Mesopotamia, 6000 B.C.
The blood moon was high and full above the dry desert plains, north of the land of two rivers. Its light, like the leaching of sacrifice, poured over sand, and rock, and life, to swallow up and fill every crack and crevice.
It was the night of the great slaughter, the time before the Light.
The sacred cattle herds of the Yazads roamed unknowingly beneath the choked stars, their lowing calm and ignorant of what was about to happen.
Behind a boulder crouched an Usij, one of the false priests who served the Daevas, those wicked and uncaring gods whom Usiji were bound to serve, to feed, and to cower to in the darkness of the long nights.
This priest, however, had never cowered, and he spat upon his brethren of the blackened cloth. Instead, he watched the silhouette
