Ash hung in the air like a curse.
It settled on the rafters of the hovel, sifted through the cracks in the dirt floor, clung to his lungs like cobwebs soaked in smoke and old blood. Every breath felt like swallowing a wound.
Lugal lay curled beneath the sagging table, ribs pressing into his knees, bare arms wrapped around his head. The belt cracked through the air again.
Whip—snap.
He didn't scream anymore. Screaming only made it worse. Gave his father a target, gave him music.
Above him, the storm raged—broad-shouldered and swaying with rotgut and ruin. His father's bulk filled the room like a bad dream made flesh. Not strong, just big. Not a man, but a shadow that drank all the light.
"You think stretching scraps makes you clever?" the man spat, slurred with spite. "You think you're better than me?"
Another lash. The belt danced like a serpent. Lugal didn't answer. Couldn't. His teeth were clenched so tight his gums bled.
A boot slammed into his ribs, fire blooming along bone. Then the belt again—frenzied now, not measured. Wild. Striking at the air, the walls, the boy who didn't flinch.
"You'll never be nothing! Just like your whoring mother!"
The knife on the man's hip glinted as he turned, catching a thread of dirty light. Lugal saw it through the haze—clearer than the blows, clearer than the pain.
He should've been afraid.
He wasn't.
He'd tried once—stupidly, hopefully—to help. Tried to stretch stale root-bread and boil bones just long enough to trick the broth into flavor. Thought maybe, just maybe, his father might see him. Just once.
The belt flew like a struck viper.
His head cracked against the hearth. The world bled red, then vanished into black.
—
When he woke, the fire was dead. The hovel was silent, cold, soaked in the stink of soot and spilled ale. His father was gone. Only the smear of a bootprint on his ribs and the shattered bottle near the hearth remained—ghosts of a storm passed.
He didn't cry. Not then.
He stared at the rafters, through the slow-moving ash, as the grey Sinks sky filtered down like breath too thin to fill lungs.
That was the moment.
Not the beatings. Not the hunger.
That moment—when silence settled in, and he knew no one was coming.
Something cracked open in him. Something deeper than bone.
Get out, it whispered.
He made a vow with blood on his lip:
He would not die here.
He would rise.
He would become more than this shadow-born thing.
He would make the world kneel for ever calling him nothing.
—
The vision shattered.
Lugal bolted upright, breath rasping. The ghost of the belt still twitched across his back.
But the air had changed.
Colder now. Staler.
The stink of mold, piss, and damp despair replaced soot.
Not the hovel.
He sat up too fast. Iron bars met him—thick, rust-gnawed, inlaid with dim yellow runes. Containment glyphs. Not for the body. For the soul.
The cell was barely larger than a grave. Cracks wept cold water down the stone walls. A steady drip echoed like a clock counting down to something worse.
Outside: shadows. Muffled prayers. Whimpers. Chains.
Lugal coughed, throat raw, and curled back into himself.
Sleep claimed him again, dark and clawing—dragging him backward into a memory that had never really left.