The tablet chimed.It was already past midnight.
The sound was too sharp for midnight, slicing the silence. Maya sat up, heart thundering, the glow of the screen blanching her face.
Her mouth fell open. "No…"
She stumbled, clutching the device, rushing into the adjoining chamber.
Maya (hissing): "Zeyla—wake up. You need to see this. Now."
Zeyla stirred, scowling.
Zeyla: "If it's another market collapse, I'll—"
Maya shoved the screen at her.
The headline burned in letters too stark to be real:
Breaking: KALPA ORGANIZATION VANISHES OVERNIGHT
No records. Whispers of fraud. Whispers it never existed at all.
Maya's voice trembled.
Maya: "Thousands, Zeyla. Gone. Vanished."
Zeyla's eyes narrowed. She forced her voice into its usual edge.
Zeyla (flat): "Go to sleep, Maya."
Maya gaped.
Maya: "You're not listening—"
Zeyla (cutting her off): "I said sleep."
Her tone was sharp. Maya faltered, then left, muttering under her breath.
The room sank back into silence.
But Zeyla sat upright now, blood cold. Noor's voice rang in her skull like a tolling bell:
"That is not loss. That is balance."
---
Her feet carried her to the corridor.
The doors moaned.
Moonlight bled across the marble.
Janir entered.
He was drenched in blood. His clothes stiff, his hair matted, his hands black with congealed blood. The smell of iron swept into the hall.
Zeyla froze.
Janir smirked, thin and obscene, and kept walking.
From the shadows, one of her own staggered forward , eyes wide, body trembling.
Janir's hand shot out. He clamped the man's throat, lifted him high, and without breaking stride hurled him down at Zeyla's feet. The man hit the floor with a wet crack, gasping.
Janir's voice was low, casual, chilling:
Janir: "Keep your dogs on leash."
He walked past, leaving the marble streaked in his trail.
Zeyla's breath locked. Her shadow-scout lay before her, shuddering, blood on his lips. His voice rasped, broken:
Scout (hoarse): "You don't understand. No… he's been building ,For months. In the dark."
The Night Before — Kalpa's Fall
Scout: "He mapped them. Every route. Every handler. Every house where flesh was sold. He knew their meetings, their guards, their lovers. He whispered in ears, planted fear, sowed greed. He forged the license with her name, stamped it clean — and they believed. All of them believed."
The scout coughed, shaking harder.
Scout: "He brought them in under celebration. Not force. Celebration. Men in silk, women in jewels. Even their whores and wives. He told them it was dawn for Kalpa. They drank to it."
Scout: "Then he sealed the doors."
Zeyla's throat tightened.
Scout: "The lights went out. Black. I heard them screaming, clawing, trampling one another. And him — walking among them."
The scout's hands clenched, nails digging bloody crescents into his palms.
Scout: "When the lamps flickered back — gods, the floor… the floor was red. He snapped spines like twigs. He slit stomachs open and made them watch their entrails steam on the marble. He strung women by their hair from chandeliers. He nailed men's tongues to tables so they choked on their own screams."
Zeyla swallowed bile.
Scout: "He climbed the piles, Madam. Stood on their bodies. A hill of meat and ruin. Blood dripping down his boots. His face… he was smiling. And he said—"
The scout's voice broke, eyes glassy with terror.
Scout (whisper): "He said, 'This is balance.'"
---
Zeyla saw it as the scout spoke:
A grand hall turned charnel pit.
Corpses stacked high, arms twisted, faces shredded open. A floor swimming in blood so deep it lapped against the walls.
And Janir — standing at the summit.
His body drenched. His eyes black fire. His smile wide, feral.
Beneath him, the last survivors writhed, impaled, nailed, broken — still twitching in the heap of ruin.
And lower still — her scout, crouched in shadows, trembling, choking on bile as he watched him more beast than man.
Until Janir's eyes turned.
Green, fever-bright, catching the trembling figure in the dark. Holding him. Pinning him.
The scout froze.
Janir (soft, carrying through the gore): "Balance does not choose. Balance consumes."
---
The scout broke down into sobs.
Zeyla stood rigid, bile burning her throat. She had lived drenched in blood, raised armies, carved men open herself — but this was no human hand.
The marble beneath her feet still gleamed with the trail of his passing, blood smeared where he had walked.
Her thought came sharp and hollow, chilling her bones:
What kind of monster has Noor raised?
---
He stopped at the base of the stair. His smirk faded. His knees struck stone.
Janir (low, reverent): "I am sullied and I reek of death. I should not be touched."
Noor stood above, white draped in silver light. She descended, crouched before him, and touched his cheek. Her hand was pale, steady.
Janir trembled beneath her. His gaze lifted, crimson burning.
Noor (quiet, grief-stricken):
"Sin is a story, Janir.
It always sounds louder when told by the loser."
Zeyla's chest tightened. Her thoughts tore jagged:
He couldn't have done it in one night. The license. Her name. 'That has been dealt with.' Were the crises smoke? Every path leads back to her. But her eyes—her eyes...Huh what is it?
Janir leaned closer into her touch. His lips twitched, devotion spilling through his silence.
Noor (soft, unblinking):
"Do you know what guilt is?
A chain with no key.
If you drag it long enough… you start to think it is your spine."
Zeyla's stomach lurched. Her reason snapped thread by thread.
Janir rose slowly, towering, crimson eyes aflame. His smirk flickered, faint, unreadable. He stepped into shadow, leaving silence behind him.
Noor straightened. The moon carved her in gold and ash.
Zeyla's voice broke into a whisper:
Zeyla: "Was it you?"
Noor turned her head. Her eyes, endless and grief-stricken, fixed on her. Her voice came low, even, mercilessly confusing.
The hall froze.
Noor turned, her moonlight struck obsidian eyes hollow with grief, voice falling low — solemn, ancient, like something unearthed from stone:
Noor:
"There was once a god who grew weary of his children.
So he loosed his lioness upon them.
She tore the fields red, drank until rivers turned to iron.
And when he called her back, she did not stop —
for the taste had become her truth.
The priests wrote that it was mercy when she slept.
But tell me, Zeyla…
was it mercy?
Or was it the god, who knew her hunger, who sinned first?"
Her hand, still faintly trembling, lowered to her side. The silence swelled.
Then she spoke again, her voice deepening, every word a verse:
"Every story chooses its own executioner.
Every executioner chooses their own god.
But blood… blood belongs to no one.
It only remembers.
For the beast does not drink by chance —
its thirst was written long before the cup was filled.
And the hand that looses the beast
weeps louder than the mouths it silences.
Do not seek the first sin, Zeyla.
There is no first sin.
There is only the echo,
passed from god to beast,
from beast to man,
from man to dust.
And the dust remembers all."
The final words struck like stone sealing a tomb.
Zeyla's knees weakened. The marble swam beneath her. She could no longer tell if it was confession, denial, or judgement.