Consciousness returned in slow droplets, seeping into a dense darkness.The first thing Shams felt was a faint light filtering into her eyes, followed by muffled voices behind the canvas of the sealed tents. She tried to move, but her body was too heavy to obey. Memories crept back into her mind one by one, until tears filled her eyes… tears for Rose, who would never return.
A shudder ran through her limbs, and then a green aura burst softly around her, like a breath being pushed back into her chest. It lasted only minutes before her body regained its strength, though a deep exhaustion unfurled through every limb. She could not tell whether it was mercy… or the cost.
A nurse noticed her awakening and brought her food and water. Shams ate a little, and a strange lightness drifted into her bones. She stepped out of the tent cautiously, taking in the wounded on either side and the dead covered with cloth, though their numbers were still mercifully few. The air felt tense… crowded with tangled endings.
She noticed a group of men gathering at the far side of the camp and moved toward them, hoping for news about Hilal or Aws. But she stopped when she saw Hilal sitting alone in a corner of the courtyard, staring at the clouds with a heavy, unmoving silence. She wanted to approach him… then wanted the opposite. She left him as he was, as though something in his stillness was asking for solitude.
She kept walking until she reached the tent of the injured. She entered, her eyes scanning anxiously… and then she saw him. Aws. The one who had taken a place in her heart without her ever noticing when.
She approached him, a sting pressing into her chest. She reached out, her hand brushing his chest and shoulder, but the weight of helplessness bore down on her. At that moment, her ring ignited, and a green glow extended from her hand into his body. She could hardly believe what she was seeing—his wounds knitting back together slowly, as though time itself were rewinding. Her eyes brimmed… not with sorrow this time, but with astonishment, joy, and a quiet fear of the force she had just witnessed in the very moment she needed her husband most.
The aura faded gradually, and color began returning to Aws's face. Minutes passed before his lashes trembled and his eyes opened. She threw her arms around him, and he held her gently, his hand brushing her cheek with a familiar tenderness. He tried to sit up, and she helped him.
With a hoarse voice, he asked about the savior who appeared at the last moment. She described what she had seen, and he told her he wanted to go to him. She supported him as they stepped out of the tent, and soon Aws pointed toward a quiet, empty place away from the patients. They walked toward it, the sea breeze brushing softly against their faces.
There, standing with his back to them, was the red-haired warrior—Asad—eyes locked on the horizon. He spoke without turning:
"Are you ready for war?… The training will be brutal."
They exchanged uneasy glances, thrown off by the question. He finally turned to them and said in a tone that found its mark:
"You have awakened divine providences… which makes you essential to this war."
Aws asked, "But why us specifically?"
Asad did not answer immediately.
It was as if the question tore open a door inside him that had long been sealed.
For a few seconds, he sank back into memory… back to the night before.
**
The memory returned with startling clarity, as though time itself had decided to replay the scene before him.
He felt the tremor in the ground. Not the tremor of a cart, nor the rumble of an earthquake. The trembling of something massive descending from the sky. He had been walking behind the caravan after the wedding when he sensed the change in the air… that ancient sign his body had learned well: the approach of a beast.
The giant boar appeared, dropping like a mountain of darkness. Its hoof struck the earth with a force that nearly tore it open. Hilal had been standing directly in its path, and the beast charged with a speed enough to kill an army if no one stopped it.
There had been only a single heartbeat separating Hilal from death… but then Shams's green light ignited. A light with a pulse. A rhythm. A life of its own.
And then Aws's blazing halo, sharp as a blade.
Asad had never expected anything like it—not from them, not from any human.
Aws collapsed moments later, his body giving out.
Asad had not thought. His body moved before his mind could command it.
The sword slipped from its sheath as though his hand had outrun time itself. One strike—clean, decisive.
The monster split in two.
He ran into the heart of the destruction.
There he saw twisted faces… bodies that belonged to no species and no era: boars with human arms, apes with ember-red eyes. They tore and gnawed and played with living flesh.
He felt no anger.
He felt coldness… and his coldness was deadlier than anger.
He descended upon them, the sword spinning faster than any human eye could follow. Flesh flew. Blood soaked the dirt. Their screams tangled with the whistle of steel.
When the horde swarmed him, he felt the red aura erupt from his spine. Heat swallowed his skin.
He raised his sword. Vanished.
Reappeared within the falling bodies, splitting them apart like meat on a scorching stone. They died before they could understand what had touched them.
When the city's forces arrived, he noticed the man in fine clothing among the soldiers. They exchanged a brief glance, and then Asad moved immediately to pull the buried survivors from beneath the rubble.
He did not feel victory in that moment…
Only the certainty that the war had begun.
**
Asad returned to the present.
Aws and Shams still stood before him, waiting for his answer.
He spoke with steady resolve:
"That is why… you are different. Not everyone who possesses divine providence manifests a halo. And no one recovers from muscle tears in a single day. What happened last night is rare… and unique."
He took a deep breath, as though finalizing a decision within himself.
"And Hilal's advice—that I take you both as students—now seems more than reasonable."
The sea breeze drifted past them, as if greeting the beginning of something vast.