"I owe a great debt to you and your father," said the Acolyte. "But I must now be on my way. You two, stay safe, and bolt the gate. But remember — If you hear a song too melodious to be true, shield your ears. And if you see a red horse, run for your lives."
The Acolyte stepped out into the night, without explaining further. The sky was still clogged by purple smoke. A strange chill came in the air, despite it being peak summer.
"Father, what did you mean when you said there hadn't been purple smoke in a thousand years?" asked Shervin, after shutting the door.
"Son, it's midnight, and I have to deliver this robe tomorrow to Minister Vernit."
His father was evading a direct question again. But Shervin stood his ground. He wanted to know. Too many questions were swirling in his mind.
"I asked a simple question, father. What happened a thousand years ago? I am curious, because we just treated a man who was bleeding all over our floor, and left saying some really ominous words. Tell me, father, is the world ending?"
Arlin, Shervin's father, let out a sigh.
"The world will end, one painful day at a time," said Arlin, solemnly. "If what the Karathin said is true, there is nothing much you or I can do about it. It is inevitable. The last time something like this happened, entire kingdoms came under a poisonous green mist. The Mad One tried to escape his prison of dreams, and put the entire world under a ruinous, hellish spell. People lost control of their own thoughts, murdered their friends, families, with smiles on their faces."
"Was that the first Dark Age?"
Arlin nodded. "The Mad One went by many names. Jairaas. The Nightmare Builder. Akhat-Un-Mar. That age lasted for a hundred years, until the Violet God himself descended from his Obsidian Throne, and captured the Mad One."
"That's when the Mad One was imprisoned inside the Chamber of Dreams?"
"We have all heard that story, haven't we? But not many know what happened immediately after? The world didn't magically heal itself. Distrust was already sown, and it took another two hundred years for the world to repair itself. That's when the first sect of the Karathins were born. Legends say that they spawned out of the blood of the Violet God."
"The Violet God bleeds?" asked Shervin. He was unable to wrap his head around the cosmic scale of the world he had lived in for just seventeen years.
"He battled with the Mad One in a mortal form," said Arlin. "He got a hundred scars. Each scar dripped his lifeblood on the battlefield, and he willed the first Acolytes to be born from those droplets."
"What did the first acolytes do?" Shervin was hungry to know everything.
"They traveled the world, and spread the word of the Violet God. Painstakingly, they undid the tainted Wards spread by the Mad One and his followers. One by one, all the forsaken Kingdoms were released from the Nightmare Realm and came back under the Hallowed Realms of the Violet God."
Ice settled in Shervin's stomach. If the Mad One was now free, it meant the world would soon be made in his image, like a thousand years before. Malice, mistrust, and mayhem would be the order of the day.
Not like it already wasn't, at least for Shervin. The Raidens had only been malicious towards him, the last few years.
Could things get any worse for him?
"Son, it's late. It has been a long night," said Arlin. "You did well today."
"Goodnight, father," said Shervin. He saw his father dutifully clasp shut the cover of his sewing machine, clean his working area, and fold the half-finished robe, before retiring for the night.
He liked this image of his father. He was a hardworking man, after all, who saw good in the world.
But do-gooders don't always have good things happen to them. That was just how the world worked.
Only if his father knew what Shervin endured at the hands of the Raidens every week. He didn't have the heart to tell him. And he still didn't have answers to what happened in the woods last night.
With these thoughts raging in his head, he went to sleep.
***
Shervin woke up at the crack of dawn to the sound of screams. Rubbing his eyes, he rushed outside, only to see half his roof caved in.
"Father!" he yelled. But there was no sign of Arlin. The roof had taken with it his father's beloved sewing machine. Rubble was lying everywhere, and motes of dust danced in the air.
He ran outside his cottage. The villagefolk were running, scared. Trees stood uprooted, their jagged stumps burning. The streets were choked with blood. Bodies, everywhere.
"Don't just stand there!" shrieked a man. Shervin knew him. He was a bangle-seller, and honest, hardworking man.
"Have you seen my father?" Shervin asked.
"I don't know, son. All I know... we are doomed."
The bangle-seller shuffled away. An acrid stench persisted in the air. Shervin covered his nose and ran out into the streets to search for his father. He dashed straight towards his father's shop in the market. Dark, harrowing thoughts plagued his head as he zig-zagged through the streets.
But as the market square came into view, another thought needled into his brain -- who was attacking the villagers? Thus far, he had only seen the chaos, but not the cause.
Then, it happened.
He did not see it. But heard it. A soul-stirring melody, an otherworldly, orchestral symphony.
But it was ever so slightly discordant.
The music made Shervin want to tear through the air and rule the world. It made Shervin want to rip his innards out and remould them. He wanted to do many gruesome but beautiful things, all at once. He wanted to be a mad god.
Then, he remembered the acolyte's words.
"If you hear a song too melodious to be true, shield your ears."
He saw a shopkeeper clawing his own eyes out, with a smile on his face. He saw a woman strangle another woman to death, right in front of the fountain.
"The world is going... mad," he whispered, as he shielded his ears, and hid behind a pillar, lest he be attacked by a mad villager. It was hard to keep the song from burying its discordant notes in his soul.
He sat down on the ground, and let the song play out, as the mayhem continued around him.
As the song neared its ending notes, he saw a figure whip past him. A blue dress, faded sandals, lush brown hair. And a scent of lilacs in its wake.
"Naira?" He looked around. And it was her, running away from an uncertain foe, shielding her ears, just like him. Had she known about this?
But before he could further entertain his thoughts, he saw a black shape tear through the streets, following Naira.
What was that shape?
All his survival instincts, carefully honed because of years of bullying, told him to stay put, or run in the opposite direction, and continue searching for his father. But Naira was the daughter of Minister Vernit. Shervin's father must have personally gone to the Minister's home to deliver the robe, before the madness began. Naira must have seen him. Naira would know his father's whereabouts.
She was also the only person at school who empathized with his ordeal. She knew all the Healing Wards, and had sewn up Shervin's wounds when he had regained his human form after spending a night as a cockroach. Her healing was not only physical, but also mental. For a long time after, Shervin had rejected his human form, still retaining traits of the last animal he had transformed into.
It was Naira who had reminded him that he was still human.
Forgetting his safety, Shervin followed the black shape towards the city.