The world was drowning in the philosophy of Vincerism.

  To the Vincerist military movement, there was no such thing as "No." There was no defeat, no failure, and no mercy. They forced victory through the barrel of a gun, controlling the social, economic, and political heart of the Habas region. For years, the people of Habas had looked toward the heavens, praying for the return of the Emperor of Deity and the Cloud Kingdom of Nagnayak. But the skies remained silent.

  In the face of total Vincerist occupation, the Habas City high officials were ready to surrender. Only the Military General held the line, clinging to a single shred of hope: a report of a village that remained invisible to enemy sensors.

  The Village of Dusan.

  Hidden by prehistoric monuments and guarded by the sentient Ancestor Tree, Dusan was a sanctuary. Its leader forbade anyone from leaving, but a fighter named Jalal knew that a wall was only as strong as the men defending it. Along with five brave youths, Jalal stood as the village's invisible front line.

  The Birth of the Chosen One

  In the heat of the conflict, a different kind of light entered the world.

  Jalal returned from the front lines to find his wife, Maryam, holding a newborn boy. "Alhamdulillah," Jalal whispered, his voice cracking. "Another hope has been born."

  "He is beautiful," Maryam said. "What shall we name him?"

  "Hamizi," Jalal replied. "Mizi. In the ancient Dusan tongue, it means The Chosen One."

  As he spoke, a faint golden light flickered on the infant's forehead. Maryam gasped. "Look, darling! A sign of luck. Our child carries a fortune."

  Jalal looked out the window at the smoke rising on the horizon. "This world is a graveyard, Maryam. I fear that when he grows up, he will have to follow me into the fire. Forgive me if I cannot fulfill my promise to grow old with you."

  Maryam took his hand, her smile unwavering. "If not here, then in the gardens above. We are family. Saya cintakan awak, suamiku."

  The moment of peace was shattered by a frantic knock. Vincerist soldiers had breached the village perimeter.

  The First Skirmish

  Jalal didn't hesitate. He grabbed his rifle and ordered Maryam to bolt the door.

  Thirteen Vincerist soldiers were harassing the villagers, their black uniforms a stain on the prehistoric greenery. Jalal watched from the brush as a soldier leveled a gun at an elder's head, demanding their daughters.

  "Distract them," Jalal signaled to his five companions.

  A hail of gunfire erupted from the trees. In the chaos, Jalal flanked the soldiers. He took out the commander with a single shot to the head. He moved like a shadow, dropping four more with surgical precision. His friends handled the others, but two soldiers turned to flee.

  Jalal pursued. One turned to fire, but Jalal leapt into the air, his silhouette framed against the Ancestor Tree, and fired a round straight into the man's heart.

  He cornered the final soldier. "Drop it," Jalal commanded.

  The soldier moved slowly, feigning surrender, before whipping out a sidearm and shattering Jalal's shoulder. Jalal hit the dirt, the world spinning. As the soldier moved in for the kill, Jalal's friends arrived, riddling the Vincerist with twenty-three rounds of vengeance.

  Jalal survived, but the wound changed him. His right arm was left weak, a permanent reminder of the price of war. From that day on, Dusan went silent. They became ghosts in their own land.

  The Relic of the Woods

  Twelve Years Later.

  After a year of struggle and endless battle, the war had evolved into a nightmare of steel. The Vincerist Destroyer Towers now choked the skyline of Habas, controlling the air and land with absolute authority.

  Outside Dusan, a boy, young Mizi, crouched in the back of a rusted truck. Above, Vincerist cargo planes circled, protected by a flight of screaming fighter jets.

  "Now!" Mizi yelled.

  Two trucks carrying improvised missiles swerved out of the forest. A fighter jet dove, its missile vaporizing one of the trucks instantly.

  "OSMAN! SUFYAN!" Mizi screamed. He stood up in the bed of the moving truck, hoisted a rocket launcher to his shoulder, and fired. The jet blossomed into a fireball.

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  The remaining trucks retreated into the deep woods. Back at the village, Mizi threw the launcher down, hot tears tracking through the soot on his face. He found his father, Jalal, waiting by the porch.

  "Enough, my son," Jalal said, his voice heavy. "The government is preparing to surrender. Our strength is gone. We are just waiting for the end."

  Mizi slumped against the doorframe, sobbing. When his mother approached, he turned away. "I failed them. My friends died because of me. I am a bringer of misfortune."

  "No, Mizi," Maryam whispered, pulling him into a hug. "This is Qada and Qadar, the fate decreed by God. We are but servants. One day, if fate decides, the tide will turn. Don't let your heart harden."

  Jalal stepped forward, holding an old, polished pistol. "Go to the city at dawn. Use the secret paths. Find General Afamiszt. Give him this weapon and tell him: Kampung Dusan surrenders."

  The Clock of Fate

  Mizi set out before the sun was high. While navigating a ravine, his foot brushed against something metallic. He reached into the dirt and pulled out a heavy, strange-looking wristwatch. The casing was dark and seamless, with no brand marking and no visible crown, only a single engraved dial at the center shaped like something between a compass and an eye. It was heavier than it had any right to be. He turned it over in his hands, and the weight of it felt deliberate, like it had been waiting in that particular patch of earth specifically for his particular hand.

