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.

The interior was vast and shadowed. Morning light filtered through stained glass, turning dust into color.


Brother Tashen trailed behind us nervously, telling us of Lord Theron and Lord Veshric's delegates already inside.


We entered the great hall, where Zhera—Lord Theron's daughter—appeared. Intelligent, composed, and dangerous in her own quiet way. She offered help in translating the Lost Books, revealing she had studied their ancient language and motives that aligned, at least for now, with mine.


When we reached the Archon's chambers, arguments and politics collided with threats and revelation.


A veiled woman named Naia pressed a blade to my throat.


And finally, I demanded privacy with Archon Dulane.


When the others left, the old man opened a black book older than the kingdom. Inside was the prophecy Awsar had died to protect:


When blood calls to blood and bone to bone,


Or the eclipse that balances the scales.


The child of sun and shadow must choose:


To burn away the darkness and die as light,


Or embrace the shadow and live as something new.


Only the bastard can become the bridge.I read it three times.


He warned me of the amulet's price—the cost in memory and humanity. Told me my mother had fled to avoid becoming its vessel.


When we left the chamber, the others waited: Zhera with her calculating eyes, Naia with her scars, Tet with quiet loyalty.


We followed Dulane deeper into the temple, into the vault below.


"Stupidity and courage look the same from the outside," Zhera said. "Let's hope you've got more of the latter."


Only forward—into whatever darkness waited below.


Chapter 13 - Chapter 13: The Prophecy