Eight Years Ago — Land of Wind, Edge of the Deep Desert
The sky bled a pale ochre over the cracked bones of the desert. The sun did not shine—it scowled, its heat relentless and hateful, burning the sand like judgment from some forgotten god. And beneath it, half-buried in the dunes, lay a boy.
Raghoul.
Barely seven years old, his skin had already darkened under the harsh kiss of the sun, his body shriveled from thirst, and his throat dry and torn from silent screams. Blood had crusted over his neck where the vulture's talons had carved a mark of death. He no longer cried. He couldn't. The wind blew through the dunes like whispers of the dead, and the vultures began to descend.
One brave vulture landed first, its claws dragging rivulets across the sand. It tilted its head at the child, blinking one obsidian eye, its beak twitching. It lunged.
But before its beak could puncture skin, a shadow fell across them.
"This is not your meal," a voice like gravel and fire said.
The monk stood barefoot in the sand, his body wrapped in brown-gray robes that had once been pure white. He moved like a man who had walked forever—tired, slow, yet filled with a deep and terrifying certainty. In his hand, he held a staff carved with scorched scripture, the language of the dead gods.
He swung it once. The vulture screeched and turned to ash.
The boy blinked.
That was when he first met the monk.
---
The monastery stood like a corpse in the desert, broken and lifeless, its body sunken into the sand like it tried to flee time itself. Once, long ago, it had been a temple to gods that no longer listened. Now it was a graveyard of hollow statues and cracked stone, a silent witness to the rot of the world.
Its central courtyard bore the shattered idol of a three-faced deity—one face weeping, one smiling, the last blind and screaming. Wind howled through its missing mouth. The columns were half-eaten by sandstorms, and the great bells that once rang to summon worship now lay shattered at the base of the cliffs.
This was where Raghoul woke up.
Bandages soaked in medicinal paste lined his neck. The scent of burnt incense and blood drifted in the air like lingering ghosts.
He opened his eyes to find the monk sitting cross-legged at the base of the three-faced statue.
"You live," the monk said without turning. "That was not guaranteed."
Raghoul couldn't answer. His voice had been stolen by the wound.
The monk finally turned. His face was long and shadowed, beard graying in patches, eyes yellow like a dying flame. "Do not speak. Only listen."
And so Raghoul listened.
---
Days passed. The child could not speak, but the monk did not require him to.
"You were thrown to the desert like garbage," the monk said one night as they sat near the cracked fountain, where only dust gathered. "I do not ask why. I ask what you will become now."
Raghoul stared, silent.
"Do not seek pity. This world devours the weak. Even your tears will turn to salt before you're given mercy."
He handed the child a bowl of roasted scorpion and cracked roots. It tasted like ash and grit.
"Eat. You must suffer to grow."
Another night, when the sky was bruised with stars, the monk took him to the inner sanctum.
The air was thick with incense and rot. Statues of fallen gods loomed in every direction, mouths open in screams, some missing limbs, others decapitated, all of them half-swallowed by sand. The floor was carved with prayers that had long since been defiled, and strange murals painted in black blood danced across the domed ceiling—images of gods warring, burning villages, rivers of screaming corpses.
"This was once a holy place," the monk said. "Now it is truth. Beautiful. Unforgiving."
He pointed to one of the murals, where a man knelt before the sun, only to be crushed by its rays.
"Hope is the first lie the world tells us."
Raghoul touched the cracked stone. It was warm. Almost breathing.
---
The training began with pain.
The monk made him carry stones heavier than his body, crawl across burning sand, hold his breath until his vision blurred. He struck him with the staff when he faltered.
But the greatest agony came from the breath training.
"Breathe like the gods have abandoned you," the monk said. "Breathe like your soul is bleeding."
He taught Raghoul to draw air from the bottom of his being, to feel every nerve, to stretch his lungs until they burned. The air grew cold around him as he practiced, cold and sharp, as if his soul was leaking out.
And then came the fire.
It was not the orange-yellow fire of natural flame. It was red, blood red—cold to the soul, but scalding to the flesh. It tore through the air like hunger.
"You do not bend flame," the monk whispered. "You become the wound that births it."
They practiced in the courtyard under moonlight, the child screaming silently as his flames curled and burned statues black. The gods, if they were watching, did not flinch.
---
In time, Raghoul learned to speak. But what he learned to say… was little.
"What is your name?" the monk asked.
"…Raghoul."
"A name is a shackle. You will burn it. Become nothing. Become will."
The monk ranted sometimes, muttering to the shadows.
"I have walked through cities of corpses. Held kings as they died choking on their dreams. There is no salvation. Only power… or the absence of it."
He would stare into the flames and laugh, shaking with something between ecstasy and despair.
"They called me holy," he said once, tears crawling down his cracked cheeks. "But I am a coward. I tried to cleanse the world. I only fed the fire."
Raghoul watched silently, breathing the way he had been taught. Watching the flickering blood-flames of his soul in the monk's mirror eyes.
---
Years Passed Like Rot
Raghoul grew taller. Stronger. Colder.
He learned languages of power, of death, of silence.
He fought shadows in the monastery—phantoms conjured from the monk's broken mind. He wrestled with sand-demons called forth from ancient seals. He learned to listen to the wind's whispers, the secrets of the broken gods.
But in the night, sometimes, he dreamt.
He dreamt of a red sun that screamed. A sun that did not rise, but bled across the sky. He saw cities burn, forests split, people melt into shadows. He woke with sweat freezing on his skin.
"Dreams are the vomit of the soul," the monk said. "Burn them."
---
The Last Teaching
One day, the monk layed sick and almost breathless before him, old and shaking.
"I am ready to leave."
Raghoul blinked. "Why?"
"There is nothing left for me here but ghosts. My demons are yours to fight now." letting out crackling chuckle he whispered
And the temple greatest woe, the righteous - blasphemer had died. The wind screamed as his soul stepped into the desert again this time leading to the jagged teeth of the abyss, no longer bound, no longer flesh, now a soul of corruption, a resentful Buddha.
---
Now
He blinked.
A scream.
The past fled like smoke.
He was no longer in the monastery. The boy was gone. The monk was ash.
Only Raghoul remained.
And the scream had come from nearby.
He stood, cloak falling over his frame, red flame flickering cold around his palms.
The world was waiting.
And it would burn.