THE FIRST NAME SPOKEN

  Ashkar-Val, the Red City, gleamed under a thousand banners, their fabric breathing with the wind like the exhaled breath of ancient beings. Blood-red, saffron, and deep violet silk rippled against a sky stained amber by the setting sun, the city's colors deepening as shadows lengthened across its worn stones.

  From the heights of the Sky-Pillar Terrace—carved into the mountain's edge by hands long turned to dust—the city unfurled like a living tapestry: spires of obsidian and red marble thrust upward like obsidian teeth, balconies draped with wind-tossed silk created ribbons of movement across the cityscape, towers crowned in fireglass and bone caught the dying light and refracted it in patterns too complex to follow. Drums throbbed in the lower districts, echoing off old stone—not war drums, but the ceremonial beat of power remembered, of history pulsing through the present moment.

  At the edge of the skywalk, overlooking all, stood the Statue.

  Carved from obsidian-veined basalt, it rose forty feet into the wind, shoulders squared, gaze fixed forever upon the far horizon as though still searching for enemies beyond mortal sight. A long mantle rippled in imagined wind behind him, the stone somehow capturing movement in stillness, and at the base, two ancient kings knelt—one human, one elven—their weapons broken and their heads bowed in eternal submission.

  He bore no name on the pedestal. He did not need one.

  Everyone knew who he was.

  At the statue's feet, small offerings were laid: red stones, braided leather cords, broken weapons, polished tusk beads—tributes from those who remembered, or those who wished to remember. Today, half a dozen children gathered there, speaking in hushed and rising tones that carried on the mountain air.

  "My father says the statue was made too tall," one muttered—scaled and well-fed, a merchant's son by the cut of his embroidered cloak that whispered against the stone as he shifted his weight. "He says no monster was ever that big." His fingers traced the air, outlining the statue's immense proportions as though trying to diminish them through gesture alone.

  "Then your father's an idiot," snapped a second—older, taller, with red threads braided into black hair and a bone sigil hanging from his satchel that clicked softly against his hip as he stepped forward. "It's not tall enough." His eyes, dark as volcanic glass, narrowed at the merchant's son.

  The others hushed, drawing back into a loose semicircle. They all knew who he was—the grandson of the old warlord, the caretaker of this place, his lineage written in the proud set of his shoulders and the fierce angle of his jaw.

  A small girl with hair like spun copper tugged at her brother's sleeve. "Daruk, don't fight here," she whispered, her voice barely audible above the wind. "They say his spirit watches."

  From the shadow of the statue, a voice rasped, cutting through their whispers like a blade through silk:

  "He's right."

  An orc stepped forward from where the statue's shadow pooled darkest, ancient but unbent by the weight of years. One eye clouded like winter mist, one sharp as ever, taking in the circle of children with a gaze that had witnessed centuries turn. The ceremonial markings of a tribal elder etched his weathered face—not just scars of battle but symbols of wisdom earned through suffering. This was Elder Krogar, once the skeptic of legends, now their reluctant keeper. His voice was gravel wrapped in steel, each word carrying the weight of memory's burden.

  "I helped lay the foundations of this statue," he said, each word measured as though carved from the same stone. "I bled for the city that rose beneath it. And I was there, when he—the one it honors—first drew breath."

  The children fell silent. Even the merchant's boy stepped back, his earlier bravado dissolving like morning fog. The copper-haired girl's eyes widened, her hand finding her brother's in silent question.

  "Were you really there?" asked a thin boy at the edge of the group, his voice barely a whisper. "When it all began?"

  The old orc's good eye fixed on him, seeing not just the boy but countless children before him who had asked the same question.

  "I was," he replied, the weight of memory evident in the slight stoop of his massive shoulders. "He was not born in glory. He was born in blood. In thunder. In the dirt of a forgotten world where hope had become a luxury few remembered."

  The old orc moved forward with the careful grace of a predator who no longer needed to prove his strength. He touched the base of the statue where silver runes shimmered faintly beneath the sunlight—ancient words whose meanings had been debated by scholars for generations.

  "He did not rise because he was chosen," the orc continued, his fingertips trailing over the runes as though reading a language only he remembered. "He rose because no one else did. Because the gods were silent. Because we had become beasts pretending to be tribes. And because he... remembered something we had all forgotten."

  His hand fell away, and the runes seemed to dim, as though responding to his touch.

  "What did he remember?" asked the copper-haired girl, her voice small but clear in the hush that had fallen.

  The old orc's gaze shifted to her, something softening in his ruined face. "That is part of the story, little one. Patience."

  "Was he really half-demon?" challenged the merchant's son, finding his voice again. "My tutor says that's just a myth to make him seem more fearsome."

