The architect of humanity's ascent towards the stars observed as Earth died; he called himself the Emperor of mankind. The remainder of humanity left the burning world behind and set their sights on an untouched universe; thus began the calendar of The Living Flame. ~ A History of The Living Flame
Part One: The Outcast
"She understands, Avraham," Iggor said softly, his hand reaching for Abraham's shoulder, before he let it drop down.
"I know. That isn't the comfort you think it is, Iggor," Avraham replied, not bothering to meet Iggor's gaze.
Iggor looked through the man's thick dark curls, into his brown eyes, that refused to meet his own. His sun-kissed face betrayed the terrible burden his heart carried.
"Sarah should go into labor any day now. Are you sure you can't delay your departure until then?" Iggor asked, although this wasn't the first time they had this exact conversation, it was a routine they had to repeat all the same.
"I… cannot," Avraham replied quietly. "If I miss this ship, after everything I've seen…"
He let out a hollow laugh. "That's the worst part, Iggor. I don't even know what the consequences would be."
Avraham looked down at his hands, thinking of the possibilities, the endless doubts, and the faint edge of madness surrounding his planned journey.
"All I know is I was set on this path for a reason. The burden of change was never meant for one generation alone. We push for as long as we can and hope someone after us carries it further. My boy will carry it further."
"So it is to be a boy, then? My congratulations. Does Sarah know the truth of your departure?"
"She knows enough."
"Do you trust her with your son?"
"More than I trust myself."
"Have you decided on a name?"
"Zain."
Iggor gave a slow, satisfied nod. "If you miss the next boarding call, will this whole conversation have been pointless?"
Avraham laughed and turned toward him. Avraham pulled his friend into a bear hug. Iggor's head barely reached his shoulders, but the pressure of his thick arms felt like a vice around his sides. Growing up on a planet with twice the standard gravity surely came with perks.
"I'll protect them with my life."
There was nothing left to say.
Avraham headed to the landing bay, where a military empire freighter waited to take him away. Before long, he left the atmosphere, then the star system itself, his family beyond his reach for good.
Two days after Avraham's departure, on the first day of the 976th year of the Living Flame, Zain cried out for the first time.
His mother's green eyes were soft and steady in a face damp with sweat, loose brown strands of hair clinging to her skin. As Sarah held him, still trembling, she reached into his young, spirited soul, searching for the mark her husband had placed there.
It was the same mark of protection she bore.
A mark that ensured he would live as an outcast of the Empire.
Part Two: The Miracle Child
Rain was strapped to a table. She screamed with all her strength and pushed, the leather straps growing taut around her wrists. Her life hadn't been easy, hence she thought she knew pain. She had known nothing, and now only one certitude remained: she'd die bringing this damn child into the world.
Natural conception was almost unheard of in the brutal mining worlds of the Outer Systems. There were no families here, only the sovereigns, the Empire, and the people they owned. Rain... the locals thought the name was cursed. For her, for anyone living at the rhythm of caustic rainstorms and air made thicker by detonations in mines and the volcanic surface of the planet.
She had chosen the name herself, and in a world where she owned not even her own body, she would at least own her name.
No one was foolish enough to risk a natural birth in the slave pens of the mining worlds. And that was just what she and her partner were, young fools. They carved out a fragile slice of heaven in this desolate corner of the universe and convinced themselves it was enough. Having a natural child, like the nobles in the smuggled films shown in factory dormitories, was their quiet rebellion against the fate the universe had handed them.
Her partner died a week ago.
A mining accident, the slave who delivered his final rations had told her. He was dead and already forgotten by the universe. Supposedly, it had been quick.
With the world of pain she had been in for the past hours, "Lucky," was all she could think of his fate.
She should have sold her eggs, like most women, at least when they weren't taken by force...
She did not know how long she had suffered. The final push was so violent that she slipped into what felt like death's embrace.
When she awoke, she lay in a different room on something impossibly soft. A real bed. Like in the films.
The pain returned quickly.
She panicked and tried to rise.
"You need not strain yourself, Rain. Your body requires more rest. Do not worry. You are safe here."
The sound of the voice calmed her immediately, which was strange. She should have been afraid.
"M… my child?" she whispered.
