had a gold watch. They walked through the orphanage like they were shopping for a pet.
The woman looked at Rayan for a second. Then she turned to the nun and said, "This one's eyes are too dark. He looks... dangerous."
The man nodded. "We want a happy child. A normal one."
They chose a blonde boy with a big smile. As they left, the boy looked back at Rayan. He was still smiling.
Rayan didn't smile back. He just watched them go.
That night, he sat by the window and looked at the moon. It was the only thing that ever looked back at him.
He whispered to the darkness: "Why was I born?"
The darkness didn't answer.
It never did.
---
At twelve, Rayan ran away.
Not because he had somewhere to go. But because staying meant dying—slowly, silently, with no one to remember his name.
He walked for three days with no food. He slept in garbage bins. He drank rain water from puddles.
On the fourth day, he collapsed in an alley. His body gave up. His vision went dark.
But as he lay there, waiting for death, he heard something.
A voice. Deep. Ancient. It echoed inside his head like thunder:
"You were born with a cry, Rayan. Will you die with silence?"
He opened his eyes.
And everything changed