  The old orc's laugh was like stones tumbling down a mountainside. "Your tutor wasn't there when his eyes first opened. I was." He tapped his own chest with a gnarled finger. "He was not like us. Not completely. But he became what we needed him to be."

  One of the children—the boy with red in his hair, the warlord's grandson—stepped forward, staring at the runes with an intensity that belied his years. When his fingers brushed them, the stone pulsed once, faintly, sending a ripple of blue light across the surface that had all the children gasping.

  "Tell us," he said softly, his voice carrying the weight of inheritance. "Tell us everything."

  The old warlord studied him for a long moment, seeing echoes of faces long turned to dust, of battles long consigned to legend. Then he closed his eyes, gathering memories like precious stones.

  "Then listen well," he said, his voice dropping to a tone that pulled them all closer, as though drawn by an invisible thread. "And do not look away, for it is not a gentle tale."

  The children formed a tighter circle around him, even the merchant's son drawn in by the gravity of the moment. The copper-haired girl sat cross-legged at the orc's feet, her eyes never leaving his face. In the distance, the drums continued their rhythmic pulse, a heartbeat beneath the words about to be spoken.

  "Before memory. Before time. Before breath," the old orc began, his voice finding a cadence that suggested these were words passed down through generations, "there was the Architect."

  The sky darkened above them, stars emerging like witnesses to the telling. In the deepening blue, Krogar seemed to see patterns that others had forgotten how to read.

  "The True One. Not god. Not demon. Not thought or light or force. Only Will—and the pattern it had carved across the void." His voice carried a note of doubt, the words rehearsed but still uncertain, as though part of him had never fully believed the tale he was bound to tell.

  As he spoke, the runes at the statue's base seemed to glow more brightly, as though responding to the story's unfolding—or perhaps only catching the last light of day at a particular angle. Krogar's gaze flickered toward them, a momentary unease crossing his weathered features.

  "He sat—or was—upon the Throne of Law, where stars were born and slain without name. Around him, the Weave of the world flickered—not fire, not stone, but possibility itself, threads of what could be and what must never come to pass." The words felt ancient in his mouth, stories older than the stones beneath their feet, prophecies that had taken root in the soil of history and grown into something that now, perhaps, obscured as much as they revealed.

  The warlord's grandson leaned forward, his expression intense. "The Weave—is that what the elders speak of? The thing that holds reality together?"

  "It is more than that," Krogar replied, his good eye gleaming with something between resignation and reverence. "It is the space between breaths, the moment between thought and action. It is everything and nothing." He paused, letting the weight of this settle, knowing the legends had grown with each telling, transformed from whispered warnings to sacred myth. "And the Architect saw that one thread had broken. At least, that is what Sarkan himself claimed to remember."

  "What happens when a thread breaks?" asked the copper-haired girl, her voice hushed with anticipation, a question that carried the weight of innocence confronting the architecture of existence.

  Krogar's face grew grave, the lines of his weathered visage deepening like valleys carved by centuries of rainfall. Within those crevices lay memories of a time when he himself had dismissed such tales as mere fabrications—stories meant to elevate Sarkan from warlord to godling. Now, with years bending his back and clouding his vision, the boundaries between myth and memory had grown treacherously thin.

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  "Balance fails," he said, each word falling like stone into still water. "Order crumbles. What should flourish withers, and what should die grows strong." His fingers closed into a fist, knuckles whitening around bones that had known both the grip of skepticism and the reluctant embrace of belief. "He watched—as monsters were hunted, their corpses burned; as gods died in forgotten wars; as the world grew fat, then hollow, then still."

  The merchant's son frowned, his young mind grappling with concepts that stretched beyond the comfortable boundaries of commerce and calculation. "But why didn't he just fix it? If he's so powerful—" The question hung in the air, the eternal challenge of the young to the incomprehensible nature of power and its limitations.

  "Power is not understanding," Krogar interrupted, his tone sharp as the edge of memory. Behind his words lay the unspoken weight of a life spent watching Sarkan grow from aberration to legend, from threat to savior—a transformation that had forced Krogar himself to question everything he had once held true. "Even the Architect must work within the pattern."

  He spread his hands, fingers splayed as though holding an invisible tapestry, the gesture half demonstration, half supplication to forces he had spent a lifetime learning to accept. "'The age has broken,' the voice said—neither cruel nor kind. 'Balance must return.'"

  His voice changed as he spoke these words, becoming something older, deeper, a sound that seemed to resonate from the stone itself—or perhaps from some hidden chamber within his own chest where doubt and faith had fought their long, silent war. The children shifted uneasily, sensing the transformation in the elder, the way his telling had slipped from recitation into something more akin to possession.

