Legend CXXXVI – The Priest of the Burning Gate

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Deep beneath the forgotten foundations of the city of Kalyr, where even the rats no longer dream and the dust tastes of cold iron, stood the Burning Gate, a gateway of black basalt, in the center of which a face glowed like a wounded star. No one knew who had once erected it, but the ancients said that it was older than human language and that its flames were not of fire, but of memory. Before this gate stood watch Arkhun, the red-eyed priest, a man whose body had long since turned to mummy linen, while his will remained as sharp as freshly cut glass. He carried a staff of vertebrae and a polished skull, and whoever looked upon him felt as if being observed from a grave that already knew the beholder's name. The merchants of Kalyr secretly brought him offerings, believing their business could only prosper if Arkhun soothed the Gate's breath, but in truth, they feared him more than death itself. It was said he had once served as an ordinary scribe until one night he found the word that must not be written, and since then the Gate had made him its mouthpiece. When the moon was low, bones gathered on the temple floor like forgotten questions, and Arkhun listened to them as if they were children seeking their father. One evening, a young thief named Malen came to the catacombs, driven by hunger and the hope of the golden chalice that sat on a table before the gate. The chalice was plain, but within it shimmered a drop of light that never dried, and Malen believed he could sell it to buy medicine for his sister. As he entered the hall, the burning gateway opened its eyes of embers, and Arkhun raised his hand, not threateningly, but like a host welcoming a late guest. The thief tried to flee, but the bone floor held his footing like tender fingers, and he heard a voice that came from both the skull-staff and his own heart. Arkhun explained that the chalice was not a treasure, but a measure in which the debts of the living were collected, and that every sip from it demanded a truth that could not be taken back. Malen confessed that he had once betrayed a friend to escape, and at that moment the face in the gateway flickered brighter, as if it had received nourishment. The priest smiled, which on a man without lips looked like a tear in a cloth, and offered the thief a bargain: if Malen drank the chalice and named his greatest debt, his sister's illness would pass, but he himself would have to guard the threshold for a year. Despair is a swift writer, and Malen signed the invisible pact, drank the light, and tasted all the winters of his life. The gate roared with joy, and Arkhun laid his hand on Malen's forehead, so that for a heartbeat the thief saw the world beyond, where cities are built of breath and rivers flow of broken promises.