Rating: MA 15+
Sabaku woke to the taste of ash and remembered fire.
But the fire wasn't here—it was there, then, the orphanage burning around him in a different life, a different body. Except the memories were bleeding together now, Tokyo flames merging with desert heat, institutional walls dissolving into sand dunes, and he couldn't tell which death was his, which pain belonged to which child.
He sat up gasping, hand clutching his heart where the bullet had struck. Where it should have struck. But the skin was whole, unmarked except for the chronic bruising of malnutrition that Aru's body carried like inherited debt.
"Just a dream," he whispered to the pre-dawn darkness. "Just—"
Another memory crashed through: not Tokyo, not the orphanage, but the chamber beneath the temple. Aru's chamber. Chains cutting into wrists. Water dripping with geological patience. Darkness so complete it had texture, weight, personality. The priests' voices echoing from above: "Ra demands your surrender. Pain is prayer. Suffering is salvation."
And then, overlapping: Mrs. Yamamoto's scream in the orphanage hallway, cut short by gunfire. The smell of gunpowder mixing with incense. Two traumas, two deaths, one consciousness struggling to contain both.
Sabaku stumbled from his makeshift shelter—a depression between dunes where he'd collapsed after fleeing the battle. His legs shook. His vision swam. The horizon tilted at angles that defied geometry.
This is what they warned about, some distant part of his mind understood. Memory integration isn't gradual. It's violent. Two lives colliding at the speed of trauma.
He made it three steps before vomiting, body rejecting something that wasn't physical poison but psychological overload. When the spasms passed, he looked up and saw them.
The children.
They stood in a line across the nearest dune, silhouetted against the lightening sky. Small figures, wrong proportions, heads tilted at angles that suggested broken necks. As his vision cleared, details emerged: institutional pajamas stained with blood and sand, faces he recognized from the orphanage—Kaoto, who'd mocked his obsession with Egypt; Yuki, who'd shared her portion of dinner when he'd been too lost in books to eat; little Haruto, who'd cried every night for the first month.
All dead now. All standing here, impossible and undeniable.
"You left us," Kaoto said, his voice carrying across the distance with unnatural clarity despite his jaw hanging at a broken angle. "You died first, and you left us to burn alone."
"I didn't—" Sabaku's voice broke. "I couldn't—"
"You wished for the desert," Yuki added, her face half-melted from fire, one eye weeping something that might have been tears or might have been melted tissue. "While we died, you were already dreaming of somewhere else. Abandoning us before the bullets even came."
Sabaku fell to his knees. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't know. I didn't mean—"
"But you did mean it." Little Haruto stepped forward, moving with the motion of a marionette with tangled strings. "You hated that place. Hated us for being content with gray walls and institutional meals. You thought we were small for accepting what we had."
"That's not—" But the protest died in his throat because it was true. He had resented them. Had thought their acceptance was weakness. Had dreamed of deserts and pyramids while they'd dreamed of adoption and normalcy.
The children advanced down the dune, skeletal feet leaving no prints in sand. As they approached, they began to dissolve—not disappearing, but transforming. Flesh became sand. Clothing became wind. Until they were just shapes, suggestions, manifestations of guilt given form by a desert that remembered everything.
They surrounded him. Reached for him with hands that weren't hands. And when they touched, Sabaku felt it—their final moments flooding through him. Kaoto's confusion as the bullet struck. Yuki's pain as fire consumed. Haruto's terror in those last seconds, calling for a mother who'd abandoned him years before.
All of it. Every death. Every fear. Added to the weight he already carried.
Sabaku screamed.
When awareness returned, the sun had risen. He lay curled on his side, throat raw, eyes burning. The skeletal children were gone. But their presence lingered—not outside him now, but inside, integrated into the growing mass of memories that were making his consciousness feel like an overstuffed container, seams splitting.
"You're experiencing full integration," a voice said.
Sabaku turned his head slowly, body reluctant to obey commands. Nahara sat nearby, mechanical arm glinting in morning light. Her armor was scorched, face bearing fresh cuts, but she was alive.
"How..." he managed through his damaged throat.
"Followed your tracks. Not hard—you ran in a straight line, no attempts at misdirection." She offered him a water container. "Drink slowly. You've been screaming for hours. Locals probably think a Duneborn is dying."
He drank, the water sharp with minerals but beautiful. When he could speak again: "The children. Did you see—"
"I saw you fighting ghosts. Whether they were real or hallucination..." She shrugged. "Desert doesn't distinguish. Memory, mirage, manifestation—all the same here. What matters is you survived it."
"Did I?" Sabaku's hands shook as he returned the container. "Or did I just add more dead to the collection I'm carrying?"
Nahara settled beside him, close enough that their shoulders touched. Contact, simple and grounding. "You're integrating Aru's memories. I've heard it happens with the very old—people who've lived multiple lives through mechanical consciousness transfer. Their minds become crowded. Past and present blur."
