This story contains themes of child loss and death. Thank you.

I do not remember my parents’ faces.

It’s something I had to accept long ago, being the first truth I knew about myself. When the few kids I knew as a child talked of the sweetness of a mother and the sternness of a father, I just nodded my head and acted as if it was the first memory I knew. In truth, my first memories were of cold stone. It all started for me running for my life from the many lonely guards searching for a way to show power to the weak and helpless. It all began in filth for me, like many orphans in the rotten streets of Darothar.

The streets were my only parent and it raised me like it raised all its children with nothing, with indifference and hunger.

I had to learn quickly that kindness was for the nobles and the rich. Theft brought food. Lies brought survival. Hesitation brought starvation. And trust only brought you to a gutter to bleed out in.

Over time, I learned to pray to the gods I’d heard of from the churches around the city. Never because I actually believed in it, but because it was said the gods give kindness to those who pray.

The gods never answered. Not till I was older anyway.

I must have been around sixteen when Redal found me. Or perhaps I stumbled upon him. I had stolen a loaf of bread from the blind merchant who was always an easy target. I was running when I looked behind me to check no one saw but when I looked back, I ran right into this tall figure.

He was wrapped in gold and white, clad in armor that looked made from the breath of a dragon, gold with streaks of gray throughout. He had a white cloak over his armor and a hood that hid whatever kind of eyes he may have had under a dark shadow. Chains wrapped his arms like he once was a prisoner but now used them for adornment rather than restraint.

As I gazed upon this man’s armor, I realized I was on the ground, and when I looked down and back up to see the damage, the world of Darothar had faded from existence and now a pure, blinding white surrounded me and this man. He reached his arm out with a smile, a kind of smile you never see. The kind that makes you think everything is okay, even if it’s a lie. I picked myself up and looked up at him expectedly. When he spoke, it felt like he was everywhere, yet he was the most kind and understanding person I’d ever met.

“You have suffered. More than most,” he said, leaning down to my level.

I fell to my knees.

“You steal because you have to. Have lied just to survive. It is a noble thing to try to live. Many in your boots would have given up. But you, my child, have not. Bring yourself to my church in the main city. You will be treated to a reward there. Now, be kind, my son, and heal those like you.”

I blinked, and he was gone. My bread, now covered in dirt and dust after I dropped it in reaction to him. Though I did not care. I dusted myself off and I ran to the church and when a priest asked me of my purpose there, I told him I had seen Redal. They, for some reason most likely connected to him, had believed me. I had now been inducted into the church as a cleric of Redal.

Over my time there, the acolytes and teachers taught me to read, write, and pray. It was the same routine every day.

The only lesson that they made sure you knew, was that death is a kindness. And dying from natural causes is a blessing. A blessing to be able to see Redal when he called upon you to bring you to Ascantar, the heavenly land of the gods, where Redal holds the most influence among the Concord.

They never brought up the Concord much at the church, though they made sure you knew Redal was the most powerful and kindest among the five. The five oldest and wisest gods made up the Concord and they were the reason that there is order among the race of gods, lesser gods, and demi-gods in the land of Ascantar.

I tried to make friends and help others all the time between lessons in church, though I was never expected much of and other people around my age grew up in the church so they did not understand the world as I did.

After around four years, I showed I was much more capable than your average cleric, so I was anointed priest of The Church of Redal. It wasn’t a celebration like I expected but I guess that’s what you get for hoping. Over a few months of being a priest, I was respected by many and gave thousands of blessings while spreading the word of Redal. Even though I never received much money or blessing of my own, I was relatively happy.

My home wasn’t much, having many rotted floor boards and a leaking roof with only one room separate from the main room, but it was still home. It was more than I ever could have expected I’d get in life. Though, perhaps, lonely.

One night after blessing a small family, a beautiful woman came in by herself. She’d announced herself as Raya and was looking for a priest of Redal to speak to. I almost didn’t want to draw attention to myself, but I was outed by some of the acolytes. Raya came to me hurriedly and asked me for a blessing from the man most loved by Redal, apparently me.

