Shards of the Gods

Chapter 1: The Unburned Scavenger

The Carcass Wastes were never truly silent.

When night fell, the wind whistled through the hollows of giant bones protruding from the earth, sounding like distant weeping. Children in Crust Hamlet were taught that it was the voice of gods unwilling to die. Reksa had stopped listening to it when he was ten. Crying didn't fill an empty stomach.

He crouched on the slope of a rib as large as a bridge, scraping at its cracks with a rusted crowbar. Slung over his back was a halfempty burlap sack containing his night's haul: gray bone fragments, scales the size of a palm, and a handful of petrified blood dust. It was enough for a plate of rice and a cup of clean water—and even then, only if the merchants at the Scrap Market didn't haggle with a look of feigned charity.

A thousand years ago, this place was the battlefield of the Divine War. In a single night now known as the Night of No Sky, all the gods fell, their bodies shattering into shards scattered to the ends of the horizon. Since then, humanity had lived atop their graves, scavenging the remains to sell. A small shard could light an entire village. A large shard could power a warship. And an intact shard...

"Can make a man a king, or turn him to dust, boy," said Bagas, an old scavenger who often shared digging spots with him. "And usually, it's dust."

Reksa chose to be neither. He was content just going home with a full stomach.

His crowbar struck something that wasn't bone.

The sound was clear, like metal striking glass. Reksa froze. He dropped the crowbar, brushed aside the bone fragments with his thick, clothwrapped hands, and a golden light peeked from the crack, dim and pulsing slowly like the breath of a sleeper.

A shard. Fistsized, jetblack, with golden veins pulsing to an unfamiliar rhythm. Neither scale nor bone. This one was alive.

A bitter taste rose in his mouth. A shard this size could pay the rent on his shack for three years. Or drag him to his grave if anyone saw.

"Well, well," a raspy voice spoke from behind him. "Poor little Reksa has found himself a treasure."

Reksa didn't need to look. Kuncoro, the leader of a scavenger gang from Edge Hamlet, had arrived with two of his men. Built like a wardrobe, Kuncoro's face was scarred with burns from a mishandled shard. Everyone in the Carcass Wastes knew Kuncoro never found anything himself. He only took from those who did.

"Step aside."

"This is my find."

"And it's a find I'm borrowing." Kuncoro grinned, showing yellow teeth. "You're a scavenger, Reksa. Your job is to find things. My job is to make sure the good stuff gets to those who can handle it."

One of his lackeys kicked Reksa in the back. He sprawled at the edge of the pit, his crowbar clattering away. Kuncoro bent down, wearing thick leather gloves inscribed with warding runes—an expensive item usually sufficient to handle small shards—and hoisted the shard high.

The runes on his gloves died out one by one. Skin sizzled, and the smell of burning flesh filled the air.

Kuncoro howled. The shard flew from his grasp, spun through the air, and landed on the ground right in front of Reksa's face.

Reflexively, without thinking, Reksa reached out to catch it.

Barehanded. His cloth wraps had come loose when he fell.

He only realized this after his fingers touched the black surface. For a fraction of a second, he braced for pain, fire, or death.

Nothing happened.

Only warmth. The shard felt like a longlost object finally found. Its golden veins flared, then dissolved into his palm like water sinking into parched earth. Reksa watched in dazed awe as his skin pulsed with a golden light, then faded until no trace remained.

Kuncoro's lackeys backed away, their faces pale.

"He... he didn't burn."

"Monster," the other hissed.

Then came a voice.

...You.

Reksa startled. The voice didn't come from the outside. He looked left and right, but there was no one around except Kuncoro, who was still wailing and clutching his hand.

You smell, the voice said. Deep, ancient, and oddly irritated. You smell of mud, sweat, and stale rice. You are hungry. And you...

A long pause.

Why are you still alive?

"What?" Reksa whispered.

Nothing! The voice spoke hurriedly, like someone who had slipped up. Forget it. I didn't say anything. Listen, this is no time for small talk. Someone is coming.

Reksa only now noticed another sound approaching: a heavy, rhythmic hornblast from the east. In the distance, a line of blue lanterns swayed atop skeletal horses.

The Sweepers.

Every scavenger in the Carcass Wastes feared that name. They were the forces of the Duchy of Rakta, who swept through the Carcass Wastes every night and seized any large shard they found. Scavengers caught with shards were never imprisoned. They simply vanished.

Kuncoro spotted the lanterns first. His expression shifted. He stopped howling and stared at Reksa with wide eyes, as if realizing there was something far more dangerous than the shard in front of him.

"You saw what he did," he whispered to his lackeys. "The boy... grab him. Turn him over to the Sweepers. They'll pay a fortune for him."

Reksa didn't wait for them to make a move.

He snatched his burlap sack, scrambled out of the pit, and bolted west, toward the labyrinth of massive, winding bones. His breath came in ragged gasps. His legs ran faster than ever before, and he didn't even have time to wonder why.

Turn left, the voice said suddenly. Through the gap between those two ribs. Quick.

"Why should I trust you?!"

Because if you don't, you die. Turn left!

Reksa turned. A narrow crevice opened between two curved bones, just wide enough for a single person to squeeze through sideways. He slipped inside, and the blaring of the horns behind him was muffled by the towering walls of bone.

Dark. Quiet. Nothing but his own ragged breathing and the warm pulse in his palm.

He leaned against the wall, panting, and looked down at his hand. His skin looked perfectly normal. There were no wounds, no scars, no sign that a shard of a god had just merged with him.

"Who... are you?" he whispered.

The voice fell silent for a long moment. When it finally answered, its tone was softer.

I'm not sure anymore. I used to think I knew.

"That's not an answer."

No, it isn't. There was a strange note to it, like a mixture of relief and dread. I used to have a name. But it has been a long time since anyone spoke it.

Reksa swallowed hard. Outside, the thrum of skeletal hooves drew closer. A blue light swept across the crevice wall, right above his head, before drifting away.

He held his breath until the sound faded completely.

And the question he had been holding back finally slipped out.

"You said earlier... 'why are you still alive.' Why did you say that?"

The voice did not answer right away. In the dark, the golden veins in Reksa's palm pulsed once, then twice, like a heart waking from a long slumber.

Because, the voice said at last, barely a whisper, the last time I saw that face, you were killing us all.