Seven summers had woven themselves into the fabric of Enki's life. The quiet boy was now on the cusp of something more, his limbs growing long and lanky, his thoughtful silence beginning to feel less like childhood quiet and more like the calm before a storm.
The dreams started subtly. Flickers of a world of impossible, smooth surfaces and a sky cluttered with light. A woman's laugh that was both alien and felt like home. Her name danced on the edge of his memory, a ghost of a sound—Ninella. He would wake with a feeling of profound loss, his cheeks wet with tears he didn't understand, the taste of salt and sterile air on his tongue.
This morning was different. The dream was vivid, brutal. He was in a vast plaza, a countdown echoing, holding Ninella's hand. He looked up and saw the sky falling, a great white moon consuming everything. He felt her hand tighten in his, a final, desperate squeeze before—
He woke with a gasp, the scream of a dying world still echoing in his mind. But another sound overlay it. Real. Immediate.
Shouts. Not the familiar calls of the village. These were harsh, guttural, hungry sounds. The crackle of fire. The sharp, sickening cry of a goat.
"Enki!"
His mother, Ninsun, burst into the hut, her face a mask of terror. She grabbed his arm, her grip fierce. "Raiders! To the reeds by the river, now! Do not look back!"
But as she pulled him towards the door, a shadow filled the entrance. A man, tall and reeking of sweat and smoke, stood there. His eyes, hard and greedy, scanned the sparse hut before landing on Ninsun. He grinned, a broken-toothed smile, and lunged for the small pouch of grain she kept hidden in a niche.
"No!" Ninsun cried, throwing herself at him, her nails scratching at his arms.
The raider backhanded her with a casual brutality that sent her sprawling to the dirt floor. She lay still, dazed.
A coldness, entirely alien to a boy of seven, washed over Enki. The terror of his dream—the end of a world—was replaced by a sharper, more immediate fear: the end of his mother. And with that fear came a shift. The buzzing, chaotic thoughts in his head stilled, organizing themselves with a speed and clarity that was not his own.
The raider, having secured the grain, now turned his attention to Ninsun's bronze bracelet, a poor but shiny thing. He knelt, grabbing her wrist.
Enki did not scream. He did not cry. He stood, a small, slight figure in the dim hut, and his voice came out not as a child's plea, but as a flat, confident statement.
"The chieftain's son is hiding in the dry well behind the old fig tree," Enki said, his words clear and precise. "He has a gold amulet. A lion."
The raider froze, his hand on the bracelet. He turned, his eyes narrowing at the boy. Greed warred with suspicion. "What?"
"The well," Enki repeated, pointing vaguely east, away from their hut, away from where the other villagers were hiding. "They lowered him down when you came. He is alone. And he is rich."
It was a desperate, brilliant lie. He had heard the elders speak of such a thing happening in a story of a long-ago raid. He used the raider's own greed as a weapon, painting a target far more tempting than a single woman and her child.
The raider stared at him, and for a terrifying second, Enki thought he had failed. Then, the man's greed won. A gold amulet was worth a hundred bronze bracelets. He released Ninsun's wrist, gave a grunt, and shoved past Enki, sprinting out of the hut toward the empty, imaginary well.
The moment the raider was gone, the cold clarity shattered. Enki's knees buckled. He stumbled to his mother's side, his small hands shaking as he touched her face. "Mama?"
Ninsun groaned, pushing herself up. She looked at him, her eyes wide not with pain, but with a new, bewildered fear. She had seen the change in him. She had heard the voice that was not her son's—the calm, calculating tone of a strategist, not a child.
She pulled him into a crushing embrace, her body trembling. "Enki… what did you do? How did you…?"
He could only bury his face in her shoulder, the ghost of a falling moon and the name Ninella burning in his mind. He had saved them. But for the first time, he truly understood that the strange, knowing part of him that could weave baskets and calm fevers… could also lie like a king. And he knew, with a certainty that chilled his soul, that the raiders were not the only monsters he would have to face.