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مذنب لأني ولدت مختلفًا

Ch. 1 · The Boy Behind the Second Door

The safe corridor of the D. Hart library at night. Kal, seven, sits in the corner beside the bench with his knees drawn up; the sealed second door glows faint blue at the far end. Nobody else is in the corridor.
  1. Narration: Kal D. Hart is seven years old. He has lived in this corridor since he was old enough to walk.
  2. Narration: House D. Hart keeps a cursed library. The corridor is the only part of it a child is allowed to stand in.
Same corridor, moments later. Kal stays folded against the bench and makes his one small blade of clear light above his palm.
  1. Narration: He can make one thing: a blade of clear light, thin as a fingernail. The house has told him it is worth nothing.
A household knight walks down the corridor and kicks Kal where he sits. The blade goes out.
Kal lies on the flagstones where the kick put him. He does not cry.
  1. Narration: He does not cry. Crying is loud, and in this house loud is a reason.
The palace door opens a hand's width and someone in the corridor beyond pushes scraps through it. Kal takes them off the floor.
  1. Narration: The kitchens feed him the way you feed something you would rather not see again.
Kal eats alone against the bench while the lamp burns down.
  1. Narration: He counts the lamp's sputters. It is the only clock he has.
Kal sits against the bench and lets the small blade turn above his open hand. The sealed door glows behind him.
  1. Narration: Behind the second door the library keeps its dead.
  2. Narration: They press on the seal at night. That is why he is not allowed to open it.
Later the same night. Sera comes down the corridor from the palace door with a covered tin, and Kal looks up from the bench.
  1. Narration: Sera works the kitchens. She is twenty, and she is not supposed to be down here.
Sera kneels and sets the open tin on the flagstones between them. Kal warns her off.
  1. Sera: Kal. Sit up. It's still warm.
  2. Kal D. Hart: You'll get caught.
Kal eats while Sera sits beside him, then she turns his face to look at the bruise.
  1. Kal D. Hart: You should go before the watch changes.
  2. Sera: Who hit you?
Sera gets up to go, the tin back in her hands. Kal tells her not to return.
  1. Kal D. Hart: Don't come back.
  2. Sera: Tomorrow.
Sera walks back up the corridor to the palace door. Kal watches her go from the bench.
  1. Narration: He watches her go the way he watches everything. From behind a door he is not allowed to open.
Later. Torin takes the door watch at the palace end of the corridor, and Kal looks up at him.
  1. Narration: Torin has the door watch. He stands where the draught comes in so the corridor stays warm.
Torin tells Kal to move closer to the lamp. Kal answers without moving.
  1. Torin: Sit by the lamp, Kal. The cold's coming in.
  2. Kal D. Hart: It's always coming in.
Four household knights come down the corridor from the palace door. Sera steps back through the door behind them with the tin and stops. Kal gets up.
  1. Narration: Household knights do not come down here at night.
A knight seizes Sera by the arm and drags her forward; the tin falls and rolls.
  1. Sera: Wait — I'm kitchens, I'm only —
Two knights pin Torin's arms. He does not resist.
  1. Torin: Easy. I'm not fighting you.
Kal stands in the middle of the corridor between the lamp and the knights, small and straight, and speaks up for Sera.
  1. Kal D. Hart: She didn't do anything.
Kal grabs a knight's tabard and is knocked off his feet. The knights walk on over him.
  1. Narration: A seven-year-old weighs nothing.
The camera swings round behind Kal to look back down the corridor. Sereth stands in the palace doorway with the knights and the two prisoners between her and her son.
  1. Narration: His mother does not raise her voice. She has never needed to.
Sereth reads the charge in a flat voice and orders them taken. Kal says one word.
  1. Sereth D. Hart: Sera of the kitchens. Torin of the door watch. Treason against House D. Hart.
  2. Sereth D. Hart: Take them.
  3. Kal D. Hart: Mother.
The knights drag Sera and Torin past Kal toward the palace door. Sera speaks to him as she passes.
  1. Sera: Kal. Don't look. Don't look at me.
The silver barrier on the sealed door flares as the library dead crowd against it from the inside. Kal presses his ear to the wood.
  1. Narration: The dead crowd the seal. They always know before the living do.
The barrier flares across the sealed door and Kal hears the rest of his mother's sentence through the wood.
  1. Sereth D. Hart: The executions will be carried out at dawn.

End of Chapter 1

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Chapter 2 · written, not drawn yet

Kindness Is Treason

At dawn in the cemetery garden, the D. Hart household gathers to watch two servants sentenced for treason.

about 24 pages · drawn in about 10 minutes · free for everyone after

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