"I'll bring him to you now, a perfectly healthy baby boy… Congratulations," the owner of the soothing voice said, and she heard him approaching. When she finally saw him, her heart sank. The fear she should have felt being alone with a stranger flared suddenly; no, it would be safe to say she would not have felt this kind of fear with just any stranger.
Cradling her son, he stepped into view: a crimson long coat reinforced with black armor plates, a golden Living Flame insignia, curly hair neatly combed, a beard streaked with grey, and he was the tallest person she had ever seen. She had only glimpsed such suits from afar, but there was no mistaking that the person holding her baby was an Inquisitor of the Emperor.
The man seemed to notice the sudden fear in her eyes. He bent down, adjusted some pillows behind her head, and propped her into a half-sitting position with one hand, holding her child in the other. Then he placed her baby in her lap, making sure she supported him with her arms.
"You need not fear me or my station, Rain. I mean no harm to you or your child. Among the servants of the Living Flame, I am known as Avraham Darkflame."
Rain realized for the first time that he had called her by name. Why did an Inquisitor, one of the highest officers in the Emperor's service, know her name? Despite Avraham's calming words, her fear lingered.
"Forgive my impertinence, Inq… my lord Inquisitor, but what would the Inquisition want from my child or me? I… I have always been a loyal subject. Your grace, please," tears formed at the edge of her eyes, "please spare me, my lord."
What she saw on the Inquisitor's face made her stagger. She had expected cruelty, anger, even annoyance. Tears? That she had not expected.
"Life has been cruel to you, hasn't it? You did well, Rain. Your struggles have not gone unnoticed. Your life is not meaningless. You have been witnessed."
"You have been witnessed," Rain repeated in her mind.
She did not know why the words brought her such peace. Her small, insignificant life had been witnessed. She began crying in earnest, pressing her baby boy gently to her chest.
"You and your child have been chosen. You must rejoice, for today you will be reborn as well. That is… only if you wish it."
Rain merely nodded, still holding her child.
The Inquisitor moved closer. With one hand, he lifted her arms until her baby's face was near enough that she could feel his tiny breaths on her cheek. Their ears were close, and when he whispered, it was as if he whispered to both mother and child at once.
Avraham sang the song of welcome into their ears, offering solace and hope in a universe that seemed devoid of both.
Rain felt as if a veil had lifted from her mind, as though she had been under a spell for a very long time and had only just awakened.
"Welcome, my sister. You and your child would do me great honor to know me by my true name: Ibrahim."
Rain was still reeling from her welcome. She could not explain it, but she no longer feared what the future might hold. She was content, though utterly exhausted.
But her stupor was overwhelming; she felt herself embrace the black once more. If she had more strength, she might have wondered what she was being welcomed into. She might have heard her son start to cry. She might even have questioned the alarms that now rang faintly in her mind at the name "Ibrahim."
Because meeting an Inquisitor would have paled before the absolute terror of meeting the infamous Ibrahim the Plague.
Part Three: The Lunar Princess
It was the last day of the nine hundred and seventy-sixth year of the Living Flame.
A congregation of beautiful young men and women gathered inside the Temple of the Living Flame, clothed in simple red tunics adorned with the insignia of the Empire.
Fifty men stood on one side, facing fifty women on the other.
In unison, they slit their throats.
Blood flowed like water into narrow channels carved into the floor, winding toward the altar at the far end of the hall, where a priest stood praying, his face hidden beneath bright red hooded robes.
"We offer lives, we offer blood, we offer gratitude to the great Emperor."
"We offer souls, we offer kindling, we offer servitude to the Living Flame."
"Our great Lord Whiterock has sired another child. The lady is in labor. We ask for an offspring blessed and bathed in the power of the Living Flame to rise and lead the next generation of the noble Whiterock family."
Watching the ritual from a balcony that opened onto the grand hall, Avraham stood. The adjoining chamber housed the Inquisitorial office and, in truly drab fashion, its torture room.
"Avraham, you look positively enthralled. Amazing what people will open their throats for, isn't it? I've heard this batch even included a distant princeling or two. Perhaps more."
Avraham looked up.
The speaker was a short, plump man wearing the same uniform as Avraham, though it did not flatter him nearly as well. This was Inquisitor Razin the Nailpeeler.