  Entranced, he strapped it on.

  The moment the clasp locked, he felt it. Not vibration, not warmth, but pressure, as though the watch had taken a slow breath and tightened itself to his pulse. The skin beneath it tingled in a way that wasn't quite pleasant and wasn't quite pain, something closer to the feeling of a sleeping limb waking up, that deep cellular prickling spreading from his wrist up through the crook of his elbow.

  He shook his arm and the feeling faded. He kept walking.

  As he walked, he felt a presence. A shadow watching him from the treeline. He called out, but only the wind answered. Bored and curious, he began to fiddle with the watch's dial.

  Click.

  The watch vibrated so hard his teeth knocked together. A beam of concentrated energy erupted from the face, vaporizing an ancient tree in a deafening explosion that left a crater of smoking earth and the smell of burnt sap hanging in the air. Mizi fell backward, landing hard on his elbows, his ears ringing and his heart slamming itself against the inside of his chest like it wanted out. He stared at the crater. At the place where a tree three times his height had simply ceased to exist.

  He yanked his sleeve down over the watch and ran for the city, not looking back.

  The shadow that had been watching him stepped out from behind a tree. "As I thought," the figure said quietly. "He picked it up."

  The Lie and the Light

  Mizi reached the Habas Defense Center, a fortress of concrete and desperation. The guards laughed when a twelve-year-old asked for the General, but when they heard the name "Dusan," the laughter died.

  General Afamiszt looked at the boy with pity. "Your father sent his pistol back? That is an emergency signal. Tell me, Mizi. What is his request?"

  Mizi looked at the pistol. He thought of the surrender. He thought of his dead friends. Then he felt the watch against his wrist, a dull steady pressure, like a second heartbeat that wasn't his own.

  "He said... he said Dusan will never surrender," Mizi lied, his voice steady. "He said I am here to join the Habas army. We would rather die than see our children oppressed."

  When Mizi returned home and confessed his lie, Jalal's hand found his face in a sharp slap. "I did not teach you to be a liar! You have doomed us all!"

  "I will prove it to you!" Mizi shouted back. "I will liberate this country!"

  He didn't have to wait long. A scream went up from the village. Vincerist bombers were approaching from the north, targeted directly at Dusan.

  Mizi jumped into the village's last truck. His friends, Idham and Azmei, hopped in beside him. "This is it," Mizi said. "Our last stand."

  As the fighter planes dove, spraying the road with lead, Mizi stood up. A missile was locked onto their truck. "This is a martyr's end," Azmei whispered, closing his eyes.

  But the explosion never came.

  Mizi opened his eyes to see a shimmering, translucent barrier surrounding the truck. His pocket was glowing. He pulled the watch out, and the moment his fingers closed around it, something happened beneath his skin.

  Heat. Not the heat of fire but something older, something that moved with his blood rather than against it. It surged from his palm up through his shoulder, and for a disorienting second his vision sharpened so completely that he could see the rivets on the underside of the fighter jet above him, could see the helmet of the pilot through the cockpit glass, could see the man's head turning as he lined up his next pass. The world had not slowed down. Mizi had simply become fast enough to read it.

  He snapped the watch onto his wrist. The clasp locked and the heat doubled, spreading across his chest, down his spine, settling into his legs like his bones had been replaced with something denser. The watch face pulsed once, green-white, and he felt the weight of it change. It no longer felt like something strapped to him. It felt like it had grown there.

  He didn't feel invincible. He felt precise. Every nerve in his body had been tuned to a single frequency, and that frequency was forward.

  "Drive!" Mizi roared.

  He leaned out the window, pointing the watch at the lead fighter jet. The shot that came out of it felt like it travelled through him first, drawn from somewhere behind his sternum before it left the device. A bolt of pure energy tore through the sky, vaporizing the plane. Idham and Azmei cheered, their fear turning into battle lust. Mizi fired again and again, each blast leaving his arm heavier and his vision brighter, the line between himself and the watch dissolving shot by shot, until the invincible Vincerist squadron was nothing but scrap metal falling through the clouds.

  When the last one fell, the heat receded slowly, like a tide going out. He was left with trembling hands and the particular exhaustion of someone who had just discovered the full capacity of their own body and used all of it at once.

  In the Vincerist Destroyer Tower, the Lieutenant Colonel watched his monitors in disbelief. He drew his sidearm and shot his right-hand man through the head.

  "Find that boy," the Colonel hissed. "Find him, and make sure he dies."

  The Return of the Hero

  When the dust settled, the truck rolled back into Dusan. Mizi stepped out, expecting his father's anger. Instead, Jalal ran forward, pulling his son into a crushing embrace.

  "I misjudged you," Jalal sobbed. "You truly are the child of luck. I am grateful. So grateful I didn't lose you."

  Mizi hugged him back, looking at the watch on his wrist. The glow had faded to almost nothing, just a faint pulse at the center of the dial, slow and steady, matching his own heartbeat so closely he couldn't tell anymore where one ended and the other began.

  "Don't worry, Father," Mizi said. "I'm staying. And I'm going to finish this war."