The sun did not merely set over the Tigris River; it died.
It collapsed behind the horizon like a slaughtered king, bleeding crimson and bruised purple across the sky. The heat, which had suffocated the town all day, lingered in the dust, refusing to leave. It was a heavy, oppressive blanket that smelled of dried mud, animal sweat, and the ancient, decaying breath of the river.
In the market, the day was gasping its last breath. Merchants slammed their wooden shutters with the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of finality. Children, their faces smeared with grime and exhaustion, were dragged home by tired mothers. From the minarets, the call to prayer rose—a haunting melody pleading for peace in a world that knew only struggle.
And in the darkest, most forgotten corner of this fading world, sat Ayon.
He was a shadow within the shadows. He sat behind a wooden cart that looked as if a strong wind would shatter it into splinters. On it lay the remnants of a pathetic day: three bruised tomatoes bleeding their juices onto the wood, a bundle of spinach that had wilted into green rags, and carrots so twisted they looked like arthritic fingers.
To the town, Ayon was the 'Clay Doll.' A man of thirty years with the face of a beggar and the mind of a child. His clothes were a map of tears and patches, his skin coated in the grey dust of the streets.
But the town was blind.
If anyone had dared to stop, to truly look into his eyes, they would have frozen. They were not the eyes of a simpleton. They were abysses. Dark, motionless pools of black water that had witnessed the birth of stars and the burning of civilizations. They held a silence so loud it could deafen a god.
He was not waiting for customers. He was waiting for the universe to align.
"Hey! Clay Doll!"
The roar shattered the evening peace like a hammer striking glass.
Kasim, the butcher, loomed over the cart. A mountain of muscle and grease, he smelled of raw meat and violence. He wiped a cleaver, slick with fresh blood, onto his stained apron, leaving a gruesome red streak.
Ayon lifted his head. He did not flinch. A faint smile touched his lips—a smile that did not reach his eyes. It was the smile one gives to a noisy child.
"Greetings, Kasim," Ayon whispered. His voice was soft, the sound of dry leaves rustling over stone.
"Keep your greetings in your rags!" Kasim bellowed, his voice a gravelly explosion. He jabbed a thick, sausage-like finger at a shriveled eggplant on the cart. "You call this food? I gave you copper this morning for fresh harvest, and you bring me this corpse?"
Ayon reached out and picked up the eggplant. He held it gently, caressing its bruised skin with calloused thumbs.
"It is not a corpse, friend," Ayon said, his tone imbued with an unnerving, otherworldly innocence. "It is merely… heartbroken. It stood under the sun all day, waiting for someone to choose it. No one did. The poor thing is just tired of waiting."
A few nearby shopkeepers snickered as they locked their stalls.
"He's talking to vegetables again," one whispered. "The heat has finally cooked his brain."
Kasim's face flushed a violent purple. To a man like him, ruled by pride and noise, Ayon's calm was an intolerable insult. It was a mirror reflecting his own ugliness.
"You mock me?" Kasim hissed, stepping closer. "You think because you are mad, you are safe?"
Thud.
Kasim's heavy hand slammed onto Ayon's shoulder, gripping the bone. He squeezed, hard enough to bruise, hard enough to make a normal man cry out. "I sweat blood to earn my coin. And you waste it on trash and riddles?"
Ayon sat perfectly still. Under the crushing grip that could snap a collarbone, his breathing remained slow, rhythmic, like the tide.
"Not riddles. Reality," Ayon replied, looking at the butcher's blood-stained hand not with fear, but with a detached pity. "That which is tired desires rest. Let it sleep, Kasim. Anger is a heavy stone to carry to bed."
That was the spark. Kasim's rage detonated.
"You preach to me?"
He snatched his hand back and delivered a brutal, vicious kick to the side of the cart.
CRACK.
The sound was sharp, like a bone breaking. The rotted wood gave way. The wheel shattered. The cart groaned and collapsed sideways, spilling Ayon's meager world into the filth of the street. Tomatoes burst like tiny red tragedies. Spinach was trampled into the dust.
In a single heartbeat, his livelihood was destroyed.
The market fell into a suffocating silence. Everyone stopped. They watched, holding their breath. This was the moment. The humiliation. The loss. Any other man would be on his knees, weeping, cursing, begging.
But Ayon just looked at the ruined vegetables.
Deep inside him, beneath the layers of human frailty he wore like a costume, a tectonic plate shifted. A power infinite and terrifying stirred. If he simply wished it, Kasim's heart would stop beating. If he exhaled with intent, this entire town would be reduced to glass.
Control, the ancient voice in his mind commanded. You are the earth. You endure.
Ayon slowly looked up at the butcher. That serene, terrifying smile hadn't faltered.
"You did a kind thing," Ayon said softly.
Kasim blinked, his rage momentarily confused. "What?"
"The ground was hungry," Ayon said, pointing to the tomato juice soaking into the dry dirt. "It has not eaten in a long time. Now… it is fed."
The response was a bucket of ice water on Kasim's fire. He stood there, chest heaving, fists clenched, utterly defeated by a man who refused to be a victim. It was like punching smoke.
"Madman… absolute madman," Kasim muttered, backing away, a strange chill running down his spine. He turned and stomped off, but his foot caught on a loose stone. He stumbled, hard, nearly falling face-first into the dirt. A tiny, instant karmic balance.