  "From his hand came not a blade, nor curse, nor flood—but a spark. A Seed." Krogar's fingers curled as though holding something precious and dangerous, the gesture itself a memory of how Sarkan himself had once demonstrated this part of the tale—a casual mimicry that had, over decades, transformed into ritual. The irony did not escape him; he who had once denounced these stories as blasphemous fabrications now preserved their every detail with the fervor of the converted.

  "It pulsed—carrying memories not of this world. Cities built on sky. Towers of light. Fire without flame. Words that shaped steel." Krogar's voice took on a cadence that was not entirely his own, borrowed rhythms from a man he had once feared, then followed, then mourned. "A soul not yet born, but already broken."

  The words hung in the air like frost, delicate yet cutting. Somewhere in the depths of memory, Krogar could still see the mismatched eyes of the infant Sarkan—one blood-red, one silver as moonlight on water—looking up at him with an awareness no newborn should possess. Even then, something about those eyes had suggested fragments rather than wholeness, shards of a vessel that had been shattered before its making.

  "What does that mean?" whispered one of the children, the question emerging from the shadowed edges of the group. "How can someone be broken before they're born?"

  Krogar looked toward the voice—a thin boy with eyes too old for his face, a child who perhaps recognized something of brokenness in himself. For a moment, the elder's gaze softened, recognizing a kinship across generations.

  "Some vessels are forged for purposes that crack them," he said, not unkindly, his words meant for the boy alone though all could hear them. Then his expression hardened once more, the momentary softness submerged beneath the weight of history. "But this is what was passed down, what Sarkan claimed to remember from before his birth—visions that came to him in dreams and fever, memories of a place and time that could not have been his own."

  Krogar's voice took on a resonant quality that seemed to emanate not just from his throat but from the depths of his chest, from the stone beneath their feet, from the statue that loomed above them all. "'Born of destruction,' said the True God. 'You shall carry what was lost.'"

  The words fell like stones into deep water, creating ripples that seemed to alter the very air around them. The runes at the base of the statue pulsed once, a flicker of blue light that might have been reflection or might have been recognition. Krogar's good eye narrowed, noticing but choosing not to acknowledge the phenomenon, just as he had chosen, long ago, to neither fully embrace nor entirely reject the mysteries that had unfolded in his lifetime.

  His voice dropped lower, becoming almost a chant, the words carrying the weight of prophecy that had, against all odds and his own initial disbelief, come to pass. "And the Seed fell—down into the mortal coil, into blood and bone, into a womb waiting beneath storm and soil."

  The words hung in the deepening twilight, a bridge between the mythic past he described and the flesh-and-blood history he had witnessed—the night when a child with a horn and mismatched eyes had entered the world and changed it forever.

  The children were silent now, entranced. Even the wind seemed to have stilled to listen.

  "Rain lashed the mountain passes," the orc continued, his voice finding a new rhythm. "Lightning danced along the stone ridges of the world's edge, splitting the sky with fingers of white fire. And within a tent of tusk, hide, and firelight, a scream tore the silence."

  His hands moved as he spoke, painting images in the air.

  "Sha'vara, First-Mate of the Tharnak Warlord, labored among midwives whose hands were steady but whose eyes were wide with fear. Smoke curled from the sacred brazier, carrying prayers to gods who had long since turned away. Outside, warriors beat shields to chase spirits from the sky, their rhythm matching the storm's fury."

  "Was she afraid?" asked the copper-haired girl, her voice barely audible.

  The old orc looked down at her, his expression softening momentarily. "Sha'vara feared nothing, little one. Not storm, not death, not even the unknown life growing within her." Pride colored his words. "But that night, even she felt something greater than herself moving through the world."

  He closed his eyes, recalling. "The tent smelled of blood and sweat and sacred herbs. The midwives worked in near silence, communicating with glances and gestures. Sha'vara's teeth were clenched against pain that would have broken lesser women."

  "'The child fights the world already,' whispered the eldest midwife, her hands steady despite her trembling voice. 'It comes with fists clenched.'

  "'Then it knows what awaits,' Sha'vara replied through gritted teeth, her eyes fierce as the storm outside.

  "Then came the cry."

  The orc's voice shifted, becoming something raw and primal.

  "Not soft. Not frail. It rang out like steel dragged across stone, echoing even above the thunder."

  The children leaned in closer, caught in the spell of his words.

  "The midwives stepped back, whispering prayers and warding signs. The tent fell silent but for the patter of rain and the distant shield-beats."

  "The child was lifted into firelight. Blood-streaked. Small. And utterly still—until its eyes opened."

  The orc raised his head, his gaze distant as though seeing that moment again across the centuries.

