The moon hung low over Thambo, bleeding silver across the fields.
Sefu stood at the edge of the sleeping village, surrounded by silence and the restless dead. Their forms were vague—shadows shaped like people, eyes burning faintly green in the dark. They waited without sound, without will, bound to him.
The air itself felt thin, stretched between life and something colder.
He could still hear laughter from the tavern. The nobles' overseers were celebrating. They didn't know that death already stood at their gates.
Sefu ran his thumb along the spine of the Kitabu cha Mauti, feeling its pulse. The book no longer whispered—it breathed.
"They feast while you starve," the Whisperer murmured."They smile while your world burns. What will you do, Sefu of Kivuli?"
His jaw clenched. "I told you—they weren't the ones who killed my family."
"Then who did?"
The question sliced deeper than the voice's tone.
He saw again the guardians who had turned their backs. The noble banners fluttering above the flames. His mother's outstretched hand fading in smoke.
"All of them," he breathed.
The Whisperer hummed in approval. "Then let all of them pay."
He lifted his hand. The shadows moved like water. The dead began to advance—silent, inevitable.
When the first scream tore the night, Sefu flinched. The sound was human—terrified, sharp. It almost broke through the numbness that had taken root inside him.
Almost.
He looked down at his palms. The black markings on his skin pulsed like veins of light, each throb syncing with the fading voices in the village. With every cry that fell silent, the glow grew brighter.
Power.
It seeped into him, filling the hollow places where grief had lived. For the first time since his family's death, he felt strong. Alive.
By the time dawn broke, the village was still.
The wind moved through empty streets, carrying the scent of ash and iron. Shadows lay in the corners, still shaped like people but fading as the light rose.
Sefu stood in the center square, alone. The silence pressed against his ears.
His eyes were brighter now, faintly green around the edges. The same light that glowed from the eyes of the dead.
The Whisperer spoke again, soft and steady.
"You have done well. Each soul you silence feeds you. Each heartbeat you end becomes yours."
Sefu knelt beside a broken well, staring at his reflection in the dark water. His face looked older somehow—his expression distant, carved from stone.
He whispered, "How much more?"
"As much as there is life left in the world."
He should have felt horror. Regret. But all he felt was a strange calm, a numb understanding.
Life is nothing but ones and zeros.Alive. Dead.Nothing in between.
The words came back to him like an old memory.
He rose, his shadow stretching unnaturally long behind him. Around him, the dead began to stir again—not like before, but changed. They no longer moved as individuals. They pulsed with the same rhythm as his heart, bound by something deeper.
He looked toward the east, where the first rays of sunlight touched the golden towers of House Nyoka in the distance.
He could still see the banners—silver serpents wrapped around suns. The house that ordered his family's slaughter.
He began to walk. The dead followed.
Each step echoed across the barren fields.
As they marched, the world seemed to fade. The grass wilted underfoot, the sky dimmed slightly, as though the air itself recoiled from their passing.
The Whisperer was no longer just a voice—it was a presence that pressed against his thoughts, watching through his eyes, breathing through his breath.
"Do you remember the temple?" it asked.
Sefu's grip on the Kitabu tightened. "I remember."
"Then remember better."
The world around him dissolved.
The memory struck like lightning—hot and blinding.
He was back inside the temple, standing before the altar. The walls bled symbols of shadow, each line moving as if alive.
The air had been thick, heavy with something unseen. He had opened the book and felt the world stop.
"What do you seek, child of dust?" the voice had asked then.
"Justice," he'd said. "For those who burned my world."
"Justice or vengeance?"
He had hesitated. And that had been his answer.
The voice had laughed, a sound without echo.
"Then we are the same."
Shadows had erupted, wrapping around his arms, his chest, his heart. He remembered the sensation of being rewritten—his humanity stripped piece by piece, replaced with something colder.
"You will never tire, never age, never forget," the voice had whispered. "But every life you take will take a piece of you in return."
And he had whispered back, "Then let me become empty."
When he awoke, the book was in his hands, the mark already burned into his flesh.
The memory faded.
Sefu found himself standing once again in the daylight, breathing hard. The shadows beneath his feet pulsed faintly, spreading across the grass like veins of ink.
He whispered, "It was never a blessing, was it?"
"It was an answer," said the Whisperer. "The only one this world understands."
He looked down the road. Smoke still rose in the distance—the remains of Thambo. And yet, even as the wind carried the scent of ruin, he felt nothing.
The part of him that would have mourned was gone.
Only the purpose remained.
By dusk, travelers began to whisper.
Merchants fleeing the northern passes spoke of a shadow army marching through the countryside, leaving silence in its wake.
A farmer claimed to have seen a boy with green eyes walking among the dead.
Priests in the capital said the darkness was a curse sent by the gods to punish the kingdom's greed.
But among the poor, the story was different.
They spoke the name softly, almost reverently—"Mfalme wa Kivuli."The King of Shadows.
A myth born from ash and vengeance.
Sefu paused that night beside a dying tree. The world around him was quiet, save for the rustle of dry leaves.
He stared up at the stars. For a moment, he almost remembered their names—the ones Neema used to point out from their rooftop in the old days.
The memory faded before it could hurt.
"You are becoming what you were meant to be," the Whisperer said.
He lowered his gaze. "And what is that?"
"The truth this world hides from itself."
He thought about the light, the nobles, the Guardians who had turned their backs.
He thought about balance.
And he smiled—a quiet, hollow thing.
"Then let me show them truth."
The wind shifted. The shadows rose behind him like waves.
When the night swallowed the last of the horizon, Thambo was nothing more than dust.
And Sefu, the boy who once believed in fairness, was gone—leaving behind only the one who would make the world remember him.