Through me you pass into the city of woe:

Through me you pass into eternal pain:

Through me among the people lost for aye.

Ashur.

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Time had passed and I had survived.

I had been forgotten, or left alone, by the inquisitor.

The same inquisitor who tore children and grown men alike, as if they were paper.

But nonetheless I survived.

The lower section of the city was much safer, as long as I knew what to do and what not to do. Stay away from the cops, don’t get caught by anyone, steal small amounts of food only during noon, and don’t always stay at one place.

That, alongside a couple more lessons that I had learned during my last couple of months alone had helped me survive.

I crouched behind a barrel at a dark street corner and looked at the stream of people walking and going from place to place. The sun was high in the cloudless sky, shining on all, except for me.

Noon. The rush hour in which people tended to overcrowd the market, a perfect opportunity to get something to eat.

My stomach groaned and I closed my eyes. After a moment of concentration I took a deep breath and eyed my target, a fruit vendor, crowded with only three people. All I needed to do was to swiftly take at least one and disappear with the stream.

I stepped out of the shadows into the stream until it carried me to the vendor’s stand. As the vendor tried to convince one of his customers that his fruits were of the best quality, I passed by the apple basket and swiped two with my hands.

With three quick steps I returned to the stream, I could faintly hear someone yell ‘stop!’ but the market place was crowded, and other merchants were already shouting their lungs out about their wares.

Within a couple of minutes I made my way to a secluded place in another alleyway and ate everything. The only thing left of the two apples were two stems, the rest was already in my stomach, which stopped its protest about being hungry.

Something above me cracked open and I sidestepped, avoiding a splash of fluid that fell onto the floor from above. Without even looking up I stepped back into the stream of people and kept walking, looking for a new vendor who was too caught up with people or a little too relaxed.

The vendors weren’t dumb, they knew that street orphans like me were stealing, so did the cops that were spread around the marketplace. So some of them kept their wares behind their stand, some had brutish looking men with them, others had even paid the cops under the table to stand near them.

But nothing was perfect, and a starving person can go to great lengths to eat.

One of the brutish men would have to take a piss, the cops couldn’t be seen to take favors so blatantly, and there was always a way to get behind the stand.

I looked at one of the small stands that had dried meat behind their stand. I saw three kids, two of them were small and skinny, but at the same time they were rather well dressed unlike the third taller kid.

The two played with each other, trying to catch one another, as if there weren’t a dozen people around them, they ran until they both bumped hard into the stand, making it wobble and fall.

The vendor roared at them without noticing the third taller child as he quickly took handfuls of dried meat and ran off.

Must have been brothers. I thought to myself as I watched each of them go in a different direction.

For a moment I remembered my home, my warm bed, the warm food at the beginning of each morning and Mother. But I quickly shook my head and kept walking. If I stayed for too long, the rush hour would end, and I would have no way to deal with anyone after me.

I gave up on the idea to find more food and walked towards the outskirts. Being further away from the center of the city was much better than anything else.

And so I walked out of the marketplace and made my way to the outskirts of town, the slums.

The houses looked shabby, and the road, although it was straight enough for a steam car to drive on, was a bit unbalanced.

However, despite how the slums looked, it was home for many of the orphans throughout the city. The rest either lived in the sewers or if they were unlucky, they were caged at some noble’s dungeon.

As I walked through the slums, I came to a stop. The sight of a rundown wooden house made me freeze. It was the same house in which the old lady had given me food right after Mother died.

The door was broken, and with the slowly fading light from the sun, I could only see darkness inside the house.

I took a couple of steps towards the house and stopped. Choking my curiosity I turned away and moved on.

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Time continued to pass by, sometimes my clothes would get ruined after people tried to grab me and oftentimes my stomach hurt so much that my vision started to spin.

But there were always scraps to be taken and eaten, rags to be worn. The people living in the boundary between the higher section and the lower section always had laundry put outside. If one or two pieces of clothing were lost in the wind, no one would complain.

