Skar

—Alright. We grab everything fast and get out of here to sell it.

The only light those ruins had seen in centuries came from the torches of the tomb raiders who had managed to enter the catacombs that day, somewhere around the Cadry Ruins. They had found a series of funerary temples carved directly into the rock.

It wasn’t a large chamber at all. In fact, it was more like an apartment in the center of Calpheon. The group looked visibly disappointed despite standing in front of treasures from the ancient world, from before the arrival of Aalism, from an age even earlier than the foundation of Valencia, when the harsh desert was still inhabited by nomadic communities.

They breathed in the stale air trapped between walls of rock and sand, mixed with the smell of pigments from old papyri and the half-rusted metal of many of the funerary objects.

…Heh, well. We were breathing.

They had been left somewhat stunned by a limestone sculpture of what looked like a reclining jackal, staring back at them with empty eyes.

Suddenly, one of them let out a cry and collapsed unconscious after being hit with an empty bottle of date wine.

—What the fu— —his companion turned around and, for a brief instant, managed to lock eyes with me. I threw myself at him and bit him.

We exchanged a few punches. I managed to knock him out while the other raider, the last one standing, aimed an arquebus at me.

—Oops…

—You followed us…! You… I recognize you! You were that drunk wandering around Shakatu!

—Drunk, tsk~ I wasn’t drunk! —I rolled my eyes and tried to move, but the guy reminded me with a gesture that he was still aiming at me. I looked at the barrel of the arquebus, then at him. —Do you even know where you are…?

—Why the hell would I care?

—Oh, you should care. —I cleared my throat. Here we go. —You’re standing in one of the few remaining temples of the Kemetians, a very ancient nomadic people from the desert, from the pre-Valencian era… Amazing, huh? —Don’t ask me why I suddenly sound like some storyteller whenever I explain something serious! Or like a know-it-all… Um… I’d like to remind you that I’m illiterate! (well, more or less not anymore~)

—Why the fuck would I—

My eyes lit up as I looked around, taking in every inscription I could make out with an excitement I couldn’t really hide. It wasn’t some perfect place worthy of kings. It was a shelter for an entire people, humble… my roots.

—That’s a lot of years… Nothing to envy about the age of the elves of Kamasylvia, you know? Heh… The Kemetians used to come here every now and then, maybe once or twice a year depending on the season. They prayed to their gods, shared whatever they had, honored their dead…

I think the reason he didn’t shoot me was simply because he thought I was a nerd. Or maybe he just felt like listening to someone tell a good story.

—...You wouldn’t happen to know where to find more treasure in this place, would you? Since you know so much, try knowing something useful for once and maybe I’ll spare your life, kid.

—Errrr —I pouted while thinking. I glanced sideways at the statue and bit my tongue. —Nope.

—Then die!

Boring…

I tried to move quickly, reaching one hand behind me. The man fired into the air just as a curtain of sand rose up. He started coughing, hunching over in irritation. He cracked his eyes open and aimed again quickly, but by then he no longer knew where I was. I slipped behind him and…

Hit him in the head with the hilt of the shamshir. He dropped sideways.

What? I’m not a murderer.

…

I breathed in and out. I groaned and brought one hand to my side. I looked down and noticed a bit of blood coming out, but it was only a graze from the bullet. I sighed. Still stung like hell, though. I’d treat it later, yeah… With any luck it wouldn’t leave another mark, especially with the next Full Moon coming up. I looked at the three unconscious thieves, making sure they were having sweet dreams, and then I walked over to the jackal statue and stood in front of it.

—You’re one of those memory repositories… aren’t you? Maybe I can… —I reached into the little pouch on my belt and pulled out the Ator stone, that damn golden sphere covered in engravings that had dragged me into so many adventures lately. I pressed several of its buttons to the rhythm of the melody that activated it. A blue light slowly emerged from every engraving, and the eyes of the jackal in front of me lit up in the same color.

Some projections from the past began to appear, using that incredibly advanced yet forgotten ancient technology. I saw children with jackal ears and tails eating fruit with their mothers, groups of young people chatting happily, a priestess greeting every member of the community, wearing large golden earrings and dark robes. It was an ordinary scene from that era, from this very place, back when there was still life here from time to time.

I couldn’t help but smile, wondering what it would have been like to live in that age myself, with those people, my people… Maybe Ma would have been there with us too, telling us old stories in her warm voice.

I raised one hand as if somehow I might be able to touch and reach that life, that community with an entire future ahead of it, filled with people of every age: elders passing their legacy on to the next generation, water seekers, artists preserving their culture, warriors protecting the others, young couples full of hope, some of them expecting a child, or two… living humbly, but happily, wherever the dunes carried them. I tilted my head, suddenly confused for a moment by… I don’t know what I saw.

