Hello, people."
My name is Zack. To the casual observer walking the rain-slicked streets of modern-day America, I am just another face in the crowd—a man blended into the shimmering neon lights and the relentless pace of the twenty-first century. But beneath this skin, behind these eyes, lies a cemetery of memories that do not belong to this era. The story I am about to tell you isn't a mere tale of the past; it is a blood-stained chronicle from ten thousand years ago.
While others speak of centuries, I carry the crushing weight of millennia in my soul. This is the story of my first birth, an era when I was a citizen of a magnificent yet terrifying empire known as Jamu. You won't find Jamu on any modern map; time has ground its palaces into dust and buried its sins under leagues of earth. Yet, in my mind, the kingdom remains as vivid and bone-chilling as the day it fell.
Jamu: The Forgotten Empire
Jamu was no ordinary place. It was a kingdom cradled between jagged, forbidding mountains—a fortress of secrets where the world could not see the horrors unfolding behind its towering stone walls. Today, as I breathe the cold air of a New York winter, I can still taste the stagnant, suffocating heat of Jamu's atmosphere.
In Jamu, freedom was a myth. We were all bound by a ruthless hierarchy that stripped us of our humanity, turning men into mere property. I was not a prince or a conqueror in that life. I was a peasant, a nobody. My entire universe was centered around my Mother. We lived in a crumbling mud shack, and every sunrise brought with it the paralyzing shadow of death.
The First Lesson of Servitude
We were not just poor; we were the personal property of a King. His name was Robert. Even now, ten thousand years later, the mere mention of his name makes my spirit recoil in a primal shiver of disgust. Robert was not just a monarch; he was my Uncle—my father's own brother.
But blood meant nothing to a monster. He never looked at us as kin. He treated us—his own brother's family—as filth, worse than the refuse discarded from the palace kitchens. He was a tyrant who had incinerated every boundary of morality and kinship. He was so intoxicated by the nectar of absolute power that the concept of mercy for his own nephew was a foreign language he refused to speak.
The Depravity of King Robert
To speak of Robert is to speak of the personification of cruelty. He was possessed by a thirst for "Ayashi"—a life of twisted debauchery that knew no end. He was the darkest stain on the long history of Jamu. Robert didn't just want to rule; he wanted to witness the slow, agonizing dissolution of the human spirit.
His depravity was boundless. He viewed the honor of innocent young girls as his birthright, a commodity to be consumed and discarded. Throughout Jamu, desperate parents would try to hide their daughters in pits or wall them up in secret rooms just to keep them away from Robert's predatory gaze. But his reach was everywhere.
His monstrous nature did not stop there. He targetted the most vulnerable—innocent young children. The sound of their high-pitched screams provided him with a sick, rhythmic comfort. He would snatch infants from their mothers' arms and spirit them away into the lightless depths of his palace. From those shadows, the laughter of children never returned; only the grim news of their demise ever leaked out. He spent his nights drowned in wine and sin, while the streets of Jamu ran dry with hunger and tears.
The Peak of Tyranny
Robert authored a chronicle of oppression where every word was written in the blood of the innocent. He was a pioneer of pain, constantly inventing new methods to torment his subjects. My mother and I were forced to stand in his court every day, heads bowed in submission, because we were his slaves. I would watch my own uncle—my own blood—burst into fits of mocking laughter at our wretchedness.
In Jamu, we were merely biological machines. We hauled massive stones and built monuments to his ego under the blistering sun. If a man collapsed from exhaustion, he wasn't given water; he was buried alive where he fell. Robert's law was simple: "If you cannot serve, you do not deserve to breathe."
A Ten-Thousand-Year Wait
Even now, as I walk the bustling avenues of America, the screams of those children still echo in my ears. Robert is dead, and Jamu is nothing but silt and shadow, but the trauma remains as fresh as a new wound. I am here in the West now, with a new name and a new identity, but my soul remains anchored to that ancient vendetta.
I tell you this so you understand that evil never truly hides; it only waits. The story Robert began ten thousand years ago is still burning in my chest. I was the son of a poor mother, a slave in my own family, and my uncle was my greatest nemesis. My mother's terror, Robert's debauchery, and our collective helplessness—these are the threads that weave the fabric of my existence. I was born into a darkness so thick that even the sun needed Robert's permission to shine.
To be continued…