Kaza was exhausted from the crying and the screaming and the pain from Justeen's beating. Yet when he saw the flames spreading at the doorway, he didn't pause his stride when he leaped over them, met the stool that was on fire and somewhat in the middle of the small smoky room, tripped, tumbled and rolled to come to a halt at his mother's feet. The pain that spread through his neck was horrendous, but he didn't care. There was so much smoke, he turned his head and realized the torch the Priest had been carrying had been flung onto the cot, the fire leaked at the walls and the floor and was all over the place he'd known as home since he became aware of his existence.

  "Kaza?" A faint whisper, he coughed at the smoke, scrambled on hands and knees, it was too hard to see but he felt his way up his mother's legs, one twisted the other way, until his hands cupped her face.

  "Mother it's going to be alright, I'll get you out of here." Kaza said, squinting his eyes at the smoke, trying to peer through the haze and see how he'd go about lifting his mother. He dug his skinny arms either side of her waist after feeling where her waist would be and tried to lift, at the same instance there was a sharp tug of resistance and his mother's scream had him letting go. The flames had caught up to them, nearing his mother who was doused in oil, one lick of the flame and she would combust. He couldn't let that happen to her, she was everything to him. He made to lift her again but a word from her, a weak whisper, stayed his hand.

  "Kaza, my arm, my arm." She said. And that's when he realized the cause of the sharp tug, a metal peg had been hammered into her right elbow, held above her head, breaking bone and flesh and into the wooden wall. Kaza immediately jerked towards it, flapping his hands uselessly against the punctured wound. "Kaza, you'll hurt me, please, stop, save yourself, please..." But Kaza wasn't listening, how could he save himself when she was his reason for living? What would he be saving himself for? He tried to pull at the pinned arm but his mother's anguished scream halted his efforts. And it was at that point, watching the flames approach his mother from the wall, from the roof, from the floor, it was at that point that he understood despair as something that lay beneath hopelessness.

  "Kaza, I love you. Live, my son, live—" And the flames touched her and she lit up like a night sky as the Dragon raged. The sound she made wasn't a scream, it was too short to be called that. Sound died in her throat midway and her mouth was left agape, she thrashed, squirmed, then her strength gave out and all she could do was lie there, pinned arm holding her sagging weight, the other hand raised towards Kaza, then fell to lie on the ground. The flames danced upon her body, and the smell of burning flesh almost made Kaza retch if it wasn't for the pain that locked his body.

  There lay the woman that loved him. Who'd brought him into the world, taught him how to move his tongue and lips to make his intentions known. A woman whose laugh eased away all else, allowing him a brief respite from the burden of existence, there she lay, never to laugh again. Soon to turn to ash. The house was burning, oil sheathed his hands and part of the thin grey cloth that was wrapped about him. If the flames touched him, he too would meet the same end as his mother. He had to leave the wooden shack, get out and live.

  Yet he couldn't move.

  She would have died for nothing! The thought was loud in his head. Yet it lacked the strength to drive him into motion. He remained kneeling before his burning mother, her clothes were now molding with her burnt flesh. Her head was a bare scalp, all hair having been consumed. Kaza understood then why Sin was associated with fire, to Sin would be to invite obliteration, according to the Scorched book. Sin consumed and transformed all that exists, turning everything into a state that was the furthest from what it was meant to be. His mother would soon be ash.

  And he would follow her. What was there to live for?

  Love? He heard a feminine voice call out from around him. Kaza didn't even turn his neck, his eyes stayed glued to the flames crawling towards him from all directions, it was drawing him in, beckoning to him with a promise of warmth, and... more?

  His eyes relaxed on the orange glow, the flickering this way and that of the flame as it crawled towards him and the voice again asked. Love? And he felt the essence of companionship encompassing all that he was.

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  Kaza found himself speaking, his mouth moving of its own volition, words pouring out of him unbidden, baring his soul out to the flame. "The one I love is dead and all is dead now. Love is nothing to live for anymore."

  Time? A male voice this time, like pouring honey yet not withholding a touch of disdain. And Kaza saw a life stretch out before him, he saw his hands all wrinkled and knobbed, his hair grey. His joints aching and a bent back. And he found no appeal in the image.

  "The one worth my time is dead."

  Order? A feminine voice. He saw a way free of the pain, a sequence of actions born of thoughts that would guarantee his mother's existence held meaning. Yet he knew...

  "There is no Order in a life without my mother."

