Before he became the Prophet of Silence, Azar was the promise of dawn—a fragile spark flickering on the horizon, warm and full of wonder.
The Jua Tribe—keepers of the Sun's rhythm—believed every few generations, the light would choose a child to bear its blessing. When Azar was born beneath the storm that tore the sky, the elders whispered that this was their chosen one, their voices hushed as they traced golden runes in the sand.
Azar grew into a boy of impossible brilliance, his laughter ringing like chimes across the sun-baked plains.
Where other children needed years to learn Aura breathing, he could already sense the pulse of sunlight in his fingertips before his tenth year—tiny veins of gold glowing faintly beneath his skin as he flexed his hands, drawing gasps from the watching adepts. Each morning, while the tribe gathered around the Stone of Dawn—a towering monolith etched with solar spirals—to greet the rising sun, Azar stood closest to the light. And the light bent toward him, rays curving in obedient arcs to caress his upturned face.
His skin shimmered faintly, as if dusted with stardust; his hair glowed like molten gold, catching the dawn in fiery cascades. The elders called him "Mwana wa Ndege"—Child of the Phoenix—their chants swelling as shadows retreated from his glow.
He laughed easily then, a bright, bubbling sound that scattered flocks of starlings into the sky. He chased birds between the acacia trees, their branches clawing at the azure vault; carved suns into stone with fingers that left smoking trails; and whispered to the sand as if it could hear him, golden grains swirling up to form fleeting crowns around his brow. But even in his laughter, there was something… too intense—a sharpness in his golden eyes, like a blade hidden in silk.
When he played, he didn't simply run—he studied the wind, its hot gusts whipping his tunic; timed his steps to the rhythm of rustling leaves, feet striking the earth in perfect syncopation. When he listened to songs, he memorized the pauses more than the notes—the breathless silences between drumbeats that hung heavy in the air.
Elder Chimori—the tribe's high seer and Azar's mentor, his face a map of wrinkles etched by decades of visions—once said, watching him from the shade of a woven canopy,
"He does not seek the light for warmth. He seeks to understand why it burns."
His words drifted on the breeze, heavy as prophecy.
By adolescence, Azar became the tribe's youngest Sunblood Adept, his lean frame robed in saffron silks that billowed like captured flames. He mastered Sol Chant, the art of weaving sunlight into Aura form. His technique was flawless—too flawless—golden threads of light coiling from his palms in perfect spirals, brighter and more precise than any elder's.
The tribe saw divinity, falling to their knees as rainbows arced from his chants. Chimori saw danger, his eyes narrowing like storm clouds. "Harmony is not perfection", Chimori told him once, watching Azar train on the sun-scorched training grounds, sweat beading on his brow like liquid gold.
"The sun shines because it rests. Even fire must sleep."
But Azar didn't understand rest. His mind was a storm of curiosity—a brilliance that refused to dim, eyes burning with questions as he paced under the relentless sky.
He studied old scrolls of the First Chant, their brittle pages crumbling to golden dust; diagrams of Echo Beasts, inked in luminous pigments that glowed at dusk; even fragments of prophecy etched into cave walls, faint runes pulsing like trapped heartbeats.
He spoke to the river about the reflection of light, crouching at its sparkling edge as waters mirrored his fractured gaze.
He spoke to the fire about the silence between crackles, embers flaring in response to his whispers.
He spoke to his own shadow—and it began to speak back, a faint hiss slithering from the ground at twilight, curling around his ankles like a living thing.