Time passes. That’s just how it works.

It is a moment’s nature to be present in fullness and vanish as soon as it is grasped. We’re left wondering if past moments every truly existed, and by dint of that doubt, if the future does either. For all those thoughts, I’ve never truly been sceptical of the instant gone by. I’m not capable of doubting what sleeps behind my eyes.

Yet the moments I am about to convey are not ones I possess, but rather conjure out of half-heard whispers within stone hallways, lost in the busily empty mind of a child but found, many years later, in one overflowing. Links were drawn and discarded and drawn again amidst slumbering companions fatigued by mortal labour. There was no completion; a puzzle missing most its pieces isn’t one that can be finished. Moments are precious things, and perhaps these were better spent resting or carving.

But a puzzle always aches to be solved; all the more so when that puzzle is you.

Around eighteen years ago, or I suppose closer to nineteen or twenty now – I’ve mostly lost track – there lived a man. Just young enough to possess ample zeal yet world-wearied enough to mar it. I contrive to imagine him as resembling myself, but he could of easily have been paler than the moons, or darker than the deepest night, possessing blonde or red or even impossibly purple hair.

Think of him as you want. I have no more idea than you. What I do know is that he belonged to the continent’s most infamous cult, and like all those within the order he held the rank of Aspirant, for supposedly, all are equal in the embrace of Avri. That’s not entirely true, but it’s also not entirely false, either. Regardless, a complete lack of hierarchy had permeated the Cult for longer than Houses have existed. His rank speaks nothing of him, and the murmuring of adults outside our stone play-area was incoherent at the best of times. If a name featured among their recollections, I do not recall; and my memory is perfect.

So we arrive at this young man, nameless and faceless but for his faith. Like most Aspirants, divinity coursed through him. Alongside it lay a dogma of accumulation. So as his most holy commandment decreed, the Aspirant went out to embrace the many inhabitants of the continent into his veins. By way of slaughter.

The Raven Cult’s warbands were synonymous with the god itself, back then, and demanded just as much fear as any god. Aspirants could not be negotiated with, and nor, from the perspective of the average family, could they be defeated. The only flower blooming amongst the red was that the Ravenbloods only ever wanted death; not torture, nor torment. An end at their hands was as clean as one could hope for, and, bizarrely, the bodies of those slain were always handled respectfully.

Not that their adherence to funeral customs slowed the Godslayers’ blades for even an instant. But I digress.

These cultists travelled in a small group: at least three, for I know three are needed for the tale to make sense, but possibly as many as six. They’d slaughtered a family. An isolated one, I believe, for any sizeable group of people would be enough to overwhelm a small group of callow Aspirants. However, there’s always a small, cynical part of me that said whatever people could have come to this family’s aid simply fled instead.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I’ve often entertained the idea that the family were noble, but it’s far more likely they were hunters or gatherers or nobles or farmers. The kinds of people preoccupied with matters of raw survival, and had many children to contend with that reality. Those children died, of course.

All save one.

One of the few things my parents said with a frequency that drained all humour from the statement was that I didn’t make a cute baby. They went into astonishing detail about that. Small, horrifically-wrinkled, with thin-eyed like a lizard, I apparently looked like a very crotchety old man had been merged with the body of an infant. I can’t know what stayed the young man’s hand when he encountered me bawling, but it certainly couldn’t have been any charm on my account.

I was ugly. Prodigiously so. I’d laugh, but though I grew prettier, I’m almost entirely certain that these days, I’m far uglier than I ever was as a child.

Two of his partners urged him to ‘embrace’ me, yet the Aspirant refused. Maybe he’d had a brother or sister or child himself, in a past life. Maybe his zealotry couldn’t hold, as his blade hovered above an entity that saw nothing and knew nothing, and thus would mean nothing to draw within himself. I don’t know. He didn’t kill the kid, and as leaving the baby would be a terrible waste, the group decided to bring it with them.

The young man, cannier than the others, brought a goat instead of slaughtering it. It’s probably delusion, but I think I can remember the taste of its milk. And so, on their way back to their god’s nest, they stole away other babies as well.

That’s what happens when Aspirants stop killing. They start grabbing things.

They ended up with around eight, all taken with hands red with the blood of the sires. Progress slowed as they murdered their way back to the Wastes. Of them all, the young man must have been the most gifted killer, because his blood was fuller than the others.

They’d nearly reached the base of the Cult’s den when the other Aspirants woke to find him smothering babies. Even now, I don’t know if he’d had a moment of madness or perfect clarity. Whatever reasons, he’d killed three before his comrades realised what he was doing. He most likely killed several of them, as well, but he must’ve ‘embraced’ them because my parents never spoke of any death.

They brought him back in ropes he chose not to break, and the Raven embraced him. Five children remained, and one of them was me. Two of the young man’s companions adopted me. I think they’d grown to like me over the course of their travels. The goat stayed too, right up until the end.

It isn’t an unusual story, among cultists. Most Aspirants are infertile, or so close to it the difference is irrelevant. Most would-be recruits were angry, bitter people, and Avri tended to eat those. The rare few who had minds to comprehend the philosophy and the strength to follow it were accepted. But most were taken as children, excepting a few strange children and adults without legs or with curved faces and too many eyes and fingers. I now know they were Strains; as a young child they were just funny-looking people.

I’ve come to think about the young man a lot, these days. The moments he found the infants amidst the wreckage, still holding a weapon stained red, and chose to deny his own beliefs. Those moments where his hands were over their mouths, watching them slowly turn blue.

I think about the way he chose to kill them. Suffocation.

A bloodless murder.