"The snake swallows its tail, and what was becomes what will be. To the enlightened naga, all moments exist simultaneously, past, present, and future, coiled as one. Thus the wise ask: if all is written, then where lies sin?"
- Ibn'Mak Varvarava On The Snake Bible
...
"Regicide against the emperor's heir."
Blue Desert Oasis's voice rang across the imperial plaza, each word savored.
Three months of humiliation culminated in this moment.
"As well as the attempted sedition against the High Tyrant's rule. Apostasy against the Worm Brotherhood's covenant. As well as the iconoclasm of many sacred relics."
Disdain filled him as the demonic figure stood bleeding in the sun, the crowd roaring at his sides.
"Shailyth Al'Jura. For your crimes against the empire. As well as the constant abuse of your naga arts,"
Blue Desert Oasis paused, feeling the wind catch his robes as he read from a scroll.
"You are to be executed through conscious mummification."
Blue Desert Oasis gestured as six priests emerged from the shadows, carrying jade burial jars filled with preservative oils. They would remove the organs of the condemned while they remained conscious, a fate worse than death.
He had personally chosen the punishment: immortality through immobility, a state of being where there was no motion but one's thoughts.
This was not cruelty, but earned retribution.
Three months.
Three whole months of social degradation, kneeling before that demon's feet, fetching him high quality rose wine, and enduring constant laughter from other elders.
If he hadn't challenged Shai Jura to the Trial of Asymmetrical Will, an arrogant wager he made in his youth, then Blue Desert Oasis would've never suffered such a torture to his dignity.
Yet as he looked down, Shai Jura's face remained euphoric, his torso mutilated with wounds, blood seeping endlessly from his lacerations - a demon baptized in his own violence.
Blue Desert Oasis' satisfaction crumbled. Even at death's edge, Shai Jura smiled at him.
---
Below, Shai Jura stood motionless in the plaza's center. The steps to the executioner's platform lay right before him, the crowd pressing in on all sides.
Soldiers, merchants, cultivators, years' worth of hunters surrounded him, their hatred pressing against his bloodied skin like heat.
Even my own mother stands somewhere in this crowd, praying for my death.
He scanned the crowd until he found her, a withered hag among thousands.
Mother.
Their eyes met. She turned her head slowly, then disappeared into the crowd, letting it swallow her whole.
Smiling, he looked down at his palms, where two circular scars carved deep into his flesh, a punishment the empire forced upon him during his capture.
Shai Jura knew what this meant.
This wasn't just an execution, but a ritualistic passage to hell itself.
They want to bind my soul to the coffin, and turn me into a slave through zombie cultivation. It seems they are aware of the value I possess, probably setting this execution up to harvest my knowledge for centuries to come.
He smirked as he walked up the wooden stairs, ascending to where Blue Desert Oasis stood waiting. Each step creaked beneath his weight, the crowd's roar fading into silence. Even the desert wind seemed to hold its breath.
At the summit, the black sarcophagus gaped open like a maw, iron and gore flooding his senses, thick enough to drown in.
Its interior was cold and reeked of age, as if centuries of death had been compressed into it.
This was his final resting place, and his chrysalis.
Looking at the scene before him, Shai Jura paused at the threshold, recalling his youth.
The enlightened naga once asked: "If all moments exist as one, where lies sin?"
In his youth, Shai Jura had dismissed such questions as the idle musings of those too weak to commit real sins.
But now, facing execution, he understood the answer those ancient masters had been circling.
Sin is not the action itself, it is the causal thread connecting action to consequence. Cut that thread, and sin becomes impossible.
This was the true nature of Saavi'Agita, "The Remover of Sins," not merely to change the past, but remove it entirely. To make it so certain actions never occurred at all.
With such power, Shai Jura would walk eternally innocent. Not because he refrained from sin, but because he could erase it. Every transgression unmade, every crime unwritten. This was not freedom to act without consequence, but the power to make consequences impossible.
However, Blue Desert Oasis's smile vanished as he saw Shai Jura step willingly inside, his eyes wide with insanity.
"Do you regret it?"
Shai Jura looked up at him, then laughed.
"No."
His voice was light, almost playful.
"Because there are no consequences to my actions."
His smile widened even further as the old man's eyebrows furrowed deeper, disturbed by such conviction.
Is he stupid—
"I love you."
Blue Desert Oasis's hand moved to close the lid, then hesitated.
For three months, he'd served this demon, learned from him, and understood why so many had followed him despite his evil.
Those three words, casual, mocking, intimate, were not random. Shai Jura had studied him, understood his pride, and chosen the exact phrase that would shatter him completely.
"Is this some kind of fucking joke to you?! You bastard!"
Thud.
The sarcophagus lid closed abruptly, as Shai Jura laughed harder. His taunting had worked.
Pure isolation!
This was it. He could finally activate his trump card in privacy.