That was when the priestess from that fleeting memory looked directly at me. Her irises turned red, like those of some kind of demon. I froze in alarm. My eyes opened wide and my back began to burn, then my blood, and then my head started spinning.

What the fuck was happening?

I dropped the shamshir immediately and clutched my head, feeling my jackal ears emerge. It hurt. It hurt, it hurt…

—Shit —I growled.

I felt the air of a sand vortex forming around me. The voice of a witch returned to my head.

Wasn’t she dead…? Hadn’t we defeated her?

—You cannot change it. You cannot change it —she repeated over and over. —You failed.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

—No, no, no. Come on, you got through this already. Don’t fall. Don’t fall —I muttered to myself, trying to stay strong as I fought against it all over again.

But whenever I closed my eyes, I saw images I missed. Images my mind had been replaying again and again for all these months. Without stopping.

I dropped to my knees. There was something I hadn’t overcome. The emptiness was still there, bigger than ever. And it was dragging me toward something. I didn’t know exactly what,

but it was killing me.

I don’t know when I started crying… that much. Overflowing. Completely out of control. Maybe it was the temple. I couldn’t lie, couldn’t pretend to be strong, couldn’t pretend I was alright.

It wasn’t that I was seeing something horrible, exactly. Quite the opposite. I wanted to relive those memories, I wanted to go back to the past.

But no matter how hard I tried…

…it was as though from the very beginning…

I had been broken.

—Come on… stop resisting —that voice said, trying to fill that emptiness with poison. I brought a hand to my chest. What the fuck.

Where was my heart?

…

It wasn’t there.

It wasn’t there!

—Give it back! —I growled.

—You are better off without feeling.

No, no, no. I don’t want to forget.

—Look at yourself… You’re going to end badly if I don’t help you with this —that presence continued, whispering into my ear.

—I don’t care! I don’t want your help!

She was circling around me. I think. My eyes were shut, overwhelmed with tears, but… I figured that with those large ears I could tell where she was moving. Or maybe by her smell… the smell of a corpse, of sulfur. It was thick in the air.

I don’t know how long I stayed like that. Maybe all she had to do was wait until I fell, like I was some puppet whose strings she would soon be able to pull. But I crawled around trying to find the shamshir again. I wanted to cut her in half, no matter how. I couldn’t see anything, and I was afraid that if I opened my eyes they would end up burning a vivid red. I had to do everything I could to stop that from happening.

I felt the jackal-shaped hilt beneath my hand and lifted the sword, slashing blindly through the air and kicking up dust from the temple floor. I heard something metallic crash against the rock, followed by clay utensils falling and shattering.

—You may have managed to kill my body in Tenebraum… —that sinuous voice spoke, as though coming from another plane —but my spirit will continue to torment you until you choose to join me. Then you will stop suffering. Come on… everyone has left you. Everyone you cared about is no longer beside you. You were not meant to walk with them. You were meant to reclaim the legacy of our people.

—LEAVE ME THE…!

—...FUCK ALONE!

The sound of a sword whistled through the air, cutting straight through the voice and defeating that presence. I didn’t know what it was, but suddenly the burning sensation drained all the strength from my body and I collapsed onto the floor, losing consciousness.

…

…

…

…

I slowly opened my eyes and looked ahead. I was in some strange place, almost as if I were standing in the middle of a golden mist in the desert. For one moment, my whole world came crashing down because I thought it was another one of those nightmares caused by the demon I had fought in the desert at dusk, but it wasn’t that place. There was wind, yet the dust never cleared, and for some reason it smelled of jasmine.

The strangest thing of all was that someone was standing in front of me. He was roughly my height and carried a straight, double-edged sword with strange details on it. Was it Asian, maybe? A brown hemp cloak fluttered behind him, falling from his shoulders and wrapping around his neck, partially hiding a bow that rose over one shoulder. He stared at me, almost as confused as I was.

—Oh, Buddha… You’re not doing well.

—Huh? What? Hey!

I looked at him more carefully. Humble clothing, black and white, but decorated with red ribbons and cords like charms around his waist, along with some golden embroidery.

Brown skin…?

Jet-black hair…?

Golden eyes?

—What? Are you… me?

What the fuck?

The brown-skinned man exhaled through his nose. He sheathed his sword with a surprising amount of skill and walked over, the links of a chain at one side of his waist clinking with every step, a small dagger hanging from it. He gently bumped his arm against mine and stopped right beside me, lowering his head slightly while looking ahead. I noticed his scar. It was on his left side, but… it wasn’t like mine. His was closer to his eye.

—No, of course not… —I sighed and looked away, understanding it, at least halfway.

We looked alike. His hairstyle was somewhat similar to how I wore mine years ago, down to his shoulders, although in his case it was decorated with a red ribbon and a dry little branch with small golden leaves whose meaning I couldn’t guess. His presence was like seeing myself in a distorted mirror, except… he was a few years older than me. Three to five, I’d say.

