Once, it had a name whispered through silk banners and sunlit markets—but now the city was a wound in the desert, forgotten even by the sky.

  It had once been a jewel—small, proud, and alive. Now it was a grave. Its bones were buried in sand, its stones picked clean by wind and war. The rivers had dried. The wells had cracked. The sun burned hotter here, as if punishing the land for trying to survive. No trade caravans passed anymore. Only scavengers, ghosts, and the desperate.

  The boy had no name either. Or if he did, it had long since slipped from the mouths that once cared to speak it. He had not heard it in years.

  He lived by scraping dry bread from broken market stalls when no one was looking. He drank from cracked jars when the nights were merciful and the gutters full. He was the kind of child people stopped seeing. Not because they were cruel, but because hunger had a way of making you forget the things you couldn't fix.

  Not since the sickness took the weaver woman who once wrapped him in faded cloth and called him river. She had no other name for him. Just "Rion"—like the current that carves its way forward, even in stone. She used to say it while tying cloth scraps around his scraped knees or when he cried in his sleep, in those early months after the fever took his voice and the city forgot he existed, her voice low and steady like the river she'd named him for. She used to hum old lullabies and stroke the hollow of his back where the bones poked through like question marks.

  He had believed her. Once.

  That day, the wind tasted wrong. Like copper and memory. The sky had curled into a faded bronze, and the air crackled with heat that didn't feel natural. He was running from older boys who'd cornered him near the west gate ruins. He'd stolen a coin—worth barely anything—but they'd chased him like it was a treasure.

  He limped south, toward the ruin-plains. Hunger gnawed. Thirst worse. His mouth felt like dust packed with ash. He remembered a trader saying there might still be water beneath the old temple—the one that collapsed when the war fires came. The one even the scavengers avoided.

  So he stumbled across cracked stone, where no shadows offered rest. His feet led him toward the ruins of the old temple—a place the elders hissed about in dying tongues. Not superstition. Grief. The place where names had once been carved into pillars now broken in half.

  That day, he fell.

  Skinned palms. Cracked lip. No tears left.

  And something shimmered near a jagged pile of stone.

  Not light exactly. Not heat. Just... presence.

  He stepped closer.

  A blackened lamp—half-buried, scorched, but warm to the touch—jutted from the earth like a forgotten tooth. He didn't question it. Didn't ask why it pulsed in his palm, or why the wind suddenly stopped when his fingers closed around it.

  He only knew that something in the world had paused.

  Then everything stopped.

  The wind halted completely—mid-rush, as if a god had held its breath. Leaves froze mid-tumble. Dust hung suspended in the air like sparks from a broken fire. The light dimmed to stillness. Time itself held its breath.

  The silence was thick—not empty, but pressing. Like the air had turned to glass and Rion was trapped inside it, heartbeat echoing against the stillness.

  The wind halted.

  The light dimmed to stillness.

  Time itself held its breath.

  The heat of the desert sun no longer bore its vicious teeth against me. Like I had somehow escaped its view

  And in that silence, a figure stood behind him.

  He hadn't heard the steps. Hadn't felt the air shift. But he turned, heart pounding like a drum in his throat.

  Smoke. That was the first impression. Not fire—not heat—just curling, impossibly still smoke. And from within it, a face that wasn't really a face. Eyes like old script. A mouth that didn't move when it spoke.

  "You may call me Gin."

  The boy's throat scraped. He tried to speak, but the words wouldn't come.

  "You have found the lamp," the figure said. "Five wishes"

  The Gin paused, something unreadable flickering across the air between them. "Speak, boy. The world is paused for you.""

  He stared. Tried to understand.

  Gin tilted his head. "Speak, boy. The world is paused for you."

  The boy licked cracked lips. "Anything?"

  Gin didn't nod. Didn't blink. Just said, "Within limits. But few."

  The boy thought. Thought of food. Of water. Of a name. But what if he ran out? What if he chose wrong? Five didn't feel like enough. Not for the world he'd lived through.

