Rhohar had learned the art of survival in the only way a bastard could—through sharp wit and sharper defiance, wearing his illegitimacy like battered armor against a world that would never grant him mercy. The highborn whispered when he passed. The lowborn spat. 

He belonged nowhere, claimed by no one, save for the red amulet his mother had left him—a relic older than Arazon itself, warm against his chest like a dying ember that refused to go cold.
He could not remove it. He had tried, gods knew he had tried. But the amulet clung to him as his mother never had, pulsing with whispers of fire and memory, of ancient tongues he did not understand and promises written in ash.
Then came the night the assassins struck.
They came as shadows, blades kissed with poison, eyes cold as winter iron. 

And when steel met flesh and Rhohar's blood touched the amulet, the world caught fire. Golden flame erupted from the relic, searing through cloth and skin, branding him with a mark that blazed like the sun at dawn—the sacred sigil of the Sunborn, a title thought dead and buried with the old kings.
The mark had not appeared in three generations. Not since the Nozak Brotherhood rose in righteous fury and cast down the bloodline kings, establishing the Law of Noz: that leadership must be earned through merit and devotion, not inherited through the accident of birth. The Sunborn were heretics, tyrants who had claimed divinity. History said they deserved their end.

But history, Rhohar would learn, is written by those who survive to tell it.
His blood carried the purest royal line, descended not from mortal kings but from Ninaarsita himself—the lion-headed god of flame and dawn, who once walked the world when it was young and the sun obeyed no master. The priests called his mother a chosen heretic, a runaway who defied the sacred order and abandoned her duty for lust and shame.

Each word he spoke, each spell he wove, demanded a price the amulet was eager to collect. Memory burned away like parchment in flame. The scent of bread baking. His own name, nearly forgotten, hovering at the edge of his mind like a ghost. The amulet was not a gift. It was an inheritance that devoured from within.

The Nozak Brotherhood would stop at nothing to see him dead. Their entire order—three centuries of law, ritual, and carefully constructed power—rested on the lie that the Sunborn line had ended. If Rhohar lived, if he claimed what was his, their temples would crumble to dust and their priests would be revealed as usurpers cloaked in holy vestments.
But the Brotherhood was not his only enemy. In the shadows beyond Arazon's borders, the exiled nobles stirred—those who had once ruled as demigods, wielding shadow magic like breathing, bending the world to their will. They saw in Rhohar not a threat, but a key. A weapon to reclaim the godhood they had lost, to rebuild their empire of darkness and subjugate the lands once more beneath their terrible glory.

And beyond all this, the world itself was fracturing. Kushna, proud and unconquered for a thousand years, fell beneath Meroe's iron legions. Khrma's temples, where priests had once spoken with the voices of gods, now stood silent and hollow, their altars cold. And far to the south, in the ruins of Atlantis—ancient, cursed, beautiful.

A young priest emerged—barely older than me, thin as a sapling, with nervous energy that reminded me of a bird that's forgotten how to fly but still remembers the sky. His robes were rumpled, and he had dark circles under his eyes like he hadn't slept in days. Maybe weeks.


"You shouldn't be here," he said, looking at me. Then his eyes dropped to the amulet around my neck, and all the color drained from his face like water from a cracked cup.


"The amulet of Kii Hore," I said. "Yes. I'm Rhohar. Kessara's son. And I'm here to see the Lost Books."


The young priest looked like he might faint. "You can't just—the Archon would need to approve—and with everything that's happened—"


"Brother Tashen." An older voice cut through his panic like a blade through silk.


A woman emerged from the temple, her robes more elaborate, grey hair pulled back severely. Her face was lined with age and something harder—disappointment, maybe, or the kind of bitterness that comes from spending decades watching ideals crumble into politics.


Brother Tashen scrambled aside, and Sister Vorin descended the steps with the careful dignity of someone who'd spent decades perfecting the art of looking down at people from a great height—spiritual, if not physical.


She stopped three steps above me, maintaining the advantage, and studied me like I was a specimen in a jar.


"Kessara's bastard," she said finally. "I wondered if you'd show up eventually. Though I expected you'd have the sense to stay hidden, given what happened to your mother."


"Your mother was a coward who stole sacred artifacts and fled her duty." Vorin's voice could have frozen fire.


She continued her cold tirade until I said, "My mother made a choice. To protect her child. To give him a life outside of all this... Maybe it was cowardice. But she's dead, and I'm here, and I'm making a different choice."


"To stand. To learn what this amulet really does. To figure out how to stop the Shadow Council before they complete whatever ritual they're planning. And you're going to help me."


Vorin laughed—sharp, bitter, like the sound of something breaking.


"Because the alternative is watching the nobles tear this temple down stone by stone... And because that amulet around my neck is the only proof left that divine right exists—that everything you've dedicated your life to isn't just an elaborate lie."


"You're a child playing with forces you don't understand."


"Then teach me." I held up the amulet. It caught the morning light and blazed gold, warm as hope.


She hesitated. Then: "The Archon will need to approve—"


I pushed past her and entered the Temple of First Light.


Chapter 12 - Chapter 12: The Archon’s Hall