Rating: MA 15+
The fever started on the second day after Nahara's death.
Not illness—Sabaku understood that immediately. This was the sun-core, no longer dormant but awakening, responding to accumulated trauma and emotional exhaustion. Heat radiated from his stomach in waves, his skin glowing faintly even in shadow. At night, he couldn't sleep—the energy coursing through him like electricity through insufficient wiring, making his muscles twitch, his thoughts race.
By the third morning, his body had begun to change.
His white hair developed streaks of gold that caught sunlight and held it, glowing long after sunset. His eyes—when he glimpsed them in reflective stone—had taken on an amber quality, pupils dilating and contracting independently of light conditions. And his shadow... his shadow fell wrong. Too long at noon, too short at dawn, as if operating by different physics than the rest of the world.
The sun tracked him. He felt its attention like pressure against his consciousness, not malicious but intensely focused. Curious. Waiting.
What are you becoming? the pressure seemed to ask. What will you choose to be?
Sabaku didn't have answers. He walked toward the Temple of Inverse Shadows because walking gave purpose, and purpose delayed the decision he couldn't make. Each step left glowing footprints that faded slowly, light bleeding into sand.
The temple appeared on the horizon at midday—a massive structure half-buried in dunes, its architecture inverted like the necropolis, built to reject rather than welcome. But surrounding it: two armies.
The Scarab Legion on the eastern approach, their bronze armor catching light like collected suns. Thousands of soldiers in geometric formations, siege engines assembled, prayers rising in unified chant.
The Dune Striders on the western approach, their mechanical forces creating different symmetry—vehicles on spider-legs, drones circling overhead, soldiers in powered armor that made them look like metal giants.
And between the armies, in those lands of contested sand: Tefra. Alone. Waiting.
Sabaku approached her, feeling both armies' attention fix on him. Weapons tracked his movement. Scopes zoomed. But no one fired. They were waiting for their commanders' signal.
Tefra smiled as he approached, golden eyes reflecting his glow. "You're activated. I can see it. Feel it." She gestured to his luminescent form. "The sun-core is ready. You're ready. Whether you accept it or not."
"I'm not your weapon," Sabaku said, but his voice carried harmonics it hadn't before—multiple tones overlapping, as if the sun-core was adding its own resonance.
"You're everyone's weapon now." Tefra's expression mixed triumph and something almost sympathetic. "Look at you. Glowing like a captured star. Both armies see you—one sees divine mandate, the other sees technology incarnate. You've become the symbol neither side can ignore. The fulcrum that tips the balance."
She turned to face the temple. "The Dune Striders have fortified that structure for three years. Claimed it as their headquarters, their research center, their proof that the old ways—my ways—are obsolete. Today, with you, I prove them wrong. Prove that divinity supersedes machinery. That faith defeats reason."
"By killing everyone who disagrees?" Sabaku's hands clenched, and light leaked between his fingers like liquid.
"By restoring order." Tefra's voice hardened. "The Collapse happened because humanity forgot its place. Treated the universe as playground for experimentation. The sun-core itself—you yourself—are proof of that hubris. Biological reactor. Human modified in utero. Playing god without understanding what gods demand."
"And what do they demand?" Sabaku asked. "More suffering? More children tortured for refusing to accept pain as prayer?"
"They demand recognition that we are small." Tefra met his gaze. "That despite our technology, our consciousness transfer, our bio-engineering, we remain mortal. Finite. Subject to forces beyond our control. The Dune Striders deny this. They believe humanity can engineer its way out of extinction, hack the sun itself, rewrite physics through clever mathematics."
She gestured to the temple. "They're wrong. And today, you help me prove it."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then I activate you by force." Tefra's hand moved to a device at her belt—crystalline, pulsing with familiar violet light. "You're not the only one who retrieved knowledge from the First Scientist's laboratory. I sent teams after you. They found... alternative methods. Ways to trigger sun-core activation remotely. Painful. Imprecise. But effective."
Sabaku felt his core pulse in response to the device, recognizing something in its frequency. Fear crystallized—not of death, but of being used. Of becoming the weapon Tefra envisioned, the forced catalyst for genocide.
