The Last Son of Arathor

Novel Prep Protagonist Backstory Contest Entry

The storm rolled over the Illinois plains like a living thing, heavy clouds scraping low over cornfields, lightning flashing like the heartbeat of the sky. In the tiny town of Haverford, most people had already shut themselves inside, doors rattling against the wind, prayers whispered against the crackle of thunder.

Samuel Johnson was not one of them.

He was standing under the warped porch roof, rain drumming against the brim of his hat, his boots sunk in the mud. He held a lantern, its glow thin against the dark, scanning the fields behind the house.

“Sam, you’re going to catch your death out there,” Clara called from inside, her voice trembling more than she wanted it to.

“I heard something,” Samuel said, almost to himself. “Something like... like the sky tore open.”

And indeed it had.

Across the field, beyond the crooked fence and the scattered patches of soy, a fire burned where fire should not have been, smoke swirling in the rain like a dark ghost trying to rise. There was no thunder at that moment, only the hush of rain and the hum of something unnatural.

“Stay inside, Clara,” Samuel said as he stepped down from the porch, lantern bobbing in the darkness.

The crater was small but deep, smoldering against the soaked earth. Trees around it were stripped of leaves and blackened on one side. Samuel lifted the lantern higher, eyes narrowing as the light glinted off something in the center.

A pod, metallic and black as a starless night, pulsing with soft blue lines, lay cracked open in the mud.

And inside, wrapped in something like cloth yet nothing like cloth at all, was a baby.

The boy was dark-skinned, with a thick thatch of black hair plastered to his forehead. His eyes were closed, his small hands curled around the glowing material wrapped around him like a blanket. Steam curled around his tiny form, the rain hissing off the edges of the strange vessel.

Samuel’s breath caught in his throat.

“Lord, what am I looking at?” he whispered.

The baby stirred, letting out a soft cry that rose above the rain, a sound so human that Samuel’s chest tightened. Without thinking, he stepped forward, reaching down, the heat of the pod making his skin prickle.

He lifted the baby carefully, the strange cloth cool and dry in his hands despite the storm, the child’s body warm against his chest. The baby opened his eyes, deep brown and wide, blinking up at him with an expression so open, so trusting, that Samuel felt tears rise unbidden.

“It’s okay, little man,” Samuel said softly. “You’re safe now.”

Clara was waiting on the porch when he returned, the lantern lighting the hard line of worry around her eyes. When she saw what he carried, her hand flew to her mouth.

“Sam, what... where did you—”

“Out in the field. Came down from the sky,” Samuel said, unable to find simpler words. “He was just lying there, Clara.”

The baby reached a tiny hand toward Clara, and something in her seemed to break, her fear giving way to something deeper. She stepped forward, touching the child’s cheek with trembling fingers.

“He’s beautiful,” she whispered.

The baby cooed, small fingers curling around Clara’s thumb, holding on as if he would never let go.

They brought him inside, the storm pounding the windows, and set him down on the old quilt that had belonged to Clara’s mother. The baby looked around with wide eyes, blinking at the yellow glow of the kitchen lamp, tiny chest rising and falling steadily.

Samuel sat beside Clara on the floor, the two of them watching him in silence. The child reached out toward them again, and Samuel took his hand, feeling the impossible warmth of it, the sense of something larger than either of them humming in the small kitchen.

“What are we going to do?” Clara asked softly, though she already knew.

Samuel looked at her, then back at the child.

“We’re going to take care of him, Clara. We’re going to raise him right.”

She nodded, tears slipping down her cheeks as she touched the baby’s head.

“What’s your name, little one?” she asked.

The baby only blinked up at her, the storm outside beginning to pass.

They did not know about the holograms hidden within the shattered pod, waiting to explain the truth. They did not know about Zanth-Ra and Mantha-Ra, or about Arathor burning in its final moments as they saved their only son, Anth.

They did not know that the baby before them would one day grow strong enough to lift mountains, fast enough to outrun lightning, powerful enough to shape the world itself.

All they knew was that in that moment, in a small, unknown town near Chicago, in the middle of a storm, they had become parents.

And the child, who would one day be known to the world as Ozymandias, known to them as Christopher, closed his eyes and slept, safe in their care.