The Eden Prophecy

CHAPTER 17

Yousef stood in near-perfect darkness, with only a pinpoint of light aimed down at him from above. He wore sweatpants. His hands stretched out to either side — cuffed to rails on the right and the left.

Metal walls sweated around him while machinery hummed and a strange vibration grew and faded and then returned again in a slowly repeating pattern.

Shadows moved just beyond his view and then passed him. Shapes dressed in black, hoods partially covering their faces. As each went past, a blade cut his arm. Just deep enough to make him bleed.

He winced at the pain, saw the knives retracted in the dark, felt the blood trickling down his arm and heard it dripping drop by drop onto a metal tray.

It flowed to a space in front of him, where they tossed their relics: crucifixes, golden pendants in the shape of the crescent moon and the Star of David, other symbols that he did not recognize.

As the last cut was made, Yousef was already shaking.

In front of him the group stood, but in the darkness he could see little.

He felt a presence behind him but he knew not to turn.

“What is the lie that we have been told?” the figure behind him said.

Now Yousef recognized the voice as that of Marko. It was deeper and echoing in the metallic chamber but he was almost certain.

“That we are fallen,” the group replied in unison. “That we are incomplete.”

“Do you lay down the lie?” the voice said.

“We lay down the lie,” they said together. “We take up our truth.”

“And what is the truth?”

In his dizzy state, Yousef listened. He tried to remember what was being said; he would have to remember these words.

“That together we are whole.”

“From where comes the truth?” the voice behind him asked.

Yousef felt as if he’d been drugged. It was the air and the loss of blood, he thought. His head was spinning.

“Cruor speaks the truth,” they said, speaking as one. “Blood speaks the truth.”

“And who speaks to Cruor?”

“The Master.”

Marko’s hand, the hand of Cruor — the Man of Blood — pressed onto the back of Yousef’s neck.

“Do you lay down the lie?” he asked.

Yousef knew what to say.

“I lay it down,” Yousef said. “There is no God. Only man. There is no punishment. Only life. There is no death for us. Only for others.”

He looked down at the metal tray. A thin layer of his blood had spread across it, soaking all the religious icons, drowning them in blood of man.

He smelled fire, and he looked over to see a glowing rod being carried through the darkness. There were letters and numbers on it. It was the brand of the brotherhood. It signified the moment when the first man had rejected God.

All the brotherhood wore it. None could be part without it.

“Do you accept the brand?” Cruor said.

Yousef stared at it. The heated metal glowed red in the dark, as if it wanted to taste his skin.

“Do you accept it?” he was asked again.

What had God done for him? he thought. If it was the will of God that he live in the gutter, tormented by the police and the drug dealers, sometimes lacking even the basics of life, then what use was God for him?

He would be part of something. He would have power. Like they did.

“Do you accept it?” he was asked a third time.

“I accept the brand,” he said, steeling himself for the pain.

“Then you shall be Scindo,” Cruor said.

And the glowing metal was pressed into his flesh.

Yousef howled in pain, trying to pull loose from the cuffs. Steam and smoke rose from his chest and the stench of burned skin filled his nostrils. He leaned forward and retched even as cold water was thrown upon him from all sides.

He fell to his knees, his arms held up by the cuffs. His body heaved and he vomited again as a layer of burned skin peeled off and fell to the floor beneath him. He looked to it, a twisted version of the mark in his own flesh. On his chest it would become a scar, a brand that marked him for what he was.

Soaking wet, blood dripping, dry-heaving on his knees, he heard a voice. And then other voices.

“Scindo,” they whispered. “Rise, Scindo. Rise.”

He pulled on the bars to which he was cuffed, grasping them and straining with what strength he had left.

The voices grew louder until they were shaking the room. He felt their power. With one last effort, he heaved himself up until he stood before them. Yousef was banished; he existed no more. He had become something greater. He was now Scindo: the one who divides.