For a moment, I was captivated. Raya had been the most elegant looking woman I’d ever seen up to that point. Her hair, light brown and long with eyes of a deep blue ocean I’d been told about as a student here. She wore a black dress that looked dirty and like it was picked up off the street just a moment ago, but she made it look like the center piece of a tailor’s collection.

I cleared my throat after a moment and I nodded quickly, realizing how strange I must look to her. I gave her my blessing just as she asked and after, Raya was excited, happy even. She talked to me and I learned that her parents were never religious while she grew up and she only learned the grace of gods like Redal recently.

Mere days had passed, and a woman who looked very familiar came running into the church. Raya. Demanding another blessing. Her words gave me no room to explain that a blessing every few days isn’t needed, although I couldn’t complain. Raya had a way of carrying herself that I found myself envying. The way her eyes shut when she couldn’t contain laughter from the many horrible jokes I made. The way her hand held my shoulder when I blessed her for the third time in a week.

It had become a schedule after weeks. The responsible thing to do would have been teaching her to pray by herself, but I was selfish. I liked seeing her every few days.

Soon it grew to us going to the market together, recommending different foods from different vendors.

And then it would be nights where I walk her home.

Over the next year or two, we grew even closer. After this time, I proposed and we soon married with the blessing of Redal himself. We lived together in my broken house, never really getting better even after all the work I did. Even though my house was a nightmare, Raya made it home, and that’s all that mattered to me, and to her too.

Our first night home together was magical.

We had dropped off her few belongings she had from her parent’s home to my home, but she decided she wanted to walk around the city with me. I advised against walking at night, though I should’ve known her better than that. Raya grabbed my hand and pulled me through the night that held very few people other than the two wildly different souls.

We’d made our way to a small clearing between two broken down buildings. A withering tree surrounded by stone bricks in a circle with bricks layered on the ground all around. The moon was right above us in the sky, lighting any corners that hadn’t already been lit by her. Raya laughed so easily at my gaze and she pushed me.

“Come on! We have all night!”

The words echoed in my head. She grabbed my hands and spun around me, making me dance with her. Her dress flowed with our movements.

I didn’t deserve to dance with her. But I did.

If I had any doubt in my mind at the love of the gods, it had been taken from me by the angel that loved me.

Every prayer of mine now ended with a wish. A wish for her health and happiness. And I always asked him not to betray just that one wish.

The next five years all bled together for me. It was repetitive. But not the kind of repetitiveness I lived through learning at the church. It was the kind where you could do the same thing everyday for centuries and still have the same childish excitement to wake up in the morning next to the person you’d spent so long with.

I loved it.

I loved every day.

I loved my wife.

Raya then fell ill. More ill than I’d ever been even after sleeping on cold stone every night for sixteen years. It was heartbreaking. It was heartbreaking to see the woman I always remembered as dancing, laughing, and not caring at all how strange she looked while doing it. The streaks of gray dripped down her hair like a dropped painting.

I took her all over the city, carrying her in my arms when she couldn’t walk. I took her to doctors, other churches, and any back alley that claimed to have medicine the gods were jealous of. Of course, no one had anything, and if they did, they would never have given it up for free, and free was all I could afford in those trying times.

I stuck with her the whole way. I fed her, clothed her, bathed her when able, and loved her more than I thought love existed. One night, she whispered to me that she wanted a child. My child. She wanted to leave something behind in this world before she left, and I wept like a child. Thinking back now, I probably looked so much like an idiot to her. I looked so weak to her in what were probably some of her last memories.

A long and hard year later, a sweet baby boy was born, never even crying. Cyrous. Named after one of the only legends I’d heard in church that I actually paid any attention to. Cyrous was a demi-god who had risen up to the power of a true god and saved his whole city from being attacked by an army of soldiers. I really thought my son would grow up to be that important, more than his old man.

Raya had an actual smile on her face. I was more happy than I ever thought I’d be seeing a dying woman holding a baby. I built a cradle for Cyrous a few days prior and made sure to get enough blankets so it felt like a bed to him. We all soon went to sleep. For the first time in days for me.

