The night came heavy and silent over Naziri, the forgotten city where faith and sin shared the same breath. The air trembled under the glow of a red moon swollen, bleeding across the sky like an open wound. The prophets had whispered of this night for centuries, the night when the blood moon would seal destinies and summon the covenant of the marked.
Black Jesus stood at the edge of the desert ruins, his shadow stretched long and unbroken. His white robe was no longer pure torn by battle, darkened by dust and blood. Yet his eyes burned with something beyond mortal light. Around his neck hung the sigil of the covenant a serpent biting its own tail, forged from obsidian and bone.
The wind carried voices cries of the forgotten, the chained, the betrayed. They spoke his name in fear and hope alike.
"He walks again… the one who bleeds light."
From the distance came Miriam, the seer who had once denied him. Her hair was now grey from prophecy, her eyes veiled in tears.
"Tonight," she whispered, "you are not here to heal. You are here to bind."
Black Jesus turned, his voice deep as thunder, yet calm as dawn.
"I did not come to destroy," he said, "but destruction follows me all the same."
Behind them, twelve shadows knelt in the dust his disciples of the broken world. Each bore a mark of sin upon their hands: betrayal, greed, lust, vengeance, silence. They were the chosen of the fallen, bound to him by fate, not holiness.
The blood moon pulsed like a heart. The desert trembled. And from the earth rose the sound a low hum, ancient and divine. A covenant older than scripture itself.
He drew his palm across his chest, blood dripping into the sand. The ground drank deeply.
"With this blood," he murmured, "I claim what was denied. The power to restore or to ruin."
The sand shifted. From it emerged an altar of bones, shining faintly red beneath the lunar glare. The disciples chanted in tongues forgotten by man. Miriam's voice joined theirs, trembling.
The sky roared. Lightning without thunder slashed across the stars. The sigil on Black Jesus's neck burned, and his veins glowed like molten gold. For a moment, he seemed to split half light, half shadow.
He looked upward and whispered, "Father, forgive me, for I remember now even You were tempted by power."
And the heavens wept fire.
When the dawn came, the moon was gone, and the covenant was sealed. Those who had knelt before him were no longer human. Their eyes burned red with purpose — divine or damned, none could tell.
Black Jesus stood among them, silent, the wind whispering through the ashes of the old world. He had taken the power meant for gods — and now bore its curse alone.
To be continued