  So he said, quietly: "I wish... I wish my wishes would never run out. Like... like the sand. Like all the sand in all the deserts. Too many to count."

  Gin was still.

  Then:

  "Granted."

  Gin's voice was final—not triumphant, not warning. Just... certain.

  I was thirteen when I made that wish. I remember because my ribs still ache when I think of that wind. It was the first time the world paused for me. I didn't know it would never unpause the same way again.

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  The world resumed.

  But something was... wrong.

  The air shifted back into motion like silk sliding over a wound—too smooth, too seamless. A soft murmur returned to the world, as if everything had rehearsed its next moment without him. Dust settled, not where it had been, but where it was now convenient. The sun shone at a slightly different angle. People walked and spoke, but it was like listening to music a half-note off from the rhythm he remembered.

  But it had changed.

  He stood, blinking.

  The ruins had shifted. The cistern was no longer broken. The sky no longer bronze, but a deep, endless blue. In the distance, where collapsed walls had once groaned, stood gates of marble and copper. And people.

  His bare feet slapped against smooth stone that hadn't been there a moment ago. The ground had color again—white limestone, veined with copper inlays. Vines curled around pillars that had once been rubble, now blooming like they'd never stopped. The heat was still present, but it no longer pressed against him like a threat. It hummed gently now, like sunlight through curtains.

  A man passed him, nodded respectfully, and said, "Rion." No title. No suspicion. Just warmth.

  He blinked.

  A woman brushed his shoulder as she passed, then doubled back. She pressed a fig into his palm. "You're late. Jorah said you'd be at the square by now. The little ones are waiting."

  Before he could ask who Jorah was, she was already gone.

  Another boy, younger than him, ran by barefoot and laughing. "Rion, we practiced the jump you taught us! Come watch!"

  He didn't answer. Couldn't. He stared at the fig in his palm. It wasn't dusty or bruised. It was fresh. Ripe. Like it had come from a tree that had never known drought.

  Someone clapped him on the back—a middle-aged man with soot on his hands. "You were right about the fire wall. Held like a charm. You saved a whole row of homes last night. We owe you, boy."

  He opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

  He turned slowly, walking the street like a stranger in his own skin. They smiled at him like he belonged. They remembered him like he had always been this person.

  But he remembered the hunger. The blood. The boys who'd cornered him behind the spice merchant's stall, grinning like wolves, laughing as they slammed his ribs into the stone wall again and again until he couldn't breathe, until he vomited the crusts of bread he'd stolen that morning. He remembered the copper taste in his mouth and the way no one looked up, no one came running.

  And none of these people did.

  He wasn't a prince. He wasn't even special. He was just a boy who had bled into the dust and prayed someone would see him. And now, they all did. Not because of who he was—but because of who they remembered him to be. And part of him, starving for warmth, wished the memory was real. But in this version of the city, they called him brave, wise, kind. Leader of the young. A light among the gutters.

  And the worst part? He wanted it to be true.

  A part of him whispered that all of this—the respect, the familiarity, the trust—felt too clean. Like a story told too often. Like a memory borrowed from someone else.

  But no one questioned it. Not the children. Not the elders. Not even the sky.

  And when he finally asked one of them why they followed him, the woman only blinked and said, "You always have."

  Then paused.

  "Haven't you?"

  People walked the streets. Laughed. Called out names he recognized but shouldn't have.

  A girl passed him and pressed a fig into his palm. "You're late, big brother."

  He blinked. She was already gone.

  He turned.

  The city was whole again.

  And worse: it recognized him.

  He wandered the restored city in a daze, too afraid to speak, too uncertain to run. Children tugged at his sleeves. Merchants waved. A guard even gave him a half-salute. Everywhere he turned, people greeted him like he belonged.

  But he didn't. Not in the way they believed.

  The streets he remembered crawling over with shattered bricks and blood were now paved in polished stone. Banners rippled from towers that hadn't existed. The air smelled of spiced bread, not smoke. This wasn't a dream—he'd lived long enough in nightmares to know the difference.

