The sun was dying.
It did not set, not anymore. It sputtered, flickering in the bruised-purple sky like a candle in a gale. Each tremor of light sent shadows stretching like monstrous limbs across the filth-choked gutters of Orivalt's Ruinspire Ward. The false gods were feeding again, siphoning the star's essence from their gilded thrones, and the world below paid the price in cold and darkness.
Down in the muck, something new drew breath.
The first sensation was the cold. It was a vicious, predatory thing that gnawed at his naked skin, a feeling so alien it was a revelation. Then came the stench—a curdled, cloying symphony of rot, excrement, and unburied dead that clung to the back of his throat. He lay in a puddle of greasy rainwater and mud, feeling the soft bodies of grubs squirm against his back.
He opened his eyes. They were the color of ash, holding an emptiness that mirrored the void between stars.
So this is what it is to be mortal, a thought echoed in the silent cathedral of his mind. It was not a thought of surprise, but of grim confirmation. This fragile, painful shell. This is what I gave them.
He did not have long to contemplate.
Heavy, booted footsteps sloshed through the mire. Two figures loomed over him, their forms hulking and distorted in the failing light. They were Carrion Birds in human skin, the slum's enforcers, their faces etched with the casual cruelty of men who had nothing to lose.
"Look what the sky-fire shat out," one of them rasped, his voice like grinding stones. He nudged the naked body with the toe of a steel-capped boot. "Still breathing."
"The Sun-Gods hunger," the other grunted. "The Priests promised coin for fresh meat. This is as fresh as it gets."
They grabbed him by the arms, their grips brutally tight. His limbs, weak and uncoordinated, offered no resistance. They hauled him from the mud, his body a dead weight between them. He was pale and thin, ribs stark beneath his skin, his black hair matted with filth. He looked like every other starving wretch destined to die in this gutter.
Except for his eyes.
The first man, Kaelen, met his gaze for a split second and flinched. It felt like staring into an abyss. He shook it off with a sneer, yanking harder. "Got a bit of fight in you, do you? Don't worry. We'll beat it out before the pyre."
They dragged him through the maze of shanties and refuse heaps. People watched from the shadows of their lean-tos, their faces gaunt and their eyes hollow. They saw the naked man being pulled to his doom and felt nothing. It was a Tuesday. Sacrifice was a currency, and despair was the air they breathed.
The slumlords—the self-styled "Grave-Gnawers"—pulled him toward a clearing where a slab of rust-colored stone sat like a crude altar. It was slick with generations of blood, a testament to the insatiable piety of the desperate. A small, pathetic fire crackled nearby, casting flickering light on the half-dozen other enforcers waiting. They wore crude armor of scrap metal and leather, and around their necks hung amulets of polished human teeth that clacked together with their movements.
Kaelen, the leader with the scarred face and one milky eye, shoved him forward. "On your knees, meat."
He collapsed onto the cold, wet ground before the altar. He did not struggle. He did not speak. He simply watched, his ashen eyes reflecting the dying sun.
"A nobody," Kaelen spat, circling him. "No brand, no name. Perfect. The gods prefer a blank slate to write their will upon." He drew a wicked-looking blade, a sharpened shard of slag bound to a wooden handle. "A gift for the heavens, so they might spare us another day of darkness. Be grateful. Your worthless life finally has meaning."
The slumlords chuckled, a low, ugly sound. Kaelen raised the blade high, its edge catching a flicker of sunlight.
The man on the ground did not look at the blade. He looked at Kaelen.
And for one single, soul-shattering moment, the world went silent.
The crackle of the fire, the distant whimpers of the starving, the wind whistling through the shanties—all of it vanished. It was not a lack of sound, but an active, crushing absence of it. A pressure built in the air, a deep hum that vibrated in the very bones of the men standing there.
Kaelen froze, the blade held aloft. His knuckles were white. "What…?"
A web of hairline fractures raced across the surface of the sacrificial altar. With a soft, sighing sound, the ancient stone, witness to a thousand murders, crumbled into a pile of gray dust and pebbles. It did not explode. It simply… ceased to be.
The sound of the world rushed back in a deafening wave. The enforcers stumbled back, eyes wide with primal fear. They stared at the pile of dust, then at the silent, naked man still kneeling where the altar had been. He hadn't moved. He hadn't spoken.
"Cursed," one of them whispered, his face pale. "That flesh is cursed!"
Kaelen's bravado was gone, replaced by a raw, superstitious terror. This was not a blessing. This was a bad omen. A dark one. He no longer saw a sacrifice; he saw a vessel for something foul.
"Forget the coin," he snarled, pointing a trembling finger. "Throw it in the Pit. Let the other cattle deal with it."
Two men, eager to be rid of him, grabbed him again. They dragged him away from the unsettling pile of dust, their movements rough and panicked. They hauled him to the edge of a massive, grated hole in the ground, from which a stench of sweat, sickness, and misery rose like a physical wall.
The Pit of Breeding Cattle. A holding pen where the slum's human livestock were kept before being sold for labor, for sport, or for flesh.
Without ceremony, they tossed him in.
He fell ten feet, landing in a heap of mud and straw. The impact sent a jolt of agony through his frail body. He tasted blood. He heard the grate slam shut above, plunging the Pit into near-total darkness, save for the slivers of dying light that pierced the gloom.
He pushed himself up slowly, his body screaming in protest. He was in a vast, circular cavern filled with people. Dozens of them. They were skeletal, clad in rags, their bodies covered in sores. Some were weeping silently. Others just stared into the darkness, their spirits long since broken.
He took a shuffling step forward and his foot touched something small and cold. He looked down. It was the body of a child, no older than five, her eyes wide open and vacant.
He did not recoil. He did not gasp. He simply stood there, a profound, ancient sorrow washing through him—the collective agony of his creation.
Then, the other prisoners began to feel it.
It started with the woman closest to him. She stopped her quiet sobbing and looked up, her brow furrowed. A shiver ran down her spine that had nothing to do with the cold. It was an instinctive, primal dread, the kind a mouse feels when the shadow of a hawk passes overhead. She scrambled away from him, crab-walking backward into the press of other bodies.
Then another felt it. A man who had been gnawing on a piece of leather looked up, his eyes widening in confusion and fear. He, too, shuffled away.
Soon, a wave of silent panic spread through the Pit. No one knew why. They only knew that the space around the new arrival felt like a vacuum, a patch of absolute cold that leeched the very hope from the air. They crawled, shuffled, and pushed each other away, creating an empty circle of mud and filth around the silent, naked man.
He stood alone in the center of the Pit, a black hole of stillness in a sea of misery, his ashen eyes seeing nothing and everything.
He was the Original, the Architect, the forgotten God.
He was Ravi, entombed in meat.
And he had just begun to feel the rot of his own failed world.