When I turned three, Ennari was born.
Nothing unusual happened that time. There were no omens, no signs from the gods. My family simply celebrated her birth. Namur, meanwhile, remained in Uruk as one of Kudur's spies. Every week, he sent reports containing both his own information and whatever the other agents had gathered.
Kudur had taken refuge in the port city of Ur.
Two years later, Dagan died. People said Kudur's coup had left him in even worse health than before, and that he had never fully recovered from it. I saw Kisaya at the funeral. She was still a child, standing quietly with a distant look in her eyes while holding the finger where she wore the ring I had given her.
Why wasn't I there with her?
Around the same time, Ishtal announced that he was giving up his claim to the throne.
Then he left Uruk.
He gave no explanation.
The city fell into chaos. The Chosen and the priests seemed to be discussing the situation constantly, and the council was growing increasingly unhappy with my father.
Eventually, Namur's reports confirmed that Ishtal had settled in Sippar.
Not long after that, my father named me heir to the throne.
I was only five years old.
…
Time kept moving, and Namur continued building the life everyone expected him to have.
He even became friends with Gamir. From the outside, he looked like an exemplary chosen. He followed my father's orders, completed every assignment he was given, and never gave anyone a reason to question his loyalty.
What surprised me was that, even after all those years as a consecrated, he had never advanced any further.
His trial had simply never come. Then another order arrived from the man he still considered his true king.
Watch Ereshgal.
Report everything.
After that, Namur began paying much closer attention to me. He watched me train. He watched me study. He kept track of where I went and who I spoke to.
There was not much to report.
Most days, I went from the palace to the temple and back again. But seeing those years through Namur's eyes made something else impossible to miss.
I had been protected far more than I realized.
I was taught, trained, and prepared for the future, but almost everything I did happened under someone's watch. There were even chosen assigned to follow me without my knowledge.
Namur had been one of them more than once. He did not seem to enjoy the assignment.
Apparently, he did not think much of my decisions either.
'He always chooses the worst path.'
I heard some version of that thought more times than I cared to count.
…
When I turned sixteen and no god chose me, Namur was the one who sent the news to Kudur.
Not long after, he received some news of his own. Our instructor had joined Kudur's side. Apparently, he now recognized him as Uruk's rightful king.
That surprised me more than I expected.
I also finally learned why everyone had always called him simply Instructor. He had sworn a divine oath never to reveal his real name or take another one in its place.
With him on Kudur's side, Namur suddenly had access to far more information than before.
Then I decided to fight the wendigo.
'Always the worst possible path.'
When I came back wounded and the healers failed to cure me, he took it as proof that he had been right.
He reported everything to Kudur.
The response came soon after. Namur was to recover whatever remained of Alubane, no matter what it took.
At the same time, monster attacks across our territory began getting worse. Enough chosen had to be deployed that it started affecting everything else.
The timing was too convenient.
Since Namur had no runes meant for combat, he was one of the chosen who remained in Uruk. That also left him free to deal with the Alubane.
To steal what remained of the kingdom's supply, he turned to Kudur's newest supporter.
Our instructor.
And the bastard actually managed to do it.
I'll make sure I kill you myself when I get the chance.
With the Alubane gone, my father decided to send me out by cart to find more of the herb. There were not many chosen available at the time, so Namur was assigned to the group along with Gamir and Azel.
As soon as Namur learned he had been assigned to the expedition, he knew Kudur's plan had worked. He immediately sent him a report.
I already knew what the reply would say before it arrived.
Make sure Ereshgal does not return to Uruk.
Namur already knew Gamir well by then. They had worked together for years, and Gamir had even come to consider him a friend.
Azel was different. Namur had only crossed paths with him on a few missions and knew little about him beyond the fact that he rarely spoke. Before we left, all three of them were tested with a divine artifact to make sure they could be trusted.
Namur had expected something like that. He activated his second rune beforehand, and the artifact found exactly what he wanted it to find.
Loyalty.
At one point, Namur even went drinking with Gamir. During their conversation, he made sure to fulfill the condition of his Edict, giving Gamir the chance he would need if Namur ever betrayed him.
He did the same with Azel.
Neither of them thought much of it.
The rest happened almost exactly as I remembered. Only this time, I saw it from Namur's side. I watched him kill Gamir while he slept.
I escaped, but Namur did not follow immediately.
His Edict would not let him. Giving me a chance meant nothing if he went after me before I had any real possibility of escaping.
So he waited.
Only after Azel woke up and they spoke for a while did Namur feel that the Edict was no longer holding him back. It happened just as Azel told him to go after me.
Finding the trail was not difficult. I had left enough blood behind for him to track me through the brush until it led him to a narrow tunnel.
He went inside.
The place looked ancient, far older than anything he expected to find out there. The tunnel eventually opened into a bare stone chamber.
And there, in the middle of it, was a corpse.
Namur stopped.
The body had dried almost beyond recognition. Its chest had collapsed inward, the skin hardened and split around the joints. There was no hair, no eyelashes, and barely anything left that looked human. Its mouth hung open, and the empty eye sockets stared at nothing.
It looked as though it had been lying there for years.
Namur never considered that it might be me.
Why would he?
The corpse looked ancient, while I had entered the tunnel only moments earlier. There was no wound on its shoulder either. Nothing about it matched the injured prince he had been following.
But I recognized it immediately.
I had seen that same body through Akhem's memories. The corpse he had found in this chamber. The one he had accidentally fed with a drop of his blood.
It was me.
