From the rooftop of a crumbling sandstone building, Malachi watched.
Below, Heaven ran. Not just walked or hurried, ran.
Her long robe gathered dust, her veil slipping from one shoulder. The basket she'd carried earlier was gone, bread forgotten. Her face was turned down, but he could see the way her hands trembled, how her chest heaved with silent sobs she refused to let anyone hear and hear the wild beating of her heart.
She didn't know it, but he had been watching her since sunrise.
He hadn't meant to.
He'd told himself, over and over, to turn away. To leave Duneshara. To keep walking through the desert, to forget the girl at the well. But the pull had already begun.
It started yesterday.
He was not even meant to pass by the city. His path was east, toward the ruined citadels beyond the Wraithspires. But something shifted. Something turned in the dunes beneath his feet, and he had felt it.
A tug.
When he felt it for the first time after four centuries, he thought it was a mistake, he told himself that it couldn't be, But the Kann sensed it, and he should obey it.
At first, he thought it was merely the wind, or the pull of something buried, the dead bones, memories, old pain. But the longer he walked, the stronger it grew. The weight in his chest twisted and knotted. His Kann stirred. Restless. Hungry.
He ignored it.
He turned his steps away from the pull.
And yet… his feet betrayed him.
"What are doing?" He had ask as if he was talking to someone beside him or anyway close to him, but no one was there, only he, the sun, the dessert and the wind. "Why are you doing this? I thought we already were on the same page" he said once more.
Step by step, he followed the path to the well, cursing himself under his breath. Even before he reached it, he could hear the rope creaking, the soft groan of effort, and then he saw her.
Her.
A woman.
He sigh, tired "a woman…. I should've known" he stared at her, her body, her hair and her thoughts. "We'd break her"
It shifted again in him " she's not strong enough for us, remember the last time you pushed me to do this?"
If someone was anywhere close to him, he'd thought he was crazy, talking to himself, but he knew better than anyone that he wasn't alone, ever since the day he took his first breath, he was never alone.
He felt it in his veins, it shifted in him once more, "Look at her!!!!"
He watched as she was Struggling to pull water with her bare hands, sweat on her brow, veil half-tied, the desert sun licking at her skin.
"Feel it" he heard it whisper inside his head. And he listened, and tried to feel it.
She was not like the others, not like the market women or veiled courtiers. He felt it, her anger and her fire within, She burned quietly, a slow fire held beneath her skin. Something ancient in him stirred when he himself felt her.
Beautiful? Yes.
But it wasn't her beauty that gripped him. It was her defiance. Her strength, carved into every tired muscle, she looked weak on the outside, but had a strong mind and a strong will.
He sigh " still" it shifted again, "fine!!!!" He finally agreed. The moment he did, he felt the joy and excitement in his bones. He cursed once more as he walked to them and went to them, he saw her struggling with the rope as her friend complained, he sigh, he offered them help and he saw how he stared at him, he wouldn't blame her, he's facial and entire structure was magnificent, even in this shell of a human form, his beauty still draped through, and it loved it, the looks were like his everyday method of attracting his prey, not that he used it everyday, for him to find his prey, centuries would pass and only find one, in other words, one in a million, and each time it would always be a woman, maybe it's because what he wants resides in a woman, and only a woman. When he was done, he felt her stare at him and her silence cries for what was going on in her life, and it made him happy, it rejoined, pain and suffering of his preys were one way of getting what he wanted, so he needed to know more about this pain, and thus, offered to help, to know more about her and her pain, the friend beside her he didn't like her…. At all. She talked too much, he felt it telling him to put her bucket on her head and spill the water on her clothes and let her burn in this scorching sun, but he scold it within him and it calmed down, He hated how much she talked, but there was one thing that came out of her which caught his attention, Her name which he knew well would later strike him like a blade: Heaven.
How ironic, his entire existence came from hell, but what he needed came from a woman, who's name is heaven.
He almost laughed at how fate was playing with him, Thoigh He hadn't helped her because he was kind.
He helped her because his Kann demanded it.
That demon soul buried deep inside him,the thing that gave him power, that cursed him, punished him for disobedience, had recognized her.
Malachi still remembered the pain when he resisted.
It had gripped his spine like fire, whispered ancient curses in his mind and burn his eyes with flames….. literally. So he'd helped. First by carrying the buckets. Then by walking her home. Then… by staying in Duneshara when he should have fled.
He knew this feeling.
Four hundred years ago, it had nearly destroyed him.
He'd felt this kind of pull before, this dangerous, magnetic pull toward a woman the Kann had chosen. A healer. Gentle, fierce in a different way. He hadn't listened then. And in the end, she burned.
His Kann had never forgiven him for that.
So now it had found another.
Heaven.
He hated it.
He hated that he was still bound by this force that lived inside his blood. He hated how it made him ache for someone he didn't even know, how it made him stay in a city that reeked of sweat and fear and grid. He hated the humans. Their noise. Their weakness. Their fragility.
And yet, when Heaven stood beside him at the market, it stirred again.
That… thing inside him. Crawling in his veins. Shifting behind his eyes.
He felt it just now, watching her run.
It wanted him to follow.
"Go" it commanded, It screamed at him to follow. When he show a mere hesitant, it shifted behind his eyes, threatening him to burn him,
"Fine," Malachi growled under his breath. "Now stop shifting."
His pupils narrowed, burning gold for a moment before returning to black. He swung from the roof with the grace of a shadow, landing soundlessly in an alley.
She was heading east, toward the sand-blasted outskirts of the city.
He followed, silent, unseen, his steps quiet as a panther's. And as he trailed her, memory began to claw at his insides again.
Back at the blade shop, he hadn't meant to say anything. But the words spilled anyway.
He just wanted to look and be close to her for a moment to please his demon but the demon knew better than to keep it's mouth shut.
"You said all men are like your father."
That wasn't for her. That was the Kann speaking.
It always liked correcting people. Especially when it found something it wanted.
Malachi didn't want Heaven.
But the Kann did.
He could feel it now ,licking at the walls of his ribs, urging him toward her, whispering all the terrible things it would do to anyone who touched her, anyone who claimed her.
And now… someone had tried.
He saw her stop at the edge of the city, finally collapsing to her knees, the weight of the world breaking across her back. She clutched her hands together, pressed them to her mouth, and sobbed , loud and ragged, a sound that should not have belonged to someone like her.
Malachi leaned against a wall behind a cluster of rocks and sandstone, unseen. Watching.
The girl was breaking.
And his Kann rejoiced.
Not because it liked seeing her hurt… but because it knew: pain would open her. Break her defenses. Make her see what she was, what she could be.
What she could be to him.
He clenched his jaw.
No.
He wouldn't do this again.
But the Kann whispered: You need her.
"No, you need her, not me"
He sigh, he does this a lot when he's forced to do something he doesn't want to, like kill the merchants in the desert just for fun..
Heaven let out a scream.
A real, human scream , filled with grief and fury and betrayal. Her fists struck the dirt. Her veil dropped fully to the ground. Her hair spilled across her back like ink in the wind.
Malachi stepped forward.
The wind shifted.
She didn't notice him at first. Not until he was only a few feet away. She turned, startled, gasping through her tears.
"What…..what are you doing here?"