The Sand Oasis is a graveyard without tombstones.
It buries everything—hope, mercy, names. among This sand oasis is a town called Ashraka. It was once a mining post abandoned after the veins ran dry. Slavers and black market traders took it over, turning the crumbling stone buildings into holding pits and auction blocks. It's known in whispers as "the town that bleeds from the ground," because bodies are often buried shallow and the sand carries the stench for miles.
In the pit beneath the slave market, a woman labored in silence, chained by the ankles and surrounded by rot. Her belly, swollen with unwanted life, trembled with the agony of birth. No midwife. No cloth. No light.
It wasn't a room—just a hole carved into the dried belly of the Oasis, with walls of cracked stone and the smell of blood that never faded. The slaves who'd been there longer would whisper that even the rats had learned to die elsewhere.
She never thought she'd live long enough to give birth.
The girl—no, the woman, though the world had never let her be one—had been stolen from a border village months ago.
Before the chains, before the pits, before the blood-soaked stone of Ashraka, she was Saina of Dahlem. Her village sat on the edge of the drylands, where stubborn green turned to golden dust. Dahlem wasn't much—just a crooked road lined with low homes built from sun-hardened clay, a wind-worn temple with no priest, and a market where traders passed through to avoid the heat of the inner dunes. The people there lived like roots clinging to rock: quiet, stubborn, and buried deep.
Saina had callused palms from grinding dye and a sunburned nose from tending herbs that only grew at the cusp of heat. Her mother was the village healer, her father a dyer of fine cloth—well-known in the region for colors so deep they caught the eye of wandering nobles. She had four younger brothers who never listened, and a sharp tongue that left her half-loved and half-feared. But she was strong. The kind of strong that goes unnoticed until it's the only thing left.
The raiders came in the second drought.
At first, they wore the king's colors—gold and crimson—and spoke of overdue taxes and conscription. But everyone knew that if Dahlem had gold, they'd have a well that didn't run dry by midmorning.
They asked for coin.
Then food.
Then daughters.
Saina stepped forward when her father tried to hide her sisters. Her eyes did not flinch. Her chin did not lower. She was seventeen and burned with the kind of pride that the desert itself might envy. That night, the sky wept red as homes burned. Her mother died with a blade in her chest. Her father, beaten, blind in one eye. Her youngest brother disappeared into the smoke. Saina? She was shackled at dawn, her wrists bruised, her name stolen from the slaver's records like ash swept by wind.
She remembered the night they'd dragged her into the barracks. The smell of sweat. Of ale. Of leather and blood. She hadn't fought—what was the point? They broke fighters faster. She'd shut her eyes and prayed they'd be quick.
Her wrists had been bound so long the skin beneath the shackles had turned black in places. Her hair hung in matted ropes, her cheeks sunken from hunger, her belly swollen not from fullness but from the child inside.
At first, she despised it. Not the child—but the knowing. The slow, undeniable weight beneath her ribs. The way her body changed, shifted, betrayed her all over again. She hated what it meant.
What it came from.
What it forced her to remember. The stink of sweat soaked into the dirt floor. The rasp of his breath—heavy, unhurried—like she was nothing more than a chore. The low, guttural laugh that slipped from his throat when she tried to twist away. The pain she had floated above like smoke, retreating inward because that was the only place left untouched.
She had clenched her jaw. Bit her tongue.
Survived.
But the memory didn't fade—not with time, not with silence. And now, it grew inside her.
A constant reminder of the worst night of her life, blooming beneath her skin like some cruel joke the gods left behind. She tried not to look at her stomach. Tried not to feel anything at all. But in the dead of night, when the world fell still and even the chains stopped clinking, she'd catch herself pressing her hand to her belly. And when he moved—when that small flutter rippled through her—she felt it.
Something else.
Something not made of that night. Or that awful man.
Something that was hers, something her body was creating, something that loved her.
She lay awake some nights with a hand over her belly, waiting. Listening. Not just to the motion—but to herself. To what it did to her heart. What it unspooled in the quiet places she'd boarded up long ago.
There was a night the guards beat a girl so badly her cries echoed off the walls for hours. Saina curled into the corner of her cell and whispered softly to her belly. "It's not your fault," she breathed, voice trembling. "You didn't ask for this either."
She started talking to him more after that. Not out loud—only in her head at first. Telling him stories from Dahlem. About the goats that chewed through her mother's herb garden, or the way the dry winds would rattle the market awnings in the afternoon sun.
And one night, when her back ached and her ankles were too swollen to walk, she found herself smiling. Just a little. Just for a second. That was the moment everything changed. The hatred didn't vanish—but it shifted.
It had a new target.
She no longer hated the life inside her. She hated the world he was being born into.
The sand. The chains. The slavers. The men who took everything and left only silence. He deserved more. Not just to live. But to live free. And somewhere deep in her soul—beneath the bruises, beneath the dirt, beneath the pieces they hadn't yet stolen—Saina made a vow. She would bring him into this world. She would hold him, name him, love him. And even if it cost her everything, she would give him something no one gave her: A chance.
It clawed through her gut like a blade, sudden and unrelenting. Her knees buckled beneath her, iron cuffs biting into her skin as she collapsed onto the pit's cold stone floor. The chains rattled behind her like cruel laughter.
She couldn't scream. Not here. Not in Ashraka. Noise invited boots, fists, or worse.
So she bit down on the inside of her cheek and tasted copper.