There were still people inside stores, and every once in a while a steam car would pass by the even road. But I had enough time to climb up to the rooftops from a dense alley, and from there drop down to a balcony with hanging clothes.

Right as I was about to drop into a balcony, a speeding figure down the street caught my attention.

I pressed my entire body onto the roof tiles and made sure that only a tiny portion of my head stuck out.

The figure was covered by a cloak and held something to his chest with both hands. But from how inhumanly fast he was running, I could already tell that the figure used Sul.

My entire body shivered, the figure was already gone, but whenever a person who does not belong to the church uses Sul, bad things happen. I quickly ran through the rooftops to the spot from which I got up and made my way down.

I made my way into the slums immediately. Torn and disheveled clothes would hint of me being an orphan, causing the cops and vendors to take deeper caution against me in the future, but being found by the church would be the worst thing that could happen.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The day slowly ended, the night began and I found myself making my way through the slums. I would seldom find other people’s trash, take it, and put it in my own hideout.

I scavenged until I passed near a rundown wooden house, the old woman’s house. It has been dark and unrepaired for months, but every once in a while, someone would leave their things in a well hidden dark corner, which would turn out to be a great find for me.

I looked around me and at the house, trying to see if there was anyone looking or staying inside the house. After waiting a while, I entered.

The house was still dark, and empty. I searched the well hidden dark corner and found a book, ‘Aerten Suleyk’ was written upon it. I froze as I saw the title, I slowly started to rub my fingers over the large golden letters of the title only to freeze again. There was a small carved symbol on the corner of the cover.

A circle, with thick lines connecting to each other inside it. The symbol of the sewers, the thieves guild. I barely knew of them, but I did hear about them and about their symbol.

On the streets it's everyone for themselves, but the thieves guild, although it was most likely made out of thieves who don’t trust each other, they still banded together, and they probably didn’t like it when someone stole from them.

The golden title of the book drew me in again.

‘Aerten Suleyk’.

I took the book and got out from a small hole in the back of the wooden house. As I ran, I took out a small metal razor that I found a while ago and scratched the cover, when I finally stopped there was no thieves guild symbol, nor a book title.

I made my way to my hideout, a convergence point of three rooftops, small enough to not be seen by others, small enough for me to not get too greedy about having more stuff to myself.

But the book changed everything. Only when I finally sat down on my hiding spot did I realize what I had in my hands. I wanted to throw it away or at least put it down instead of holding it in my hands.

But I couldn’t.

Instead I started to look through it, to learn, and understand.

Long before the empire, in the beginning of time itself, Ashur lived in the heavens, he looked over his children until they grew, until they created great cities of pristine and gold. And when he saw that all was good he slept.

People slowly forgot about Ashur.

And without the watchful eye of the benevolent creator, hidden primordial darkness, that was taken away for there to be light, slowly returned.

Darkness that corrupted, darkness that turned people into R’aksha, demons, skin weavers, void eaters and shadow terrors.

The darkness grew so thick, that people hated each other for no reason, brothers turned against one another, mothers stifled their children in hopes that they wouldn’t have to be born into a world of suffering.

Slowly throughout the ages, the screams grew silent, for there were barely any left to scream. Until one day, one person prayed.

His name was lost to time.

But his prayer did not vanish into the darkness, instead, it reached Ashur.

Ashur was weakened by the darkness during his slumber, he wasn’t able to push the darkness, but the creator was still the creator, and so, he created.

The man who prayed, kept praying, he found a wife, and they both gave birth to a child, a sign of pure creation, of Ashur’s forgotten existence, of love among the endless hate and darkness.

The child’s name was Ashur. His parents did not know Ashur, but they knew their child was a divine blessing.

And so it was that every child born after Ashur, was given Ashur’s blessing. The blessing of celestial power to ward off the darkness.

Aerten Suleyk.

Along with some scriptures from the book of light, the book explained that the power that the inquisitors used, Aerten Suleyk, belonged to everyone, to all of Ashur’s creations. The reason why nobody was using it was because it was hard to detect in the first place.

