The dining room was an island of gold in a sea of encroaching soot. Rosemary and rendered lamb fat hung in the air, a thick, greasy perfume that fought against the lants outside the walls.
Alaro Asher sat at the head of the table, his blonde hair gleaming under the chandelier like a crown. He didn't eat; he dissected. His knife moved with precision, separating the pink meat from the bone.
Elara, sitting opposite him, didn't look up from her wine. Her fingers traced the rim of the crystal glass, a rhythmic shirr-shirr that set Felix’s teeth on edge. "If the Distribution is delayed, the donations will drop, Alaro."
"Tomorrow is vital." Alaro’s gaze shifted to the end of the table.
Felix, a nineteen years old young man, felt the weight of his father’s eyes like a physical pressure against his guts. He looked down at his plate. His black hair, a jagged contrast to the golden warmth of the room, fell forward, shielding his face.
"Felix," Alaro said, his tone shifting into a more strict tone. "Eat. You must be a perfectly aligned with the blessing of the gods. Fortune does not smile on a hungry omen."
"I'm not hungry, Father," Felix murmured. The lamb on his plate was still untouched.
Beside him, Anika let out a small, wet sound, a cough she tried to bury in her napkin. Her skin, pale. No one acknowledged it. To the Asher family, sickness was an inefficiency to be ignored until it went away, for there are more important things to worry about.
"The City of Light is gone," Alaro continued, turning back to his wife. "A glass bowl of ash. The reports say the earth itself turned to liquid. Something deleted it from the face of the earth in one night".
Felix pushed his chair back. The wood groaned against the stone floor, a harsh, jagged sound.
"May I be excused?"
Alaro didn't look at him. He simply waved a hand, his rings catching the dim light.
Felix stepped out of the dining room. The warmth of the candles died instantly, replaced by the echoing chill of the manor’s stone hallways.
His footsteps were silent as he climbed the stairs. Each board he trod upon felt like it was holding its breath. The house was too quiet, a tomb gilded in wood. He reached his door, the heavy oak handle cold against his palm.
Inside, the room was a cell of his own making.
He didn't light a candle. He walked to the far wall, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a bone-white die.
Thud.
He tossed it. It bounced off the stone floor, a sharp, dry sound. It tumbled, skipped, and died.
Six.
He picked it up, he threw it again, harder, aimed at the corner where the shadows were thickest.
Six.
He did it again. And again. And again. The sound became a pulse. Thud. Clack. Thud. Clack. On the tenth throw, the die hit the leg of his bed and spun with a frantic energy before settling into the same mocking face. Sixty pips. A mathematical impossibility.
Felix stared at it. His vision blurred until the six black dots looked like eyes. With a sudden, jagged lunge, he kicked the die. It vanished under the wardrobe, but he didn't need to check. He knew the six was facing the ceiling. It always was.
He left the room, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He needed to move. He needed to find a sound that wasn't the echo of his sadness.
As he passed the master suite, the door was cracked, a sliver of yellow light spilling onto the rug. He slowed, his feet sinking into the thick pile of the carpet.
"...how much of the 'Soil' is left?" Elara’s voice was sharp, hushed. "You know it can't last. If we keep this monthly pace, the garden will be barren in a few years."
"The loyalty of this city is bought with that soil," Alaro replied. "If I cut the supply, the public outrage will be a tide we can't swim against. Don't fret, Elara. We have Felix. If the garden’s soil runs out, his divine fortune will guide us to another source. The same way it brough us here."
"But what if it doesn't? What if the gods have had their fill of us?"
"Stop it, woman" Alaro snapped. "You were the one who opposed the adoption. You called him a 'black-haired crow.' But I saw it. The way the first fruit he touched was a Golden Heart. I saw the blessing put in that child. We are here because of that luck Elara, we would never have found this settlement without him, you know that soil is beyond rare to find. He is why we are living this life, and you should be thankful to me."
Felix leaned his forehead against the cold stone wall. A "blessing." A "luck" that was used like a dowsing rod for profit. He didn't stay to hear the rest. He turned and walked toward the smallest door at the end of the hall.
The air in Anika’s room was stagnant, as if she rarely moved inside.
He pushed the door open. The girl was a small, fragile shape beneath a mountain of silk quilts. She looked too small for the bed, as if the room was slowly absorbing her.
"Anika?" he whispered.
A small movement. A pale hand emerged from the blankets. "Big brother?"
Her voice was like dry leaves skipping across pavement. Felix sat on the edge of the mattress. He reached out and padded her head, his fingers catching on the fine, sweaty strands of her blonde hair.
"I'm sorry," he said. The words were a lead weight in his throat. He looked at her sunken eyes, the way her chest struggled for every draft of air.
"Why?" She coughed, a wet, rattling sound that shook her entire frame. "Me being sick... it’s just the wind, Felix. I’ll be fine tomorrow. I want to see you in the robes."
Felix didn't answer. He reached into his vest and pulled out a small, silver Kalimba. The metal tines were worn smooth from years of his thumbs dancing over them.
He began to play.
The notes were liquid, shimmering things, drops of cool water falling into a deep, dark well. It was a song their foreign nurse used to hum when they first found this place a few years ago, before the "Soil" had made them rich, before the Manor had swallowed them.
"When the pillar of hope is found, the twelve stars will align in the... " Felix hummed the melody, his voice low and kind.
Anika’s eyes drifted shut. A small, genuine smile touched her cracked lips. "The star song," she whispered. "Play the part about the two little twin dummies."