If their bureaucracy had never banned naga arts, then they would be aware of the power I possess.
Yet due to their combined idiocy, they will remain unaware of what's about to happen.
His face no longer showed any signs of euphoria, but his eyes sharpened as he activated his blood core with cold determinism.
Saavi'Agita.
Blood started to pour from every orifice in his body, eyes, ears, nose, mouth. Nothing was spared as the spell demanded everything. The taste of copper flooded his throat, and his vision blurred to red.
Through his blurring vision, Shai Jura felt a familiar weight on his shoulder. A yellow snake, its crimson eyes glowing in the darkness.
As he began to cough out streams of blood, slowly dying, Shai Jura whispered a command to the naga familiar.
"I never went to the imperial academy. Make it so."
The snake's head remained motionless for a few seconds, before dissipating into thin air, its ability taking place.
If Saavi'Agita succeeds, he would walk this world innocent, a blank slate rewritten endlessly. He would commit every sin again, erase it, and walk free.
Ancient texts warned of endless hunger. He was the snake that eats itself, the endless cycle of transgression and absolution.
This was transcendence.
I will not break this cycle, but perfect it.
As the blood loss caused his consciousness to fade, Shai Jura's last thought was peaceful in his grotesque situation:
The beauty to undo mistakes does not come without cost. This was the price of Saavi'Agita's domain of causal erasure.
...
Inside an orange sandstone throne room, the air hung heavy with incense and rot. A silhouette emerged from the shadows, as footsteps echoed against stone, approaching the giant steel throne that loomed ahead.
"Yes, Sultán?"
The man bowed before a hooded figure, his features lost in the dark.
"3 years."
"I have given you 3 years, and the utmost leniency, Ezura."
The sultan's voice was grainy, deep in its resonance.
"Your eminence, the pursuit of immortality is something that cannot be rushed."
The frail man bowed lower, before raising his head to meet with the gaze of the hooded figure.
"However, during our raids of the Narginte citadel. Our troops may have found an ancient document that could lead us there."
A smile split on the man's face, revealing rotted cavities, and his breath stinking of decay.
"In the south, during ancient times, a tribal civilization called the Yushtani had once documented an irregular medical case they call, the Ananteshesha virus..."
Ezura paused, before continuing.
"A condition that compels a person, to eat themselves."
"And what of it?"
The sultan spoke aloofly, his wrinkled fingers exposed from privacy of his cloak.
"Well, when they first saw signs of a baby eating themselves, they were obviously horrified and confused. However as the baby continued to eat at its own fingers, legs, and other body parts for that matter."
Ezura's voice tinged with discomfort and disgust, shuddering his body.
"Spare me the grotesque details, Ezura."
"You don't understand, new parts of his body began to regrow instantaneously, replacing the old with the new."
His voice dropped, before continuing.
"While medically Yushtani physicians termed it as the Ananteshesha virus. Commonfolk called it the Ouroboros curse. Named after one of the gods they worshipped."
The Sultan's labored breathing cut him off.
After a long pause, his voice came slow and merciless:
"Ezura. You're doing it again."
The sultan's interest was fraying.
"How many times must you feed me with irrelevancy. I will kill you if you do not get to the point."
The sound of buzzing insects invaded Ezura's ears as he fiddled with his fingers anxiously, explaining at a faster pace.
"Sultan, you don't understand. Whenever a person eats their own flesh, it regenerates almost instantaneously after swallowing, with newer and much younger flesh. Do you know what this means?"
The sultan turned his head to face Ezura, this time an eye peered from the hood, wide with insanity.
"It's called a virus because when you drink the blood of someone who has it, you also share the curse. Sultan, these people do not age."
The throne room fell silent. Then wet, raspy laughter broke the quiet. The Sultan's fingers trembled against the armrest, clutching it hard.
When silence returned to the throne room, Ezura spoke again.
"There are humans walking among us, Sultan, people who may be well over a thousand years old-"
"Immortals."
The sultan cut off, leaning towards Ezura with obsession deep in his heart.
"Why haven't we found them yet then."
"Two reasons. Either everything I've told you is a lie fabricated by the Yushtani people. Or simply, they've gone into hiding."
Ezura tilted his head, shrugging.
"Then find them, and bring them to me. I will not simply drink their blood, and spare any droplet. But bathe in it, and the splendor of immortality."
The sultan pulled back his hood, his face repulsive to even Ezura.
His face was the amalgam of youth and age. Pristine skin stretched across one cheek, held by crude suture marks. The skin of the young was worn like a mask, hiding the necrotic flesh underneath.
He looked less like a man, and more like a puppet. There was no more humanity left in him.
This was the obsession of the Sultan.
This ongoing deterioration, whatever the cost, none of it was too great. No method was too vile, if it meant returning himself back to his prime.
As Ezura observed the hellish scene, a cold tremor crawled up his spine, lowering his gaze to the floor.
"Then it is so, my Sultán."
...