The Day He Did Not Burn
The rain had that way of cleaning the city on the surface — sweeping the grime off the asphalt, erasing silhouettes until they became anonymous. Qaishad Al-Rayan felt it like a cold pressure on his skin, as though the sky itself were trying to peel something off him. He held his school bag in one hand, his switched-off phone in the other, and watched the blue glow of an ambulance reflect off the shattered storefront of a pharmacy.
There was noise — voices breaking into sobs and orders. When the young woman was lifted out of the crushed car, Qaishad saw the tear — not in her body, but in the air around her: a black veil, like thick smoke that undulated and seemed to breathe. The paramedics stepped back without understanding; one of the firefighters had a trembling flashlight.
First Qaishad smelled a stench — old blood, wax, burnt prayers — then something more intimate: a pain in his ribcage, as though someone were bending and re-bending his ribs. A tiny melody vibrated against his teeth, and images flashed behind his eyes without warning: a cold room, hands pulling a sheet, a child screaming "Don't leave me," a man closing his eyes.
He had never learned how to explain these things. At sixteen, you mostly learn how to avoid drawing attention. But that day, when the Defilement — its technical name, the one he had read only once in a poorly ranked article on forums where adults allowed themselves to believe the implausible — manifested, it did not try to hide. It hurled itself at the young woman's face, twisted with a sickening grace, and let out a cry that belonged to it alone: the cry of accumulated regrets, of faults first labelled small, then labelled crimes.
The paramedics recoiled; one of them vomited. A nearby hospital room vibrated, and the neon light buzzed. The young woman convulsed, her eyes covered by a black veil, yet there was something fragile in her expression — a mute plea to someone who was not there.
Qaishad felt his fingers tighten around his bag. He did not think. He threw himself between the Defilement and the human body. It was not courage. It was pure urgency: the sensation that a bone of the universe would break if he did nothing. His hand passed through the smoke — and it was like plunging into ice water. An internal burn, followed by a wave of vertigo. Words he had never learned to pronounce formed in his throat as though they had been left there to be forgotten all along.
The Defilement shuddered. It tried to escape, to scatter into the damp night. Through it, Qaishad sensed voices — not voices in his head, but background existences: a funeral vigil, a kiss that never happened, a torn letter, the hand of a father who never returned. It was a banquet of memories, all the intense emotions that had fed this creature.
And then the Defilement made a choice.
It was like the blink of an eye. The smoke concentrated, as though drawn in. It slid along Qaishad's arm and seeped into his skin as if searching for a pocket, a chamber. The pain became heat, then a gnawing cold. Something inside him cracked and sealed itself at the same time. He felt full — full of images, full of sobs, full of the voice of someone saying "I don't want to go."
He collapsed.
The rescuers shouted orders. The ambulance doors opened, pale neon flooded the street, and someone called the police. Someone farther away muttered: "What the hell is this?"
Qaishad barely heard anything. His chest was pounding as though a second heart were trying to be born beneath his ribs. He raised his eyes and saw, running the entire length of his left forearm, a dark fissure, as though the skin had split to reveal an inscription. It was not a readable word; it was a sutra, but alive: characters twisting and sliding, pulsing like veins. The pain was already easing, and with it came a razor-sharp clarity.
The Defilement had not consumed him. It had settled inside him — and it seemed satisfied.
When he tried to stand, two hands helped him up. They were firm, covered by a black glove. A low, measured voice spoke in French, with an accent that carried the heavy affectation of those accustomed to rituals:
"Don't move. You have absorbed a Defilement."
Qaishad looked up at the man who had spoken. He was tall, square-jawed, hair cropped short — a face shaped by too many decisions. His jacket bore a symbol etched in silver: a stylized scroll topped with a circle. Qaishad immediately felt an ancient cold run down his spine.
"Who... who are you?" he asked, voice broken.
The man removed his gloves. Beneath the skin of his wrist lay the faded trace of an ancient Sutra.
"We are from the Clergy. You're coming with us."
The word fell like a sentence.
"But this is not a standard case," he added, almost despite himself.
A figure then emerged from the alley, wrapped in dark tatters and silver rings. Her gaze belonged to someone who had survived too long. She smiled.
"Ah... finally."
She fixed her eyes on Qaishad.
"A Tomb."
The Clergy man paled. A device was hastily produced, brought close to Qaishad's arm. The screen flickered... then turned an icy blue.
"No..." the man murmured. "That pattern..."
Qaishad felt something move inside him. An ancient voice, calm, almost tender, rose in his chest.
Remember.
The tattered figure chuckled softly.
"They're going to be afraid of you. Living Tombs have always made the Sutras tremble."
Above them, a helicopter sliced through the rain. Lights swept the street. The Clergy was arriving in force.
The man clenched his teeth.
"Take him. Hide him."
As they dragged Qaishad toward the ambulance, he cast one last glance toward the alley. The figure traced an ancient symbol on the wet stone and murmured, for him alone:
"They don't know yet that you are not the first, Qaishad Al-Rayan."
And beneath the city, beneath the engraved prayers and the sacred lies,
something very ancient had just awakened.