Raya died in her sleep that night. Died after seeing her boy be born, like there was nothing left to give to the world. She passed away so quietly like she was afraid to wake the world from slumber. I felt numb. Every night after we buried her, I slept on the ground next to Cyrous. There for him if he needed anything at all, and there for him even if he hated my face, which I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.

Coin was very tight, more so after her death. The church just told me how I should be happy to see my wife not suffering. I should be happy to know she’s with Redal, probably laughing at how devastated I was. I worked as much as I could, but being a priest is basically charity work. It didn’t matter how hard you worked, how many families you blessed, you barely got paid a silver.

Every prayer of mine ended with a new wish. A wish to let my boy live healthy and happy. Some days I thought I heard Redal tell me that all will be fine. So I trusted him. Like I had since I first met him.

On the days I brought home food, I saved it all for Cyrous, trying to make sure he wasn’t hungry. But I never really knew how to take care of a kid, I barely knew how to take care of myself. I hardly ate for a long time, having to hold my robes closed at church because of how skeletal I was. Food always dried up quickly though, Cyrous ate almost every piece of bread or meat I could get. I never blamed him for that.

I had to resort to taking donations from the church sometimes. It was the only way I could bring food to the table. Some nights it was just a silver to get enough for bread, but other nights I had to take almost all the donations just for a sliver of food for Cyrous. One night while praying though, I heard Redal speak to me for the first time in what was almost a decade if I remember right. It was just a voice. He told me that my actions were unfaithful. My actions were causing more harm than good and I was feeding my child with unholy money.

I felt a surge of brokenness.

I felt like I was doing all I could and yet he has the nerve to tell me that he would rather my child starve than eat off of stolen money? I knew this was wrong. It’s wrong of me to think about my god that way, considering all he’d done for me in the past. But I still had that lingering thought in the back of my mind.

I stopped stealing from the church and I continued to pray. Harder and harder every night. I begged on the streets some days, knowing it wouldn’t work after seeing so many like me in this position as a child myself. I never got any more money. I couldn’t steal like I could when I was a child. I was small and agile, plus the fact I haven’t had to steal in over ten years.

Every day I had to face my child and look at the ribs protruding from his chest. I had to look at him and tell him that, no, we can’t eat food today, but maybe tomorrow. I knew he couldn’t understand me, but that never stopped me from bawling my eyes out every night after hearing him cry from hunger.

Gods, I loved him.

I loved my baby boy.

I came home from church one day with a piece of bread. The first piece he’d had in two, no three, days. I walked in and laughed as I held it up to him. He didn’t respond. I touched his shoulder and two flies buzzed away as his lifeless body laid still. I dropped the bread and fell to my knees.

I just looked down at my hands and heard no sound whatsoever. I felt my heart stop and beat simultaneously faster than it ever had in my life. I prayed to Redal.

Not out of faith this time.

I prayed to him for an answer. Why? Why has he let my last thread die? How can he sit up in Ascantar on his throne of gold and stare down at me while I sit next to the body of my dead child?

I didn’t even realize I started crying.

Redal didn’t answer me. I laid there for two weeks, never leaving my house. Acolytes and other officials of the church came knocking but I never answered. Figured I’d take a page out of Redal’s book.

After all the time of praying, Redal finally spoke to me.

Softly.

Mockingly.

He only told me that, “Life is suffering, my child. You should know that. Is it not the first lesson you learn with me, that death is a kindness?”

I wanted nothing more than to scream at him.

Any trust I thought I had is now gone. Like every false hope Redal ever gave me.

Every thought I had in mind was about the families I “blessed”. The thousands of families that I cursed with the word of Redal. I wouldn’t doubt they have now been torn apart by the lies of the god that failed. The god that ends your suffering, but only after he causes it.

I dedicated my life to bringing suffering to those around me, and as soon as love somehow finds me in the dark, I unknowingly stabbed it in the heart.

Just like everything else I ever called mine.

I left immediately. I left my house and tore the chain of Redal’s pendant off my neck and threw it in a river.

The only things I bought were a sword, and a mug of ale.

The bread molded.