Her hands trembled, slick with sweat and dirt, bracing her as her body seized again. The agony came in waves, building like a storm she couldn't outrun. There was no midwife. No water. No comfort. Just blood and grit and darkness.
She was alone.
She pushed. Because she had no choice.
Because that was what women like her did.
Pushed through pain. Through silence. Through every godless thing.
Her vision blurred. Her jaw locked tight. Her body burned and broke and begged.
And then, Her knees buckled. She collapsed in a pool of blood and afterbirth, cheek pressed to the stone, her vision dimming.
The baby came fast. Too fast.
There was no cry. No movement.
Just silence.
She blinked. Once. Twice. Her body trembled as she dragged herself across the floor, arms weak from fever and blood loss, reaching for the tiny shape still tangled in gore.
He was still. Pale. Lips blue. His chest didn't rise. "No," she rasped, throat torn raw. "No, no—please." She scooped him into her arms, holding him against her chest, rocking back and forth, iron biting into her wrists. "
Not like this," she sobbed, forehead pressed to his. "You don't get to leave too." Tears streaked down her blood-smeared face.
"I didn't want you," she whispered, the truth stabbing like a blade. "Didn't ask for you. Didn't want to carry him inside me. Didn't want to feel his filth every time you kicked…"
She clutched the child tighter, fingers shaking.
"But you're not him," she said softly. "You're not him." The guards wouldn't come. The others wouldn't care. She was nothing. A ruined body made useful only for trade or torment. And now she was empty. No life left to give. "Please…" she sobbed, voice cracking. "Please, gods, demons, anyone—take me instead. Not him. Not my son."
She kissed his face, her tears mixing with the dirt. Her voice cracked with hope she didn't know she still had. "I was nothing when I came here. But I was something to you. I wanted to give you a name. A real one. One that means something."
"Levi," she whispered, naming him without even thinking. "That's your name. Levi. It means something that lives. That survives. That fights." She sobbed as her voice broke.
"Please…" Her voice trembled, barely more than a breath. "Please, just breathe."
Her hands hovered above his tiny chest, shaking uncontrollably.
"I need you," she whispered, her voice cracking. "You're all I have. All I have."
She pulled him closer, pressing her forehead to his, as if her heartbeat alone could will his to start. Her tears fell freely, streaking his still face, mingling with blood and dust. She rocked him in her arms, gently, frantically, as if motion could summon life. "Don't leave me. Not after everything. Not after I carried you through this hell. Please, please, my child… I need you to stay."
Her words broke into sobs, her body wracked with pain, with emptiness, with fear.He lay silent. Still. Too still. And in that hollow silence, the world narrowed to a single heartbeat—hers—beating
loud,
fierce,
alone.
There was no one left to hear her in the pit. No gods in Ashraka. Only dirt, and blood, and the endless, silent dark.
But something did hear.
Not her words.
But her heart.
The cry of a mother's soul—raw and wild—cut across the Veil that separates life from death. It echoed, unseen, into the realm where no mortals tread. Not a prayer, not a spell, but something older. Something truer.
The essence felt it.
The ancient, slumbering power that had long wandered, fractured and waiting, unseen by the world. The last thread of a forgotten force buried beneath ages of dust and ruin.
It did not choose by blood.
It did not choose by strength, but by fate.By sorrow.By sacrifice.
And in that moment, no soul needed saving more than the child cradled in that mother's arms.
A stillborn baby.
Born of pain.
Wrapped in love.
And in that moment, no soul needed saving more than the child cradled in that mother's arms.
A stillborn baby.
Born of pain.
Wrapped in love.
The air stilled.
The shadows drew back—not from fear, but reverence. A hush fell across the pit like the world itself had stopped breathing.
And then—
Light.
It didn't descend. It rose.
From the earth. From the bones. From the space between life and death, drawn not by command but by connection.
It found the boy's body—fragile, untouched by breath—and settled like a whisper into his skin
It was not holy. Not pure. It was older than both.
The Veil that divides life and death thinned, just for a breath. Just enough for something lost to slip through.
Something searching.
Something listening.
The child's body pulsed with sudden light—subtle at first, a glimmer beneath the skin. Then brighter. Stronger. Saina drew back with a startled gasp, shielding him with her hands.
A warmth bloomed beneath his tiny forearm. She watched, wide-eyed, as a shape began to form—not carved, not burned, but revealed, like it had always been there, waiting.
Lines appeared beneath his skin—glowing, intricate symbols, sharp curves and jagged hooks that curled into a design like ink etched by divine hands.
Her breath caught
"What… what is this?" she whispered, trembling. The light dimmed. The mark remained—black now, like an ancient tattoo, foreign and beautiful and terrifying. And then—
a gasp.
A real one.
His chest hitched. His lips parted. And he breathed.
"Levi," she sobbed, eyes widening, "Levi!"
She caught him up in her arms, cradling him, pressing frantic kisses to his head, his cheeks, his hands. His skin had warmth now. His fingers curled weakly around her thumb.
"You're alive," she whispered, stunned. "You came back to me. You're—oh, Levi…"
She looked down again at the mark on his arm. It throbbed faintly with a dull light, like embers long buried beneath ash.
She didn't recognize it.
She'd never heard of it. Just symbols—strange and unknowable.
But something in her knew. Deep down, without understanding how, she felt it. This was not normal.
Not luck.
Not magic.Something older. He wasn't just born. He had been claimed. And though she didn't know the word—though no slave or servant would dare whisper the name—far from the palaces of gold and marble, a boy with the mark of the Veilborn now breathed beneath the sand.
And the world would never be the same.