"Don't make me do this," he pleaded. "There has to be another—"
The device activated. Pain exploded through Sabaku's heart—the sun-core responding against his will, energy flooding through him uncontrolled. He screamed, falling to his knees as light poured from his eyes, his mouth, every pore becoming conduit for solar fury.
"I'm sorry," Tefra said, and meant it. "But necessity supersedes mercy."
She raised her hand, and the Scarab Legion charged. Thousands of soldiers screaming prayers and war cries, rushing toward the temple, toward the Dune Striders, using Sabaku's activation as divine signal.
The Dune Striders responded, weapons firing, drones diving, their mechanical efficiency meeting theological fervor in explosive collision.
And Sabaku, kneeling between them, felt the sun-core reach critical mass.
Energy beyond his body's capacity to contain. Solar power filtered through biological architecture never meant to channel this much, this fast. He was burning from inside, cells igniting, consciousness fragmenting under the load.
This is what Tefra wants, some distant part of him understood. For me to explode. To release all this energy as weapon. To make my death her victory.
But through the pain, through the dissolution of self, he felt something else. The knowledge from the crystalline sphere, integrated during those days studying the First Scientist's equations. Understanding flowering in his fragmenting mind:
The sun-core wasn't weapon. Was never weapon.
It was bridge. Communication device. A way to speak with the sun itself, to negotiate with stellar consciousness.
But activation required choice. Required will. Required the user to decide what message to send, what request to make, what bargain to propose.
Tefra wanted him to explode. To become bomb.
The Dune Striders wanted him contained. To become specimen.
But Sabaku...
Sabaku remembered Nahara dissolving into dust. Remembered the lotus blooming. Remembered transformation that was gentle, natural, the desert taking what died and making something new without force, without violation.
What if, he thought desperately, what if I refuse both options?
He reached inward, past the pain, past the burning, to the sun-core's actual function. And he spoke. Not with voice—with consciousness, with intention, broadcasting through the core directly to the sun itself.
I don't want to be weapon, he said to the star. I don't want to be sacrifice. I don't want more death in my name, more children forgotten, more Naharas and Arus and orphanage kids turned into fuel for someone else's vision of salvation.
The sun's attention focused completely. Sabaku felt it—vast beyond comprehension, ancient beyond time, conscious in ways human minds couldn't properly process. But aware. Listening.
So here's what I offer, Sabaku continued, feeling his body beginning to dissolve, cells converting to pure energy. Take me. All of me. The sun-core, the memories, Sabaku and Aru and everyone I carry. But don't take them. Don't take the armies. Don't take this world. Let it transform naturally, gently, the way Nahara became lotus. The way deserts remember without consuming.
The sun considered.
And then, impossibly, it responded.
Not words. Not language. But understanding flowing back through the core: CHILD OF TWO LIVES. YOU OFFER YOURSELF BUT DEMAND PRESERVATION OF OTHERS. THIS IS INSUFFICIENT EXCHANGE. STELLAR PROCESSES REQUIRE FUEL. TRANSFORMATION REQUIRES SACRIFICE.
Then take what I'm willing to give, Sabaku replied. My consent. My choice. Make that enough. Make free will matter more than forced offerings.
Silence from the star. Calculation beyond his comprehension. Then:
SHOW ME.
Sabaku understood. The sun wanted demonstration. Wanted proof that individual choice could supersede collective necessity. That one willing soul could matter more than thousands of forced ones.
He stood, body barely solid now, more light than flesh. The armies had clashed fully—Scarab Legion and Dune Striders locked in combat, blood and oil mixing in sand, screams of dying mixing with machinery's grinding death.
Tefra watched him rise, golden eyes widening. "No. Don't you dare—"
But Sabaku was past her commands. Past anyone's commands.
He raised his hands—translucent now, almost gone—and released everything. Not as weapon. As storm. As transformation.
Light erupted from him in waves, spreading across the battlefield. Not destroying—transforming. Sand beneath both armies began to shift, to liquify, to superheat. Within seconds, the desert floor was glass, molten and flowing, forcing soldiers to leap back, to abandon position, to retreat from ground that had become impossible to stand on.