Felix played. He zoomed in on the movement of his thumbs, the way the silver metal vibrated, sending a faint hum. He played until her hand, which had been clutching his sleeve, went limp and heavy with sleep.
Felix wasn't in the house anymore. He was perched on the peaked roof of the storehouse, his boots dug into the mossy shingles. Below him, the city stretched out, a sprawling labyrinth of flickering torches.
He pulled a Astrea fruit from his pocket.
In the moonlight, the fruit looked like a pulsing organ. The translucent skin was so thin he could see the amber fluid swirling inside. The silver "Heaven's Dust" on the skin felt like a cold sweat against his thumb.
He stared at it with the weary eyes of a man watching a play he’d seen a thousand times.
He bit down.
The skin gave way with a wet, rhythmic pop. Instead of the bitter, charcoal-tasting sludge that the rest of the village choked down to survive, the amber nectar flooded his mouth. It was cloyingly sweet, tasting of honey and copper.
He spat the first mouthful onto the dark shingles. It looked like liquid gold in the dark.
Nested within the pulp was the Golden Core, a seed that glowed with a faint, bioluminescent pulse.
The Astrea fruit was one of the main nutrient sources in this place, a necessary food to survive in the hard conditions, and abundant one too, its taste wasn’t desirable, however, about one in ten thousand pieces had the golden core inside, a tasty lucky version of the fruit. And you could only find out after biting it.
So this, was the Third Miracle of the week.
Felix watched the glowing seed as it rolled down the slope of the roof. It tumbled off the edge and fell into the mud of the livestock pens below. In the market, that single seed could buy a family’s freedom. To him, it was just another reminder that the universe refused to let him taste the bitterness everyone else had to endure.
He felt a sharp, stabbing heat in his chest, not of gratitude, but of a profound, isolating shame. The world was starving, and he was being force-fed miracles.
Morning arrived with the tolling of the Iron Bell.
The air was thick with the smell of incense and unwashed bodies. Thousands had gathered along the processional route, a sea of gray rags and hollow cheeks.
Felix walked three paces behind his father. He was draped in heavy, white brocade, the fabric stiff with gold embroidery that felt like a cage. The high collar chafed against his jaw, keeping his head forced upright.
Alaro moved with the grace of a conqueror, his chest puffed out with pride.
"The Omen!" a voice shrieked from the crowd.
A woman lunged forward, breaking through the line of guards. Her hands were caked in the gray dust of the lower wards, her eyes wide and bloodshot. She didn't reach for Alaro. She reached for Felix.
"Touch the Soil, Young Master!" she begged, her fingers grazing the hem of his pristine white robe, leaving a smear of filth. "My boy is eating dirt! Give us the gods blessings!"
A guard stepped in, the butt of a spear hitting the woman’s shoulder. She went down, but her eyes never left Felix’s.
"Felix," Alaro hissed under his breath, not turning his head, his smile never wavering. "Acknowledge them. Show them the gods are watching."
Felix didn't look at the woman. He didn't look at the guards. He kept his eyes fixed on the distant spires of the Cathedral. He walked with a heavy, mechanical gait, a silent, black-haired doll being led through a city of dying men.
As they ascended the Cathedral steps, a priest in crimson robes stepped forward, holding a silver bowl filled with the "Soil", a fine black powder.
"The Witness shall provide," the priest intoned.
Felix reached out. His hand trembled, just for a second, before he dipped his fingers into the black soil. As his skin touched it.
The crowd let out a collective, guttural roar of adoration.
Felix knew that the soil properties has nothing to do with him, that this was just a ceremony to brainwash the crowd’s minds, yet he still played along, for his father’s sake, his mind was not a room, even tho his body was there. The world outside, the chanting, the bells, the heavy weight of his ceremonial robes, felt like a distant storm happening on the surface while he sank deeper into the dark.
He was at the center of the Cathedral now. The air was a thick soup with the smell of the "Soil."
The distribution began with the precision of a slaughterhouse.
A line of citizens stretched out of the massive oak doors and snaked through the city making a huge line. They didn't look like people anymore; they were a collective twitching nerve of desperation. Under the watchful, unblinking eyes of the Crimson Priests, the first man stepped forward. He was a merchant, once wealthy.
With trembling hands, he placed a velvet box on the altar. Inside lay a necklace of raw emeralds, a family heirloom that could have bought a mountain of food.
Alaro Asher didn't even look at the gems. He signaled to the Priest, who took a tiny, silver scale. From a heavy iron vat, the Priest extracted exactly one gram of the Soil, a pinch of shimmering black dust that looked like ground obsidian.
The merchant clutched the tiny paper packet to his chest as if it were a beating heart. He began to weep with a sound, before being shoved aside by the guards to make room for the next. A woman traded her wedding ring, peeling it off a swollen, bruised finger. An old man offered a crate of hand-carved ivory.
One gram of dirt for a lifetime of treasure.
Felix watched a single grain of the Soil fall from the scale and land on the stone floor. Every time I get lucky, the thought bounced in his skull like a lead marble, it took years for this idea to fully form and take shape, and at this moment, this exact day at this exact hour, this exact minute and exact second, the idea finally popped in its head.
For all this time, every time I get lucky. The world gets smaller. Anika gets thinner.
What if my luck isn't a gift? What if it's a siphon?
Little did he know, this realization was enough to trigger the invitation. Felix’s mind now was finally ready to take the deal.
AND THE WORLD WENT WHITE.
The sound of the Cathedral vanished. The smell of incense was replaced by the scent of … nothing, there was no more scent to be detected.
"Welcome to devil’s realm."