  He passed a baker who handed him a wrapped loaf without charge. "Thank you again for protecting my son," she said with shining eyes.

  Rion opened his mouth to ask what she meant—but something in her smile stopped him. Like she needed it to be true.

  He said nothing. Just nodded and walked on.

  Every kindness made his stomach twist. Every praise felt like a stolen coat two sizes too large. His ribs still ached from the kicks. The hunger still scraped at his memories.

  Then he turned a corner. And froze.

  There it stood: a statue in the central square.

  Him. His own face. Or close enough. Smoothed by an artist's hopeful hands. He was cast in bronze, a cloak sweeping behind him, arms open to a group of children at his feet.

  The plaque below read: RION: THE FIRST LIGHT OF THE DUST.

  A group of younger children stood nearby, mimicking the pose and laughing. One of them glanced at the real Rion and gasped. "It's him!"

  "Is it really?" another whispered.

  He turned and walked away, faster this time.

  He needed answers.

  He needed to speak to The Gin.

  Back in the ruined part of the city—or what should have been ruins—he ducked behind an alley, pressed his palm to the lamp in his satchel, and the world stopped.

  Time froze.

  The sound of the market vanished like a dropped curtain.

  And The Gin was already there.

  Sitting on a now-motionless fruit cart, as if he'd always been.

  "I didn't ask for this," Rion said, shaking.

  The Gin looked at him without blinking. "You asked for infinite wishes. The world needs something to believe in to carry that kind of weight."

  "But they remember things I never did. They think I'm someone I'm not."

  "They think you are someone worth listening to. That was not your wish. That is their story."

  Rion's fists clenched. "You made them lie."

  "I gave them coherence. The world is not built to hold contradictions. Would you have preferred the truth?"

  Rion was silent.

  Finally, he said, "Will it stay this way?"

  The Gin was still for a long moment. Not thinking—he did not need to—but simply waiting, like a sculpture deciding whether to breathe.

  "It will, if you leave it alone," he said at last. "If you add to it, it may fracture. If you question it too often, it may rot. If you try to fix it, you may break more than you mend."

  "Then what do I do?"

  The Gin answered.

  "You live."

  And the world resumed.

  He stood in the alley for a long time, surrounded by stillness that had resumed too perfectly. The air smelled of figs and sun-warmed stone. His heart beat too fast for this new world, his thoughts too jagged for its smoothness.

  He didn't return to the square. Not yet. He wasn't ready to step back into a story that didn't belong to him. Confusion knotted with guilt in his chest—guilt for not deserving their love, and fear that he might begin to want it anyway. He walked side streets instead, testing the city like a scabbed-over wound. The children waved at him. A dog followed him for two streets and then ran off, tail high. He passed a well where two girls filled pitchers and laughed when they saw him.

  "You really have to teach my brother to climb like you do," one said.

  He smiled weakly and kept walking.

  Everywhere he went, the story continued without him. He was a character in a book he hadn't written.

  And worse, he felt it tempting him.

  To stay. To accept it. To wear the face they handed him like a clean mask.

  But something inside him stayed sharp. A sliver of memory that refused to soften.

  He returned to the temple ruins by nightfall. The place where he found the lamp—now just another part of the city's architecture. A shrine had formed there. Candles burned, and someone had left a child's drawing of him standing in front of the old columns.

  He sat by it, knees tucked to his chest. The drawing trembled faintly in the wind, a child's version of him smiling beneath pillars that had never truly been whole. He looked at it for a long time, wondering who that boy was supposed to be. Was it the hero they saw, or the one he might have become if the hunger hadn't carved its name into his ribs?

  He didn't wish for anything else that day.

  Not yet.

  Because deep down, he feared what he truly wanted.

  And feared even more what the world might give him if he asked.

  He didn't wish for anything else that day.

  Not yet.

  But the possibilities bloomed like heat in his chest.

  And for the first time since the world paused, he wondered what else could be made real.

  And what else might unravel if he tried.