But he wasn’t me. He seemed more… determined, more skilled, and for some reason more serious. Melancholic, maybe? He glanced at me sideways, his eyes slightly narrow, by the way. He spoke with an accent that sounded a little strange, even though his voice was similar to mine too.

—You’re young. Why do you cry so much? I could hear you crying all the way from Kaifeng…

—Heeeey! I don’t cry that much! —I snapped, a little annoyed, although I couldn’t quite look him in the eye. —I don’t know… I feel like… things haven’t been right inside me for a long time. I feel this emptiness here… I don’t know…

I slid my hand toward my chest. He watched me without saying anything, simply holding my gaze. So I kept talking.

—I… I don’t see any way to be happy. Like this… I don’t know…

—There’s always a way… even if it’s hard as hell. …Look, I’m terrible at comforting people. People in general, really. But… let yourself get out whatever you have inside. Just don’t ruin your life over it either. You’re… stronger than you think?

He sounded uncertain.

Great.

Even he wasn’t sure about that himself.

I understood him… I mean… how many times had I tried to say something nice to someone else while everything inside me was falling apart…

—Do you… think there’s still hope for me?

—Yeah —he nodded. —It’s just… you might not make it out the way you thought you would, I guess…

—That happened to you.

—Different things happened to me. Not what happened to you.

—Oh… You… look… alright.

He looked at me again, stifling a quiet laugh.

—Mmmh~ I’m not as much of a social animal as you are…

—Are you some kind of lone wanderer or something?

—Umm… more or less. —Well… —I’ve got my own stuff. The heartbreak thing you’ve got going on? Nope.

Damn it, it was like Akame and I had fused together. I didn’t know who he was or where he came from, but… at that moment my mind went blank again. I felt the tingling in my chest, and it began to hurt once more, just like it had so many times before.

—...I just… wish that in another life… maybe… she and I… Umb…

My throat tightened and silence fell between us. I didn’t know how to express what I was feeling. Once again, a soft sigh came from him.

—As for that witch from your ancestors… You really need to take better care of that heart of yours. It’s far too valuable to let people steal it that easily~

—I don’t have it… I… I lost it…

—You do have it. You just need to trust it…

I listened to him while looking down at my chest, almost afraid of facing reality. I placed my hand there again…

It was beating.

Weakly, but it was beating.

—See?

I looked at the young man. He had one hand resting on the hilt of his sword without drawing it, simply leaving it there.

—Who are you?

The boy pressed his lips together.

—Let’s just say… I’ve always wanted to know where my name came from.

—Oh… …What? Is it not common where you live?

—Weird as hell. Normally I’d be called… I don’t know, Great Zhao.

—Great Zhao? That’s a terrible name!

—Bah~ …

He rolled his eyes and we looked at each other. That conversation calmed me down a little, even though the emptiness was still there. My worries were still there. My fears were still there. The emptiness was still there. Every time silence returned, it weighed on me like marble.

I think he caught me looking miserable. I had gone quiet again. He kept speaking while turning his eyes forward once more.

—I think I can help you with that inner-animal thing.

—I… I don’t know how to control it. It’s still difficult. Can you…?

—For a few years now. I learned.

I sighed in relief. I don’t know why. I didn’t know him. Maybe we were different, maybe not so much. But the burden felt lighter then, knowing that at least I had some hope of learning like he had.

—Hey, you’re not that bad with people… Um… Are you… happy?

He seemed to hesitate for a few moments.

—We try —he answered with a calmer smile.

We shared another knowing glance. I tried to smile, just a little. Seconds might have passed, or perhaps minutes, like that.

—I have to go —I decided, given how little I enjoy alternate realities and magical dreams. Maybe it was something he was more used to.

—Heh! Yeah… Me too.

—Will we see each other again?

—Of course!

And then we said goodbye, each of us walking in opposite directions.

I stopped seeing.

I slowly opened my eyes again, disoriented and with my head still spinning. I blinked sluggishly, everything blurry at first until my vision gradually came back into focus. I was lying on the floor. I drew in a longer breath and tried to push myself upright as best I could. I picked up the shamshir and moved it behind me. I was still inside the small ancient chamber, now far messier than when I had found it, with broken objects scattered everywhere.

I groaned and let out an irritated breath, still aching a little, though I hoped it would calm down soon. I walked slowly toward the exit and leaned against the doorframe when the sunlight of Valencia hit me full in the face.

—Duuh… —I complained, blinking several times.

I looked ahead at the ruined, barren landscape beneath the full light of day. I took a deep breath.

Then I walked on in silence, continuing the long journey that still awaited me across the entire desert and, if everything went well, would finally take me to Arehaza.