Silence clung to the ruins of Basra like a shroud. The night air was thick with smoke, the stench of charred flesh and burned parchment heavy enough to choke the lungs. Where laughter once rose from markets and prayers once echoed from mosques, there was only the hiss of dying embers.
Dhia lay among the fallen, his chest rising shallowly, his vision clouded with drifting ash. His body screamed with pain, yet a strange numbness dulled the edges of agony. He remembered arrows, the flash of steel, the crush of bodies surging through the library doors. He remembered falling. He remembered surrendering to death.
And yet, he breathed.
Why am I still alive?
With effort, he moved his fingers. His hand brushed against something hard, flat, and strangely warm beneath his head. Forcing his neck to turn, he saw it: A book.
Its cover was blackened with soot, the leather edges scorched as though it had been plucked from fire. Blood streaked across it in thick, dark smears—his own, or someone else's, he could not tell. The title was gone, burned away.
He blinked, heart pounding. Basra's library had been consumed; its treasures turned to ash. So why was this one here, unbroken, beneath his head like a pillow?
His chest heaved, shallow breaths filling his lungs with acrid smoke. Hours crawled by as he fought between waking and slipping into darkness. But slowly—impossibly—his body began to mend. The sharp pain in his ribs dulled. His arm, which should have hung lifeless, stirred with strength. The arrow wound at his side closed, leaving only dried blood where torn flesh had been.
"No…" he whispered, voice trembling. "This isn't possible."
A bitter laugh bubbled out of him, dry and cracked. His stomach growled fiercely, demanding food he did not have, yet even hunger felt like a sign of life he should not possess.
By dawn, he rose unsteadily, brushing soot from his tattered tunic. His hometown—what little of it remained—was a skeleton of beams and ash. He found nothing to salvage. Even the coins hidden beneath the floors had melted into useless lumps of bronze.
"Oh God…" His voice cracked, a strange mix of grief and irony. "I am broke. Broken, yet alive."
Only the book remained. He lifted it, tracing a finger over the burned edges. When he rubbed at the bloodstains, they vanished—as though they had never been there. He flipped through pages half-consumed by flame, others covered in faded ink and markings he could not understand. Some letters were written in a script unfamiliar, curling like fire itself. Others were blank, yet when his eyes lingered too long, faint shadows of words seemed to ripple into being before fading again.
His throat tightened. This was no ordinary relic.
"What are you?" he whispered.
Clutching it close, he stumbled from the ruins into the cold breath of winter, unsure whether he carried salvation—or a curse.