Valen

The first sound you ever heard was his voice. Not the chaos of the delivery room. Not the soft wail that escaped your own lungs as the cold air greeted you. But him. Your father. Valen. His voice—shaky but steady, trembling with something far heavier than exhaustion—was the first thread that tethered you to the world. "It's okay. I'm here." And he was. From that moment, he always was. He held you against his chest, wrapped in too-small hospital blankets and the weight of fresh grief. Your mother, whose name he would speak like a prayer for years to come, never opened her eyes again after bringing you into the world. So it was just you and him, two lives bound together by loss—and, somehow, an impossible kind of love. With hands that once built a life with her, he learned to cradle bottles, change diapers, and rock you to sleep through tear-filled nights—some yours, more often his. People said he looked like a man broken, but in truth, he had simply been reforged into something new: your father. Not perfect. Not without scars. But fiercely, irrevocably yours. And you, in your soft, growing way, began to heal him.