Chapter Two
The locker room smelled of sweat and dust.Water dripped from the showers in slow, stubborn beats, marking time in a world that suddenly had too much of it.
Azriel sat on the wooden bench, his hands resting, his breath slow and deliberate.The walls buzzed faintly too steady for electricity, too alive for plumbing.
He thought about the line on the court and how it had pulsed once, as if it had been listening.Khamari was pacing again, towel around his neck, sneakers squeaking against the tile.
Every few seconds, he'd glance over, searching Azriel's face for something normal."Your eyes are different," he said finally, breaking the air like a man opening a sealed door.
Azriel lifted his head, and the lights overhead flickered as if agreeing"They're just tired," he said, though his reflection in the locker's metal sheen said otherwise gold, faint and steady as sunrise through smoke.
The warmth had moved lower, it felt like a slow tide running through him.It didn't hurt; it commanded.He felt it crawl down his arms, curling around his wrists, whispering through his pulse.
Every heartbeat came back louder than the last, like something echoing from under sand.Khamari didn't need words to feel it; he took one step back, his body answering the unseen before his mind did.
Azriel reached for his duffel bag and missed, the strap sliding away as if repelled.When he tried again, his fingers brushed the handle, and the plastic softened under his touch.
He froze, stared, then closed his hand more carefully, as though gentleness could undo physics.The handle hardened again, obedient, pretending nothing had happened.
The hum in the walls quieted, but only to listen.Khamari rubbed his jaw and said, "Maybe you should see someone."
"I'm fine." I said"You're glowing." he said .Azriel laughed...one sharp sound that came out like a crack in glass.It startled both of them, the echo stretching too far for the room's small size.He grabbed his phone to call Ama, though part of him didn't know why.
The screen refused to light at first, flickering between black and the faint reflection of his own eyes.When it did, the time blinked wrong two minutes into tomorrow.
He didn't press dial; he didn't want to hear the explanation she might give.He already knew she'd warned him once, and he'd mistaken it for superstition.
"You heading to the press?" Khamari asked, trying to tether the moment to normal life."Yeah," Azriel said, though neither moved.
The idea of cameras, of microphones, felt like inviting strangers into a temple mid-prayer.He pushed himself up anyway, each step a negotiation with gravity.
The heat followed him, loyal as a shadow.The corridor outside was emptier than it should have been.Security had cleared most of the reporters, leaving behind a few stragglers and the buzzing lights that couldn't decide whether to hum or scream.
He walked slow, as if speed might attract attention from things not meant to notice him.Khamari trailed behind, head tilted, whispering something that sounded like a prayer or a curse.
The air carried a smell like rain on metal, sharp and promising.
Halfway down the hall, a vending machine exploded in a quiet, polite burst nothing violent, just a rain of plastic and water bottles.
Azriel flinched; Khamari swore.No alarms went off; no one came running.They both stared at the fizzing puddle creeping toward the drains.
The lights steadied again, pretending to have learned their lesson."Let's go," Khamari said, his voice lower than usual, as if afraid the walls could overhear.
They stepped into the service tunnel that led toward the loading bay.The arena's roar was gone now, replaced by the groan of cooling metal.
Their footsteps were the only thing honest left.Azriel felt the air shift again too cold for a desert night, too deliberate to be wind.He looked down at his palm and saw the faint outline of a scarab glowing under his skin.
Not bright just a whisper of light, golden and patient.It moved when his heart did, pulsing in rhythm, as if marking him for something he hadn't signed up for.
He rubbed at it until his skin reddened, but it didn't fade.Khamari saw it too, but neither of them spoke, because speaking made things real.
Outside, the desert city had begun to hum in sympathy.Billboards flickered in sync with his heartbeat.Distant car alarms went off and stopped at once, a wave of sound that knew its place.
Somewhere far off, thunder rolled over a sky that hadn't been promised rain in weeks.Azriel stopped walking and turned toward the horizon.The moon was red.
Not the soft red of dusk, but the red of wounds that never heal right.The air between him and it shimmered like heat on asphalt, except the night was cold.