Namur searched the chamber briefly, but the place made him uneasy. More importantly, he had no reason to believe I could still be alive.
So he picked up the sword I had left behind.
And declared me dead.
…
When Namur and Azel returned to Uruk, they were the ones who told my parents what had happened. Namur looked devastated. The regret on his face was convincing enough that no one would have guessed there was nothing behind it.
My mother nearly collapsed.
My father, on the other hand, showed nothing.
Seriously? Nothing?
That's how you react when someone tells you your son died?
If I could have laughed, I would have.
It did not take long for me to understand why. My father began sending chosen and soldiers out to search for me. He did not believe I was dead.
So that explained his reaction.
But what made him so certain I was still alive? And more importantly, by refusing to accept my death and committing so many people to the search, hadn't he gone against his edict?
Of course, they found nothing.
But the decision still had consequences.
The council began questioning my father's judgment, and Kudur took advantage of it. Through Namur and his other spies, he started working on several chosen and members of the council, slowly turning more of them against my father.
My mother changed too.
At some point, she shut herself inside the palace and almost never left. No one seemed to know why.
What happened that even Namur never found out about?
Kudur eventually gave Namur another order. He was to keep an eye on Gamir's daughter, Kala, and stay close to her in case she ever became a chosen.
Namur did exactly that.
He even gave her the scarf he had taken from her father's corpse, placing it around her with a warm smile as if he genuinely cared.
At least I killed this bastard.
…
Two and a half years later came the ceremony where Ennari was chosen. Namur had already been preparing for the possibility. If a god chose her, he intended to arrange her kidnapping.
He never got the chance. As soon as the ceremony ended, my father sent Ennari to Sippar with Ishtal.
So that was why.
My father must have realized what was happening around him and made the best move he could with the situation he was in. Getting Ennari out of Uruk had kept her beyond Kudur's reach.
I saw Kisaya during those years too.
She barely seemed like herself anymore. She moved from one mission to the next, never stopping for long. She had taken on so many assignments that she had been promoted to captain six months earlier.
Then, over the following months, the cultists began appearing. Somehow, the ritual used during the selection ceremony had gotten out. What surprised me was that Kudur's faction had nothing to do with it.
They had been caught off guard too.
That did not stop Namur and the other spies from taking advantage of it. They fabricated evidence connecting everything to my father.
That was all Kudur needed.
He used the false evidence to turn what remained of Uruk's leadership against Lugalbanda. Much of the council, several priests, and even some of the chosen eventually decided that my father could no longer remain king.
The pressure became enough to force him to abdicate. But there was something I still did not understand.
Why did he let them?
My father was one of the strongest chosen in Uruk. If he had refused to step down, how many of them could have actually forced him?
Yet he never resisted.
With me believed dead, Ishtal having renounced his claim, and Ennari only sixteen and already sent away to Sippar, Kudur was the only realistic choice left.
The council then formally revoked Kudur's exile.
When he returned to Uruk, he was appointed regent. The city was falling apart, and someone had to take control while the accusations against my father were investigated.
Lugalbanda had not been declared guilty yet, so he remained imprisoned while the investigation continued.
Kudur wasted no time.
He began gathering support openly, and more chosen started siding with him.
Darek and Tarin were among them.
…
Around five years after my supposed death, the attacks began.
Reports started coming in about a new creature northeast of Uruk. Something that hunted people and animals alike, draining them of blood. Between that and the clandestine rituals spreading through the city, Uruk was becoming more unstable by the day.
Namur did not pay much attention to any of it.
By then, he was attending meetings with what remained of my father's faction. There was little left of it, and certainly nothing Kudur considered a threat.
As far as Namur and the other spies were concerned, they had already won.
Still, information had a way of reaching him.
He heard when the first survivor of the creature's attacks was found. He also heard when Kisaya was sent after it, with those who gave the order apparently expecting her not to come back.
And then, a few days later, something happened to the survivor. He suddenly attacked one of the people caring for him. It was so violent that they eventually had to kill him.
Why? The question stayed with me.
Unfortunately, Namur did not care enough to look into it.
More time passed.
Kish had noticed how vulnerable Uruk had become. If they saw enough weakness, an attack was becoming a real possibility.
That, combined with the worsening clandestine rituals, was what pushed Kudur to move his coronation forward.
By then, I had already made my way back into Uruk with the others.
A few days later, I watched events I remembered far too well, only this time from Namur's side.
Hadan managed to trick him into going to the temple of Ereshkigal. Namur still followed his usual precautions. Before leaving, Namur wrote a short tablet warning Kudur's network about the meeting. Then, just as he had done countless times before, he left it inside the same jar.
Then he went to the temple.
When Hadan accused him of being a traitor, his thoughts almost made me laugh.
'It doesn't make sense.'
'Impossible.'
For once, Namur genuinely could not understand what had happened.
Then came the torture.
I felt every part of it. Hadan's people tried to break him, but Namur never gave them a single word. No matter what they did, his loyalty to Kudur never wavered.
By that point, I was getting very tired of feeling pain that had already happened. Unfortunately, I knew there was still one part left.
Me.
Eventually, I walked into the room. Watching myself torture him was considerably less satisfying when I was the one feeling it.
I almost regretted how much pain I had put him through at the end. From now on, if I'm going to torture someone, I'm not taking their memories afterward.
Then I watched myself lean closer.
I bit him.
The moment my fangs entered his neck, I felt Namur's entire body go still. His muscles stopped responding. He could no longer move.
And a few moments later… Namur died.