"Well, the venerable Lord Whiterock grows old and desperate. If he fails to sire an heir, power shifts to the other branches of the family. The old bastard is pushing two hundred. He should roll over already."
Avraham regarded Razin coldly. "What of the prisoner?"
"Ah, ever the conversationalist, aren't you? His name was Iggor. No last name. Found him on the planet New Horizon, in the Arasaka86 system. Weren't you stationed there at the beginning of this year?"
"I was."
"Strange that you missed him."
"If the prisoner possessed anything of value, that would indeed have been a significant lapse." Avraham's voice carried a quiet, cutting undertone.
"Well, I got nothing on the grand Ibrahim or his little cell of rats. But interestingly, after I peeled off his toes, his nails, and half his teeth, he finally broke. Started praying. And I assure you, it was not to our venerable emperor or flame. Which means we were close. Very close. He may even have held rank among them." Razin smiled with open delight.
"That is interesting. Dispatch additional teams to Arasaka86. Increase surveillance. Tighten security at the system's Warp Gate."
Avraham was interrupted by an emergency alert on his HPC (Hollographic Personal Computer). He tapped the control embedded in his wrist and retrieved the earpiece from his pocket, leaving Razin behind on the balcony, visibly intrigued.
The call was from Lady Whiterock, who was meant to be in labor.
Before answering, Avraham cast one final glance through the observation glass at the limp figure of his friend Iggor.
His face betrayed nothing.
Lady Whiterock demanded his immediate presence in the medical wing at Whiterock Castle. Avraham complied. After all, this moment was the culmination of his year-long journey.
When he arrived, the medical center stood strangely empty. The last guards he had seen were posted outside the entrance to this wing of the castle.
He walked with the grace and fearless composure expected of an Inquisitor, though he possessed none of the supernatural gifts granted by the Living Flame.
The Flame would not touch him. It refused him its blessings.
And when he had last stood within these walls, he had ensured it would refuse the heir as well.
Inside Lady Whiterock's chambers, she sat alone, cradling a newborn child.
She beckoned him closer.
The baby, though scarcely an hour old, already resembled her mother. Silver hair crowned her small head, and her round eyes shimmered with the same silver irises.
Lady Whiterock studied Avraham's face, searching for a reaction. Finding none, she spoke.
"She is like you, Avraham. She carries no trace of the Emperor's favor. I am tired of burying children. If my child can only live by being devoid of the Living Flame, then so be it."
Her voice rose before she forced it steady.
"The Lord Whiterock will not stop. He must have a child who inherits the embers of the Living Flame."
She sighed.
"Until that day comes, my daughter remains his heir. He will conceal her… deficiency for now. But I would not trust him to waste resources protecting her. He may even welcome an assassin's success."
She met Avraham's gaze.
"I have summoned you to ensure that my daughter does not merely survive, but thrives. You will see to her protection, her education, and a life beyond the shackles imposed upon me. And with this task, my Lord Inquisitor, you will repay your debt for my sponsorship of a flameless peasant into the ranks of our glorified Inquisitors."
Avraham allowed the faintest crack in his stoic mask. The subtle shift seemed to satisfy her.
After a moment, he spoke.
"Your will shall be done. I swear it upon my life."
"I hope that will suffice," she replied quietly. "I will help while I am able. After that… you may stand alone."
"Have you chosen a name?"
"Luna. For the lost moon that elevated House Lunaris."
She looked worn, yet none of her noble poise had deserted her. Dark circles weighed beneath her eyes, but her gaze remained razor sharp. She wore a silver gown and had wrapped her daughter in a blanket of the same shade, the color complementing their shared hair and eyes.
"I have used my position and all the influence the House of Lunaris afforded me. The Lord Whiterock has been dissuaded from killing the child outright."
Avraham had already sung the welcome over the child once before, while she lay in her mother's womb. He dared do nothing further now, but that posed no issue. In his new position, he would have ample opportunity to counter the influence of the Flame.
Zain. Ash, Rain's son. Luna.
Years ago, Avraham had watched the three of them in a dream as they were born. Then he had seen them bound in chains of pure light. From those chains extended countless others, linking them to multitudes beyond counting, millions, then billions. Some were shackled in light. Others in blood.
For nearly four years, his sleep had been haunted by that vision.
Tonight, however, he wished for nothing more than a dreamless slumber.