  Chaos? A deep male voice and Kaza felt the appeal of the word, how right it was, how it suited his every emotion. Yet he somehow knew that in Chaos lay madness, and a mind free of understanding would never be able to recall the importance of the moments he'd shared with his mother when she'd been alive.

  "No." Kaza whispered.

  Depth? And Kaza fled from the woman's voice as the emotion he felt heightened, going deeper. The feeling of abandonment and loss made his limbs tremble, still he managed to whisper.

  "No."

  The Void? And there was stillness, an absence of everything. Total annihilation, a lack of memory, a lack of identity. Only a deep endless cold, the complete opposite of all the other aspects represented, here Love did not dwell for it could not. Time was a mirage, oscillations a mere mockery. Order was absent, so too chaos, and depth had no purpose for nothing was shallow to begin with. Here, lay the very emotion that prevented him from leaving his mother's burning shack, the very thing that made him crave the end she'd met. And he suddenly hated it, hated the void and all it stood for.

  "No." Again, a whisper. The corrugated iron sheet spread above the shack fell as the wood holding it in place burnt to crisp, around him the shack begun to collapse yet nothing touched him as the flame drew closer... An inch ... Another inch. The heat was unbearable, yet he did not move.

  Sin? And the sound was one of a multitude, male and female, all coalescing as one. It wasn't a question but a plea, riddled with hope and desire.

  Desire for what? And then he saw it, Dragons, hundreds of them. Rising into the sky and he was among them, bathed in flame. His eyes akin to theirs, he felt one with his own kind, a part of something that mirrored what he'd had with his mother. There too, among the raging Dragons, lay vengeance. And it's call was sweet, sweeter than a burn upon an itch.

  But Sin, wasn't that the very cause of his current predicament?

  Touch the flame. A command now.

  "Who are you?" Kaza inquired, observing the stool that he'd toppled in his haste to reach his mother, completely engulfed in flames. The same stool his mother had sat in for the better part of four days, tending to her bedridden son.

  I am Sin. Power, the word carried power.

  Kaza obeyed, as if it was something ingrained into his very being. A command issued at birth, he heard a growl, no doubt that of a Dragon, coming from within the flame.

  He reached out without thought, Rankf Oil stained fingers of his left hand touching the flame. The fire spread over his hand, past his wrist, up his arm past the elbow. It looked beautiful before it started to act to its nature. The fire consumed, flesh burning. The pain was immense, yet, something urged him to focus on it. Not ignore it, not wish an end to it, opting instead to appreciate it. To be one with the pain, accepting its existence and living with it in harmony.

  Harmony. He understood the purpose of Sin.

  Kaza's vertically slitted pupils blazed the color of fire. He saw it then, the face of a Dragon, dark scales sheathing a snout the size of a man. The Dragon's eyes opened to him, it opened its maw and flames poured forth from between large serrated teeth. He knew he wasn't before a dragon but within a burning shack where his mother lay dead. Kaza knew the Dragon he saw was from another place, another reality, a place separate from where he breathed. Yet when the flames emitted by the Sky Serpent touched him, he knew obliteration and rebirth.

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  The Dragons that slept woke, raising themselves on their hind legs, beating the wings conjoined to their flanks and arms, rising into the sky. Those on the ground beat their wings, rising as those who'd slept. Those already in the sky hovered, waiting. The sky above Basi Haya was filled with Dragons and in the dark of night the Rad es Maalas knew not what hovered above them. In unison, the Dragons raised their snouts to the sky, opened their maws and unleashed the breath of Sin. Fire, erupted upon the Basi Haya sky in an orange - red conflagration. The roar of the Dragons rattled the very windows of the Queen of the East's bed chamber. The Rad es Maalas exited their houses in unison, each of them with faces turned to the sky, observing as night became day as a rolling cloud of flame spread across the horizon. Hundreds of Dragons, united in harmony, under one God, under one banner, under one element ... Unleashing a song of worship for the one they had been waiting for.

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  The Fire spread over Kaza, but it did not burn, he was one with it.

  The roar of hundreds of Dragons made him smile.

  Basi Haya would know his name, his purpose, Harmony. The debt of his pain, Vengeance.

  "Kaza." A deep voice said to him from within him. He immediately knew who it was.

  "Yes, Wrath, first aspect of Sin?" Kaza answered.

  "Do you wish to make a Prince dance to our tune?"

  Kaza's smile widened, "Gladly."

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