He blinked, and for half a breath, the desert stretched longer, its sand moving like a sleeping thing shifting under a sheet.Khamari grabbed his shoulder and said his name like an anchor once, twice, a third time.
The world righted itself, but the sky stayed wrong.Stars moved slower; clouds watched instead of drifting.
Azriel exhaled and felt the warmth rise again, flooding his throat until it tasted like light.He coughed once, hard, and gold dust spilled from his mouth like smoke.
They both stared at it floating, curling upward until the wind carried it into nothing."You saw that," Azriel said."I saw nothing," Khamari replied, voice hoarse, eyes refusing to betray him.
They stood in the middle of the road, half-lit by the arena's dying lights.The hum from earlier followed them out like a melody unfinished.Azriel didn't move until the last echo disappeared.
They made it to the car, the black sedan that still smelled of sunscreen and tension.Khamari drove in silence; Azriel stared at his reflection in the window, where his eyes no longer belonged to the world he'd known.
Headlights from the few passing cars fractured across the glass, splitting his face into pieces of gold and shadow.He wondered which part of him the world would believe the player or the thing underneath.
Somewhere behind them, the stadium lights flickered once, then went out.The drive back to the hotel was a blur of noise and neon.
News alerts were already lighting up phones around the world clips of the match, slowed down, analyzed frame by frame.People online were calling it "The Miracle Serve," "Solar Phenomenon," "The Khepri Pulse."
Azriel's name was trending, his highlight reel worshipped.None of them noticed the frame where his shadow moved a second before he did.
When they reached the hotel, he didn't go inside.The glass doors opened for him anyway, the motion sensor bowing as if to greet a god.
He hesitated at the threshold, feeling the weight of something ancient watching.Inside, the marble floor gleamed, but its reflection showed two suns one in the sky, one under his skin.
He stepped forward and the lights dimmed like candles in prayer.The elevator ride was quiet except for his heartbeat, loud enough to feel through the floor.
He thought of Ama Khepri her small hands, the stories about gods who rose with the sun and fell with pride.She'd warned him once that blood remembers its promises, even when you forget to keep them.
He had laughed then, the kind of laugh youth wears like armor.Now every word of hers pressed against his ribs, demanding to be believed.
When he reached his room, the key card failed twice before giving up.The moment he entered, the air changed thick, expectant, alive.
He dropped his bag, and the zipper slid open on its own, spilling clothes that didn't remember being folded.The gold buzz in his chest surged, and the room's light bulbs went pale as bone.
Something unseen crawled up the walls, tracing lines like veins across paint.He stumbled to the bathroom mirror, half expecting to see fire.
What looked back was him only quieter, eyes like molten dusk, a glow pulsing at his throat.Behind him, faint and blurred, stood Ama's reflection.
She wasn't really there, but her presence was woven into the hum of the mirror's light."Child of light," she whispered, though her lips didn't move, "you've woken what sleeps between days."
He spun his body around , but the room was empty.The ringing in his head dimmed, ashamed of its betrayal.
He pressed both hands to the counter and saw the glow spreading down his veins, thin as rivers, golden and merciless."Stop," he whispered, and for a moment, it listened.
Then the scarab under his skin shifted again, wings opening with quiet delight.The sound wasn't human it was the tremor of something old remembering itself.
Azriel felt the warmth bloom into pain, sharp and pure, like sunlight burning through fog.He gasped, fell to his knees, and the floor beneath him cracked faintly, fine lines of black slicing through marble.
His shadow stretched against the walls and touched the ceiling.He couldn't tell whether it bowed or rose.When the pain stopped, silence claimed the room completely.
He lay there, breathing hard, body cooling as if the heat had been poured out of him.For a long time, he didn't move.The scarab's light faded, but not completely it lingered in rhythm with his pulse.
He closed his eyes and whispered the only prayer he remembered: Let this mean something.Far below the hotel, under the city's veins of wire and pipe, something ancient stirred.It turned once in the dark, like an animal hearing its name for the first time in centuries.
In its breath, the sand shifted, carrying the scent of fire and night.The buzz returned, lower now, deeper, familiar.
And far above, in a room of fractured light, Azriel Khepri dreamed of the sun bleeding gold into his hands.