“You ever seen a city, boy?”

  Kael blinked through the haze of bone dust and smoke. Old Harun sat beside him, tucked beneath a ruined altar scrawled with forgotten tongues. His one good eye gleamed like an ember, the other a sunken void left from some punishment long ago.

  Kael shook his head. His throat was dry. His muscles still ached from the st rite.

  “In the cities,” Harun said, voice rough and low, “children train with teachers. They learn with books. Their Miyaki flows like wind and water, not fire and screams.”

  Kael’s hands trembled in his p. His knuckles were raw from yesterday’s trial. “They’re soft,” he muttered. “They’d call us monsters.”

  Harun exhaled, eyes dim. “They’d be right.”

  The Yagami Tribe was no legend.

  It was a nightmare remembered only by those strong enough to survive it.

  Hidden deep within the burned spines of the Obsidian Maw, the tribe’s existence was whispered by warlords, feared by kings, and erased from maps by trembling hands. They were devil-blooded men and women—flesh carved by rituals, bones cracked into shape, powerful beyond reason.

  Through their sacred art, Miyaki, the Yagami shattered human limits not with harmony, not with meditation but with suffering.

  Their strength was a debt paid in blood—strength Miyaki earned by carving their muscles open and boiling them in sacred oils, defense Miyaki wrought by surviving poisons that ate the soul, spiritual Miyaki unlocked by drinking from the skulls of maddened seers.

  And above all…

  The Transcendental Miyaki—a gift of the gods.

  A curse for Kael.

  He was only six when they brought him to the Fme Inheritance.

  Twenty children. Naked. Shivering. Their eyes wild with terror. The high priest stood before them, flesh stitched with barbed wire, his voice a guttural chant.

  "Let the flesh burn and the spirit ascend. The weak will perish and strong will gain more strength."

  The ground was iron, heated from below. Coals smoldered. The boys were forced to kneel.

  Kael felt the fire cim him instantly. Skin split. Muscle hissed. Tears streamed down his cheeks and evaporated.

  The first to scream was beaten to death with a club of bone.

  Kael trembled. His body begged to scream. But he didn’t.

  Because in the shadows beyond the fme, Harun was watching.

  “Don’t scream,” the old man had whispered. “If you scream, you will be theirs.”

  Kael pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth and clenched his fists as his knees blistered and popped and he didn’t scream. He survived many didn’t.

  Next came the Trial of the Spine—the rite that separated the strong from the sacred.

  Children were hung by their arms over a sacred pit, backs bared. The priests came with the Obsidian Brand, forged in blood and hate, shaped like the mouth of Thir-Yaak—the Devouring God.

  Each child’s back was branded. Some died. Others went mad.

  Kael stepped forward on his own. When the brand struck, something inside him shattered. He fell and he saw them.

  Ka’ra-Thuun, cloaked in fme and fury, crushing mountains with a grin. Vey’goln, still as stone, ancient and empty. Eishara, with voices screaming over each other from a hundred mouths and Thir-Yaak, a vast, endless hunger... watching.

  “Mine,” it whispered.

  “Saint of fire and pain. Vessel of our voices. Let us wear your name.”

  Kael convulsed then bcked out.

  Pain dragged him back but this pain was different—sharp, precise, and filled with intent. Kael blinked, he y on stone. His arms were pinned gently by warm hands. A man sat above him, Harun.

  He held a bone needle dipped in spirit ash, and with it he was carving glowing runes into Kael’s left forearm. Blood dripped into a shallow bowl beside them. The room was dim—silent but for the ragged breath of the old man.

  Kael didn’t cry out.

  The pain bit deep. It fred down his nerves like burning rivers. But it wasn’t the same as the tribe’s pain. This wasn’t punishment. This was protection.

  “What… are you doing?” Kael rasped.

  Harun didn’t stop.

  “Seals,” he murmured. “Locks. Cages for the gods.”

  Another stroke of the needle. A glowing sigil etched just below the elbow.

  “You saw them, didn’t you? When they burned your spine.”

  Kael nodded.

  “They saw you too,” Harun said. “And they won’t let go.”

  A new rune. This one jagged like a broken fang.

  “This is for Ka’ra-Thuun. Strength born from rage. May this chain his fire when yours is enough.”

  Another rune, curved like a shield cracked in half.

  “For Vey’goln. So you don’t forget silence can be strength.”

  And a third, spiraled like a scream caught in a bottle.

  “Eishara’s voice. This seal will muffle her madness.”

  He paused, eyes heavy with sorrow.

  “And this…”

  Harun traced the final rune across Kael’s spine, directly over the brand.

  “…is for Thir-Yaak.”

  The Devouring Maw.

  The one who would eat the world through Kael’s mouth.

  Kael’s skin burned. His limbs twitched. His breath came ragged.

  Still, he didn’t scream.

  “I trust you,” he whispered.

  Harun smiled, tears streaking the blood on his face.

  “And I trust you to fight them… for as long as you can.”

  Later, when the priests came, their faces were painted in sacred ash.

  One snarled, pointing at Kael’s arms.

  “You cage divinity? Are you mad, cripple?”, “Let him burn! Let the Maw rise! The Saint must consume!"

  Harun stood, bone needle clenched like a bde.

  “He is not your pyre. He is not your weapon.”

  “He is a boy. Let him choose what kind of god he becomes.”

  The elders chased Harun away but left Kael alone.

  Kael sat awake long after the torches dimmed.

  His arms pulsed softly with glowing runes. His spine throbbed like a sealed gate.

  Inside him, the gods snarled, whispering from the dark but above them all was Harun’s voice, soft, steady.

  “You’re not them, Kael. You’re more.”

  For a while Kael believed that as well