"I'm thirteen," Sabaku said hollowly. "I shouldn't have this many ghosts."
"This world doesn't care what we were," Nahara said quietly, her voice carrying something that might have been compassion or might have been shared pain. "Only what we become. You can let the memories drown you, or you can learn to swim through them. Use them as fuel rather than anchor."
"And if I don't know how?"
"Then I teach you. That's what survival is—teaching each other the tricks the desert hasn't thought of yet."
They sat in silence as the sun climbed. Sabaku felt the memories settling, still present but less chaotic. The orphanage children. Aru's torture. Two lives' worth of trauma finding equilibrium inside a body too small for such weight.
"Why did you follow me?" he asked eventually. "Tefra's army was between us. You should have—"
"Should have saved myself?" Nahara's mechanical fingers flexed. "Maybe. But I've been alone in this desert before. Know what that's like? Every decision yours. Every consequence yours. Every death you fail to prevent landing squarely on your conscience." She met his gaze. "I'm tired of being alone. Tired of the math where one person can only save themselves. So maybe if I help you, we both survive. Or we both die, but at least we tried something different."
Before Sabaku could respond, the sand shifted. Not wind-driven, but purposeful. They scrambled to their feet as figures emerged from the dunes—soldiers in scarab armor, moving with professional coordination.
Tefra walked at their center, golden eyes catching sunlight like small suns themselves. She stopped ten paces away, surveying Sabaku with an expression mixing triumph and something more complex.
"Running was futile," she said conversationally. "The pendant calls to those who know how to listen. You carried a beacon the entire time."
Sabaku's hand moved to the pendant, finding it warm—warmer than body heat alone should make it.
"You've been tracking me since I left."
"Of course. Did you think I'd allow prophecy to simply wander off?" Tefra gestured, and soldiers moved to surround them. "But I let you run. Let you experience the memory integration alone. It's important you understand what you carry before we proceed."
"Proceed with what?" Nahara demanded, mechanical arm shifting into a fighting stance despite being outnumbered twenty to one.
"With truth." Tefra approached slowly, each step measured. "The kid deserves to know what he is. What he carries." She stopped directly in front of Sabaku. "Tell me—do you feel heat in your heart? Not metaphorical. Actual heat. A warmth that intensifies with strong emotion?"
Sabaku hesitated, then nodded. He'd felt it since the battle. Since the memory integration. A fever localized behind his ribs, pulsing with his heartbeat.
"That's the sun-core," Tefra said. "The reason Aru was called Forbidden Child. The reason the priests wanted him dead but couldn't bring themselves to kill him quickly." Her golden eyes fixed on his with disturbing intensity. "Aru's body was modified in utero by the First Scientist's last experiment. A biological reactor designed to process solar energy, convert it into usable power. Essentially, a human battery capable of storing and channeling the sun itself."
The words landed like physical blows. Sabaku staggered back. "That's impossible. I'd know. I'd feel—"
"You do feel it. Every moment. That heat. That fever." Tefra's voice carried absolute certainty. "The core activates gradually as the host matures. Aru died before full activation. But you—you're not just Aru. You're Aru plus whatever you were before. Two souls means twice the consciousness, twice the energy. You're accelerating the process."
Nahara stepped between them. "You're lying. Trying to manipulate him into—"
"Into nothing." Tefra's gaze didn't leave Sabaku. "He can verify it himself. The core responds to will. Focus on the heat. Try to move it. If I'm wrong, nothing happens. If I'm right..."
Against his better judgment, Sabaku focused on the warmth behind his ribs. Imagined it responding to his intention. And felt it move—flowing through his body like liquid light, concentrating in his hands until his palms glowed faintly, radiating visible heat.
"Gods," Nahara whispered.
Sabaku stared at his glowing hands, feeling the power there. Not his power. Not Aru's. Something older. Something that predated both of them.
"The First Scientist believed consciousness and energy were interchangeable," Tefra continued, her voice taking on the cadence of religious recitation. "That with the right biological architecture, a human could become a living conduit for stellar power. The sun-core was his masterpiece. And Aru—Aru was the final test subject."
"Test subject," Sabaku repeated numbly. "He was experimented on?"
"His mother volunteered while pregnant. She believed in the First Scientist's vision—humanity transcending its limits, becoming something new. Something capable of surviving the sun's approach." Tefra's expression softened fractionally. "But the priests saw it differently. Saw the core as blasphemy. An attempt to steal Ra's power. They killed Aru's mother. Tortured Aru to force the core's deactivation. When that failed, they tried starvation. Deprivation. Anything to make his body reject the modification."
Sabaku remembered Aru's memories—the chamber, the darkness, the systematic cruelty. Not just punishment. Not just theological sadism. But attempted murder of something inside him that wouldn't die.
