The dunes had always whispered.
Now, they called him by name.
Every step Azar took into the Obsidian Dunes was met with a shimmer of movement beneath the sand—as if the land itself recognized him. The air was heavy, dense with unseen rhythm. Each grain of black sand seemed to hum with memory.
At the heart of that vast darkness, a single formation stood: a jagged spire of glass-like rock, split down the middle like a wound.
The locals called it Mdomo wa Giza—The Mouth of Shadows. Azar approached it alone, barefoot.
The wind was still. The sky above was neither day nor night—caught between gold and void. He placed his hand upon the spire. The stone was cold, but pulsed like a living heart. Then came the laugh—low, rippling, impossible to tell if it was near or within.
Mbweha.
"You came back, little sun."
"You called me," Azar whispered.
"No," said the voice, smooth as smoke. "You listened."
The sand stirred, swirling around his feet. Out of it stepped the Trickster Jackal, half-formed and shimmering—a body of black metal and ash, eyes twin embers of cunning gold. Each movement it made distorted the air, like heat rippling from a forge.
Azar did not flinch. He'd dreamed this moment a hundred times. "You are Mbweha," he said. "And you are the child who talks to shadows," Mbweha replied.
"I seek to understand them."
"Understand?" the jackal chuckled. "No. You seek to own them."
For a long silence, the two simply watched each other—predator and reflection. Then Mbweha's tail flicked, scattering the sand into spirals that shaped symbols Azar recognized from forbidden scrolls—the glyphs of Binding.
"The light within you burns too clean," Mbweha murmured. "Let me show you how to twist it. How to bend the sun's rhythm until it obeys only you."
Azar hesitated. He remembered Elder Chimori's words—"Even fire must sleep." But another voice, quieter and older, stirred within: "Why should it?" He extended his hand.
The jackal leaned forward and bit his palm—not in malice, but in ritual. The blood that dripped into the sand hissed. The dunes trembled. Where their bond was sealed, light and shadow merged—white and black intertwining like molten glass. A circle of mirrored sand formed beneath Azar's feet, reflecting both the sun above and the abyss below.
"Now," Mbweha purred, his voice vibrating in Azar's skull, "breathe as I breathe."
Azar inhaled. The air was heavy with iron and silence. When he exhaled, his breath turned to smoke. He could feel Mbweha's heartbeat—a rhythm sharp and irregular, unlike any human pulse. It thudded behind his ribs, out of sync with his own.
At first, the connection was agony—his Aura convulsed, his veins burned like molten silver. The ground split beneath him, streaks of black light tearing through the sand.
But then… calm. He stood taller.
His skin no longer shimmered with sunfire—it gleamed faintly, like bronze tempered in shadow. His eyes, once bright amber, now held a faint reflection of gold and smoke, gradually shifting to silver. He spoke, and the dunes answered. His voice carried weight, bending the very rhythm of the wind. He commanded a handful of sand to rise—and it obeyed, swirling in the shape of a coiled serpent. For the first time, Azar laughed—not the laughter of youth, but of understanding.
"So this is the truth," he said softly. "The sun burns only because the dark gives it shape."
"You learn quickly, little sun" Mbweha said, circling him, proud and hungry. "Now you must learn control. For every secret I give, I will take something in return." And he did.
Over the coming moons, Azar returned to the dunes each night. Mbweha taught him to mold Aura into Echo constructs, to twist reflection into form, to command fear as easily as flame. He learned to bind echoes into objects—a blade that murmured, a cloak that moved like liquid shadow. But each lesson cost him.
The warmth of his Aura dimmed. His heartbeat slowed.
When he returned to Jua, even the sunlight seemed to hesitate before touching him. And yet—the tribe still believed he could be saved. Only Elder Chimori saw what truly stood before him:
A boy who had made a god kneel,
and a beast who had found its mirror in man.