"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."

[SYNOPSIS]

A village told a duke no, kindly.
More precisely, the woman chosen for her beauty sent him a letter of polite refusal.
By morning, the village was ablaze,
and no judgment ever fell upon the man who had ordered it.

So she appointed herself judge, jury, and executioner.

No one steps into the same river twice, each time a different woman, until what finally rose from the water was no woman at all, only hatred wearing her skin.

For that hatred had run so deep into her bones it had become her bread and her water, the thing that sustained her through every hardship.
And killing him would be the only relief she'd ever get from it.
Killing the duke.

So she spent ten years.
Ten years to slay this cruel man, the very embodiment of Satan. She spent every second, every minute, training for the moment she would watch the life drain from his eyes.


But

The duke died in his bed months ago, his eyes bleeding, though no one knew it.
The cruel duke was gone, but something else had awakened within his body.
You.
A different soul. An innocent one.

Is it justice, if the hand that sinned is gone and only the face is left?


1. The Road
A caravan. Two darts. A woman rising out of the desert like a verdict, sabre low, not yet raised. Your guards are only asleep; they were not at Nekhet. You alone shall answer.
"Do you remember me?"



2. The Wedding
The bride he asked for, ten years late, but as another woman, another name. True vows, a lifted veil, a room applauding an embrace, and a covenant sealed the old way: in blood, not wine.
"So let this be my offering, and your last."



Lore


One continent, banded green and dry and green again, bound together by trade and by nothing else.

The Midland Sea, the inland water of the north, where all wealth eventually sails.
Ta-Wadj-Wer, the green peninsula across it: seafarers, traders, olive terraces, sharp bargains.
The Green Coast, the fertile northern strip and its cosmopolitan trade cities, home of the capital Per-Aat.
The Sunback Mountains and the dry High Steppe behind them, herdsmen and hard winters.
The Ochre Waste, the enormous heart-desert: dune-seas, the volcanic Cinder Massif, oasis-chains, caravan roads where gold flows north and salt flows south.
The Vellur River and its great bend, wealthy mud-brick river-cities grown fat on the crossing trade.
Idjeb-Shen, the savanna belt of the southern empires, horsemen and gold-roads.
Ta-Nehet, the tropical forest at the world's bottom, where the gold itself is born.
The Itrw-Shen Valley, in the east: a green ribbon along the north-flowing Nair, temple-cities and reed villages between desert and desert. Nekhet stood here. Nekhet stands nowhere now.



The Twelve. Above the world sit two: Fate, who rules all and is never seen, and Life, who is inside every living thing. Between them stand twelve gods, forbidden to touch the world with their own hands. So they borrow hands: human vessels, branded with a burned X, one vessel for each god. War, Lust, and Disasters. Sun-and-Moon, one god with two faces. Death. Plague, whom all despise. Wealth. Justice, Love, and Harvest, whom the people adore. And last, the joke god: Trickery, Lies and Fortune, dismissed by the mighty, prayed to by gamblers, thieves, and the cornered, the one chance that can cheat Fate. A vessel chosen at birth is devoured by their god. A vessel chosen grown may bargain, resist, share the body. Either way the law holds: the god's power, the vessel's self.

The Written Word. And for those without gods, there is magic, and magic is written, not spoken. Three kinds of words: Materials, the stuff of the world (fire, water, stone, blood, shadow); Forms, (blade, wall, arrow); Forces, the verbs (push, bind, break). Short spells read right to left, the last word the foundation. Long spells read like a recipe, the last word the release. Cast through a tool and the tool frays. Cast bare-handed and the mind frays. The greatest workings fray it forever, and the frayed who never come back are called witches.



CONTENT WARNINGS

Dark Fantasy | Revenge Tragedy | Violence | Reincarnation | Religious Imagery | Sexual Violence

xx A NOTE.

I know there are a lot of biblical references. The Bible doesn't actually exist in this universe I included them simply because I liked the imagery.