Beneath the dust-laced skies of Yemen, where mountains whisper forgotten tales, a lone rider carves his legend into the sands. His sword—Al-...

The wind howled the night Amr was born, as if the jinn themselves recoiled from what slithered into the world. His mother died screaming—not from labor, but from the vision that tore through her at his first breath: A serpent coiled around a sword, whispering in rhymes of fire and iron.

The tribe raised him on a diet of steel and spite. At ten winters, his father dragged him to the corpse of a hanged thief. "Lick the rot from his ribs," the man ordered. "Taste the price of weakness." Amr obeyed, then vomited verses instead of bile:

"I swallow the gall of the coward, Let it sour my veins to venom. One day, men will choke on my name, And call it mercy."

The elders exchanged glances. A poet was dangerous. A poet who fed on pain? That was something new.