  "One burned red like the heart of a forge. One gleamed silver like the moon on water. A single horn, bone-white, already jutted from the center of his brow."

  "'That's not right,' one midwife gasped, her hands trembling.

  "'Horns take cycles to rise,' another whispered.

  "'Omen child…'"

  "'Not natural,' Krogar, the tribe's elder, muttered from where he stood in the shadows, his ancient face creased with concern. 'We should consult the bones before naming it.'"

  The orc's voice hardened at this memory.

  "The tent-flaps parted with a crack like thunder. Gorvak, Warlord of Tharnak, entered. Leather-soaked from the storm, eyes like storm-forged stone, shoulders broad enough to block the entrance."

  The old orc squared his own shoulders unconsciously, mimicking the stance of the long-dead warlord.

  "He said nothing. Simply stepped forward and took the child into his arms, ignoring the midwives' gasps."

  "'My lord,' Krogar began, stepping forward with hands raised. 'The signs—'

  "'I see what I see,' Gorvak cut him off. 'And I need no bones to tell me what my blood already knows.'"

  The orc raised his own arms now, miming the action from his tale.

  "He raised the child high, toward the tent's central fire, so all could see what had come into the world. The firelight caught the infant's mismatched eyes, making them gleam with an intelligence no newborn should possess."

  "'He is of my blood,' Gorvak declared, his voice like the mountain itself. 'And he will be strong.'"

  "The others dared not answer, though their silence spoke volumes. Some made warding signs when they thought the warlord wouldn't notice."

  The orc's voice softened slightly.

  "Sha'vara lay back, exhausted but triumphant. Blood stained the furs beneath her, yet her eyes remained clear, fixed on her child."

  "'Name him,' she whispered, reaching out one hand toward her mate and their strange offspring."

  "Gorvak looked at the newborn—his son, yes. But more than that. Something darker. Something old. Something that seemed to look back at him with knowledge no infant should possess."

  The old orc paused, letting tension build. The children leaned forward unconsciously.

  "'He will be called… Sarkan,' Gorvak pronounced, the name falling like stone into silence."

  The orc raised his face to the darkening sky.

  "And outside, thunder answered, as though the sky itself acknowledged the name."

  The children remained perfectly still, caught in the spell of the story. Even the merchant's son seemed unable to look away.

  "Far beneath the earth," the orc whispered, "the Mana stirred. Ancient powers, long dormant, shifted in their sleep. Something had changed in the pattern of the world."

  "What happened then?" asked the warlord's grandson, his voice hushed with reverence.

  The old orc looked down at the children gathered around him, their faces illuminated by the fading light and the growing glow of the runes.

  "That," he said with the hint of a smile that revealed tusks worn with age, "is where the true story begins. But not tonight." He gestured to the darkening sky. "Your families will be searching for you, and some tales should not be rushed."

  A chorus of protests rose from the children, but the old orc raised a hand, silencing them with the authority of one accustomed to command.

  "Return tomorrow, if you wish to hear more," he said, his tone softening. "The story of Sarkan is not for a single telling."

  The copper-haired girl rose to her feet, brushing dust from her dress. "Will you tell us how he got his scar?" she asked, pointing to a detail on the statue's face—a deep groove that ran from brow to chin.

  The old orc's good eye seemed to twinkle. "That came later. Much later. After the Battle of Sorrow's Gate but before the Fall of the Ivory Court."

  The merchant's son, now thoroughly captivated despite himself, stepped forward. "My father says he couldn't really have lived for three hundred years. That it's just stories."

  The old orc fixed him with a stare that had once made warriors tremble. "And how old do you think I am, boy?"

  The question hung in the air. The merchant's son studied the ancient figure before him—the scars, the clouded eye, the hands that bore the marks of countless battles—and said nothing.

  "Go home," the orc said at last, his voice gruff but not unkind. "Remember what you've heard. And perhaps, when you return, you'll be ready to listen with more than just your ears."

  The children dispersed reluctantly, casting glances back at the statue and its aged guardian as they made their way down the winding path that led to the city below. The drums continued their rhythm, a counterpoint to the children's retreating footsteps.

  Only the warlord's grandson remained, standing before the statue with his head tilted back to study its imposing face.

  "Grandfather," he said without turning, "was it worth it? All the blood and pain the stories tell?"

  The old orc—once called Krogar, Elder of Tharnak, who had stood in judgment of the strange child born that stormy night—moved to stand beside the warlord's grandson, both of them gazing up at the stone face with its eternal vigilance.

  "That," he said softly, "is a question each generation must answer for itself."

  Above them, the first stars pierced the darkening veil of night, ancient light bearing silent witness to the legends of the Red City, to the statue without a name, and to the story only just beginning to unfold.