The sand, it hissed, it hissed and swirled round Sigonia IV, ochre grains like thoughts unmoored, scouring the tents of the Avgin, scouring the boy who was Kakavasha, who stood, small, bare feet pricked by the heat of the earth, the earth that was no earth but a wound, a scar of a planet, unforgiving, unyielding, where Gaiathra Triclops, three-eyed mother, wept rain on the day of his birth, blessed him, they said, blessed with luck, a slippery word, luck, a coin that spins and never lands, heads or tails, life or death, and he, Kakavasha, stood at the edge of the camp, eyes squinting against the dust, the dust that carried his father’s scream into the quicksand, swallowed, gone, and his mother’s cough, her breath a rattle, a plea to the stars, and she too was gone, and his sister, oh his sister, her laughter like bells, snuffed in the Katica-Avgin slaughter, the second extinction, blood on the sand, blood in his dreams, and he, the last, the sole, Kakavasha, child of luck, child of nothing, stood alone.

The tent flap slapped, a rhythm, a heartbeat, and he thought, "Why me, Gaiathra, why the rain for me, why the luck that saves and damns?" The stars above, cold, indifferent, not Penacony’s stars, not the Dreamflux Reef’s ripple, but stars of a cosmos that cared not for Avgin or Katican, for tribes or tears. He was nine, or ten, or timeless, when the slavers came, chains clinking like coins, sixty tanba, red copper, a price for a boy, a price for a life, and he was sold, Kakavasha was, sold like a trinket, a bauble, to men with eyes like voids, and he thought, "Is this luck, is this the blessing?" The brand on his neck burned, a number, a mark, property of the IPC, property of Qlipoth, the Amber Lord, and he laughed, a dry laugh, because what else was there, what else but to laugh when the universe plays dice with your soul?