"You're telling me," Sabaku said slowly, "that I'm a weapon. That this body is a weapon."
"You're a key," Tefra corrected. "The sun-core can do more than store energy. With the right knowledge—" she glanced meaningfully at Sabaku's pack, where the crystalline sphere containing the First Scientist's calculations rested, "—it can be used to communicate with the sun itself. To negotiate. To convince it to halt its consumption of Earth. To save what remains of humanity."
"By sacrificing the host," Nahara said flatly. "By burning him out as fuel for your cosmic bargaining."
Tefra didn't deny it. "The core requires activation. Full activation. Which means channeling enough solar energy through the host body that..." She trailed off, leaving the conclusion unspoken.
"That I die," Sabaku finished. "You want me to die to save everyone else."
"I want you to transcend," Tefra said. "Death is transformation. The core doesn't end consciousness—it elevates it. Merges it with stellar awareness. You would become part of the sun, able to influence it from within. A god born from human sacrifice."
"That's insane," Nahara hissed.
"That's necessity." Tefra's golden eyes reflected Sabaku's glowing hands. "The sun approaches. The desert expands. In three generations, perhaps less, Earth becomes uninhabitable. The core is our only hope of changing that trajectory. And you—" she reached out, touching Sabaku's heart where the heat radiated strongest, "—you are the core's current vessel. Which makes you humanity's last chance."
Sabaku's mind reeled. Two lives of trauma. A body modified before birth. A consciousness merged from desperate wishes. And now this—the revelation that his existence had purpose beyond his choosing. That he'd been cast as savior without audition.
"No," he said. The word emerged quiet but absolute. "No. I won't be your sacrifice. I won't be anyone's weapon or key or divine bargaining chip."
Tefra's expression hardened. "Then you doom everyone. Every child in every settlement. Every scavenger trying to survive. All of them die slowly as the sun consumes the world."
"Maybe." Sabaku's hands dimmed as he pulled his focus inward, forcing the core's energy to subside. "Or maybe there's another way. A way that doesn't require my death. The First Scientist's calculations—" he pulled the crystalline sphere from his pack, "—maybe they contain an alternative."
"I've studied those calculations," Tefra said. "There is no alternative. The math is absolute. Consciousness transformation requires equivalent exchange. Life for life. Individual for collective."
"Then the math is wrong." Sabaku's voice grew stronger. "Or the interpretation is wrong. Or the premise is wrong. But I refuse to accept that the only way forward requires another child's death. Aru's death. My death. Any death."
Tefra studied him for a long moment. "You sound like Aru. Same defiance. Same stubborn insistence that there must be gentler paths." Her expression became almost sad. "They broke him of that belief. The darkness. The starvation. Eventually, he surrendered. Accepted his purpose. Died peacefully in the sand, ready to become more than human."
"You don't know that," Sabaku said. "You know what the priests told you. What their doctrine claimed. But Aru's memories are inside me now, and I felt his final moment. He didn't surrender. He hoped. He died hoping for something kinder."
"Hope is not salvation."
"Maybe not. But it's enough to keep trying." Sabaku looked at the soldiers surrounding them, then back to Tefra. "You can take me by force. Chain me like you chained Aru. Try to activate the core through torture. But you know it won't work. The core responds to will. And my will says no."
Silence stretched across the desert. Soldiers tensed, awaiting orders. Nahara's mechanical hand hummed with potential violence. And Tefra stood perfectly still, golden eyes processing calculations of her own.
Finally, she lowered her hand. "Very well. I'll give you time. One week. Study the calculations. Search for your alternative. But if you find nothing—if the math remains absolute—you will accept your purpose. Or I will activate the core by force, regardless of efficiency or consequence." She turned to leave, then paused. "And wow? The memory integration will only intensify. Aru's pain. Your own. The orphanage children. All of it growing heavier. Consciousness has weight. Eventually, you'll beg for transcendence just to escape the burden."
She walked away, soldiers following. Within moments, they'd disappeared over the dunes, leaving Sabaku and Nahara alone with impossible knowledge.
Nahara was the first to break the silence. "A week isn't enough time to decipher calculations that took the First Scientist a lifetime to develop."
"I know." Sabaku clutched the crystalline sphere, feeling its pulse match his heartbeat. "But it's what we have. So we try."
"And if she's right? If the math really is absolute?"
Sabaku thought of the orphanage children. Of Aru's hope in his final breath. Of every forgotten child who'd ever deserved better than what the world provided.
"Then we change the math," he said quietly. "Because the world doesn't get to demand more dead children and call it salvation. Not while I'm still breathing."
Nahara smiled—fierce, proud. "Then let's find a way to keep you breathing."
They stood together in the desert morning, two scarred survivors carrying impossible weight, searching for gentler paths in a world built from cruelty. The sun watched from its too-close vantage. And waited to see what consciousness would choose when faced with its own extinction.
TO BE CONTINUED…