The heat intensified. Both armies pulled back further, weapons forgotten, survival superseding strategy. The molten glass spread, consuming the battlefield, turning the entire contested area into a sea of burning crystal.
Sabaku felt himself dissolving completely, consciousness spreading out through the light, through the glass, through the transformation. He was dying—truly dying this time, no reincarnation, no second chance. The sun-core was consuming him as fuel for the message, the demonstration, the proof that individual choice could change reality.
I choose transformation over violence, he broadcast with his dying consciousness. I choose to make something new from death rather than just adding to the body count. And I choose freely. No coercion. No manipulation. Just... choice.
The sun's response was immediate and absolute:
ACCEPTED.
Reality shuddered. The sun above pulsed once—visible even in daylight, a brightening that lasted exactly one heartbeat. And in that pulse, Sabaku felt the bargain complete. Felt his consciousness acknowledged, his sacrifice recognized as sufficient.
Felt the sun... pause.
Not withdraw. Not shrink away from Earth. But pause its approach. Halt its consumption. Not forever—the stellar processes would continue eventually. But delayed. Centuries, perhaps millennia, bought with one kids willing dissolution.
The armies saw it too. Felt the temperature drop fractionally. Saw the too-close sun somehow become less oppressive. Understood, without knowing how they understood, that something fundamental had shifted.
Tefra fell to her knees, staring at the sky with her golden eyes, tears streaming. "He did it. He actually did it. But not as weapon. Not as sacrifice I demanded. As..." She struggled for words. "As choice. As free will."
The Dune Striders' commander, her face half-metal, stepped to the edge of the burning glass sea and saluted. "The prophet saves us by refusing to be prophet. By choosing humanity over divinity." She turned to her forces. "Stand down. There's nothing left to fight for. He already won."
Sabaku felt these moments from vast distance. He was spreading, dissipating, consciousness fragmenting across the glass sea. Soon there would be nothing left. Just light. Just transformation. Just the change he'd chosen.
But in his final moment of coherence, he saw her.
Nahara. Or the ghost of her. Or the memory of her. Standing at the edge of the glass sea, lotus in hand, smiling with that fierce pride he remembered.
"You did good," she said, voice carried on wind that existed only in his dissolving mind. "You made it kinder. Just like we hoped."
"I'm scared," Sabaku admitted, feeling himself going, going, almost gone. "I don't know what comes after. Don't know if there's anything after."
"Then we'll find out together," Nahara replied. "The desert remembers everything, right? We'll be in the sand. In the glass. In the stories people tell about the kid who glowed and the kid who became flower. That's not nothing. That's memory. That's mattering."
Sabaku wanted to respond, but words had become impossible. He was light now. Just light. Spreading across the glass sea, illuminating it from within, making the entire battlefield glow like captured sunset.
The last thing he felt was warmth. Not burning. Just warmth. Like Tokyo rain on gray walls. Like desert sand remembering heat. Like Nahara's hand in his during those days of walking together.
Then even that faded.
And he was gone.
The glass sea cooled slowly over hours, solidifying into permanent monument. Both armies withdrew to opposite sides, no longer enemies but witnesses to transformation they couldn't comprehend.
Where Sabaku had stood, a shape remained in the glass—a silhouette of a kid, arms raised, light preserved in crystal like insect in amber. And beside it, inexplicably, another shape: a lotus, petals spread, eternally blooming.
Tefra approached the memorial alone. Knelt before it. Removed her golden eyes—the artificial ones—revealing scarred sockets beneath. Blind now, but no longer seeing through ideology.
"Forgive me," she whispered to the glass kid. "I tried to make you weapon when you were always just child. Just child choosing kinder way."
The Dune Striders' commander approached from the other side. Powered down her armor, stood in flesh and metal vulnerability. Placed her hand on the glass beside Tefra's.
"We both used him," she admitted. "Different methods. Same sin. Making prophecy more important than person."
They knelt there together, enemies united in grief, as the desert wind whispered across cooling glass.
And somewhere, in the sand, in the stars, in the space between memory and matter, two children laughed. Free at last from bodies, from prophecies, from worlds that demanded they be more than human. Just light. Just transformation. Just proof that gentle paths exist, even in deserts made from cruelty.
TO BE CONTINUED…