Ayon didn't laugh. He just watched.
The crowd dispersed, eager to avoid the stench of misfortune. No one helped. Compassion was a luxury the poor could not afford.
"You are hopeless, Ayon," sighed Fatima, the old woman from the tea stall. She wiped a glass, shaking her head. "You will starve to death. Why do you never fight back? Why do you let them trample you?"
Ayon picked up a piece of broken carrot, wiped the grit on his sleeve, and took a bite.
"Answers are for questions, Mother," he said, his voice distant. "Insults and kicks? Those are not questions. They are just… noise."
Fatima slapped her forehead. "The heavens alone know what kind of clay you are made of."
Night swallowed the town. The moon rose, a pale, watching eye. The market was empty now, save for Ayon and the wreckage of his day.
He stood up. He reached into his pocket and touched the three copper coins there. A day's life, valued at nothing. He stared at the coins, his eyes losing focus, seeing not metal, but the passing of centuries.
Another day, he thought. Another grain of sand in a desert that has no end.
He grabbed the splintered handle of his cart. He had to drag it. Scrape. Drag. Scrape. The sound echoed through the narrow alleys like a heartbeat of loneliness.
He was halfway home when the shadows moved.
"Look! The Clay Doll is broken!"
A pack of children emerged from the gloom. Jamil, the leader, a boy with eyes too hard for his age, stepped forward.
"His cart is dead! Ha ha ha!"
Ayon kept walking. He had seen kings fall and mountains rise; the cruelty of children was just a ripple in the pond.
But his silence only sharpened their malice.
"He ignores us," Jamil sneered. "He thinks he is better than us. He is not a man. He is a stone."
Jamil bent down. He picked up a rock—jagged, sharp, heavy.
"Let's see if the stone bleeds," Jamil whispered.
Thwack.
The rock struck Ayon's shoulder with a sickening thud. The sharp edge sliced through his thin shirt and dug into his skin. Blood, bright and red, bloomed on the fabric.
Ayon stumbled. The cart slipped from his hand and crashed to the ground.
The children froze. They waited for the scream. They waited for the rage.
Ayon stood still. He touched his shoulder. He looked at the blood on his fingers.
Red, he thought. Still red. Still human enough to bleed.
Slowly, he turned.
There was no anger in his face. Only a profound, ancient sadness. He looked at Jamil, and then he looked at the rock lying in the dust.
He bent down and picked it up.
The children flinched, stepping back.
But Ayon simply dusted the rock off. He stroked its rough surface.
"Friend," he said to Jamil, his voice carrying the weight of a judgment day that never came. "You throw stones at things that are alive. Things that feel pain. I am just clay. I feel nothing."
He paused, his eyes boring into the boy's soul.
"But you have hurt this stone," Ayon whispered. "It was sleeping peacefully in the earth's embrace. You woke it up to use it as a weapon of hate. It must be in pain now."
With infinite tenderness, Ayon placed the rock back on the ground, tucking it into the soft dirt as if putting a child to bed.
"Sleep now," he murmured to the stone. "The world is too loud for you."
The children stared in horror. This was not madness. This was something else. Something ancient and terrifyingly gentle.
"He's… he's a ghost," one whispered.
"Run!" Jamil hissed.
They scattered into the night, their footsteps fading like a bad dream.
Ayon watched them go. Then, he picked up his broken world and walked the final mile to the river.
His hut was a ruin of mud and straw, clinging to the bank of the Tigris. Inside, it was barren. A torn mat. An earthen pot. A silence so deep it felt heavy.
He dropped his coins into a jar. He sat on the mat.
The day's noise—Kasim's rage, the children's cruelty, the hunger—evaporated.
But sleep did not come. It never came easily to a man who remembered too much.
He stood up and walked out to the riverbank. The Tigris flowed black and silent, reflecting the stars he knew by name. He sat on a large, smooth rock—his throne of solitude.
And here, in the privacy of the dark, the mask finally shattered.
The serene smile vanished.
In its place, a look of such profound, soul-crushing agony washed over his face that the river seemed to slow in sympathy. His eyes, no longer dull, swirled with the memories of a thousand years.
He reached into his tunic and pulled out a small, worn book. He ran his fingers over the cover. He didn't open it. He didn't need to. He knew every lie written inside. And he knew the one, single truth hidden within the lies.
A memory assaulted him. Not a vision, but a physical sensation.
The smell of burning pearls. The sound of a sky cracking open. And a face… a girl with eyes like starlight and a laugh that sounded like wind chimes. Ilma.
He remembered the prophecy he had written. He remembered the picture inside the book—a picture everyone thought was a future queen, but Ayan knew… it was a memory of the dead.
"Another day, Ilma," he whispered to the river, his voice cracking, raw and human. "I carried the burden for another day."
He looked up at the stars. He possessed the Sitaron ka Ilm—the Knowledge of the Stars. He knew the cycles. He knew the signs.
"They are coming," he whispered to the night. "The pieces are moving. The grief is returning."
He was Ayon. The Clay Doll. The beggar.
But underneath the rags, he was the Guardian. The Survivor. And he was the loneliest being in the entire universe, waiting for a ghost to return in the flesh.
What is the secret of the book he guards? And who is the woman whose face haunts the prophecy?