But there were ways and techniques to notice the ‘celestial power’ that resided inside, though they mainly included breathing techniques and having another user of Sul transfer a tiny portion of his power unto another for it to be noticed, to be felt.

I didn’t have another Sul user around me to show me the way, and I’d better be eaten alive by rats in the sewers than go and ask an inquisitor for a favor. So I tried the breathing technique for an hour, trying to feel something inside me, anything at all that came close to a ‘celestial power’ or a ‘little ember of energy’.

But I felt nothing.

I laid the book down and sighed.

What did I expect? That I will be as fast and strong as the inquisitors? That I wouldn’t need to hide and eat like a rat? As I asked myself those questions I felt a hole in my heart manifest.

I’ll probably always be a street rat.

I left the book alone, grabbed some torn rags and cuddled to sleep. It was hard to fall asleep while feeling a constant small pain in my stomach, but I had grown used to it.

What I hadn’t grown used to were the recurring dreams about Mother, about my warm home, warm food, and a warm bed.

A rat will always be a rat, and nothing more.

Darkness took me as I fell asleep.

But I wasn’t alone in it.

There was a man standing in a street corner, he was smiling. Beneath him was an unmoving woman.

Her glassy eyes looked up at me.

I woke up, my breath stuck in my throat and my entire body sweating. My heart was thumping, its sound encompassed the whole world. All, except for a book.

I reached out for the book and grabbed it, I looked through it again and again. The only thing that accompanied me were the constant beating of my heart and my thoughts.

There were others who used Aerten Suleyk. Others who were not of the church. Street orphans, like me, only a bit older, Inquisitors wouldn’t teach them, they must have managed by themselves, somehow.

If they managed by themselves, I would too.

Before I noticed it, my breathing returned to normal, the sun was already up in the sky and my eyes were dry and itchy. But most importantly, amidst my revelation of how long I was awake, I also felt something akin to an ember in my stomach.

It wasn’t hunger, nor was it a burning feeling. It was warmth, it was power.

I did it? I asked myself as I focused on the ember in my stomach.

It was small, and yet it was still there.

A wide smile spread on my face, I wheezed out a hoarse laugh out of my dry throat and looked up to the sky. Did I really do it?

For a moment, I simply sat. My dry eyes wide open, my mouth stretched in a large smile, and the ember of pure power in my stomach remained. I did it.

I won’t die like a rat, the cops won’t ever lay their hands on me, I won’t be used by nobles as a plaything, even the inquisitors wouldn’t be- The memory of the inquisitor tearing people to shreds crossed my mind, both children and other Sul users died like they were nothing.

And now that I was a Sul user, they would hunt me down.

My wide smile fell apart and I looked at nothing as I slowly understood what I had done. With trembling hands I collapsed my hair and gritted my teeth.

What did I do? No.. No, no, no, what did I do?!

I had entered a whole new hell, I would be fleeing from the ever coming execution, a slow death. I had become the biggest target of the most terrifying force in the city, the church.

No matter where, I would either have to not use Sul at all, or use it and become a target of the church. Either way I would stay a rat, a dying rat.

My breathing turned heavy and the world itself felt as if it was spinning. I slumped to the ground and closed my eyes. It was as if the whole world came crashing on me, there was no way out.

The memory of my mother laying on the ground lifeless with her glassy eyes staring at me flashed through my mind, along with the smiling man who stood in the dark corner. The cops that took me, the nobles who used the children, the inquisitor who killed and spread death.

No.

I had survived, when I was chased down after my scarf, when the cold blizzard made my bones and lounges freeze, when I was taken by the cops and when I got passed through the inquisitor. I had survived.

Clarity came upon me. While I focused on the flame in my stomach, I breathed in and out until I relaxed.

I will survive, no, I will live, I won’t run anymore. And if I will be hunted…

I opened my eyes and looked at the skies. I will fight.

The book was on the ground, and my stomach, although it hurt, wasn’t completely empty. I took the book in my hands and delved into it. There was no turning back.