The First Sin
Nevada Territory, 1849
The desert did not care about men.
Wind crawled slowly across the dry hills, dragging dust through the skeletons of unfinished wooden buildings. A mining town had grown there too quickly, like a wound that refused to close. Tents leaned against crooked saloons. Wooden boards creaked under boots stained with mud and blood. Smoke rose from iron chimneys. Gold had been discovered in the mountains a few months earlier, and men came from everywhere to claw pieces of the earth from its bones.
But gold never came alone.
It brought hunger. It brought guns.
And it brought men who no longer remembered the meaning of mercy.
The town had no real name. Some called it Hollow Creek. Others simply called it "the pit." Law had not arrived yet, and perhaps it never would.
On that afternoon the sun burned the sky pale white. Horses screamed in the streets. Gunfire cracked between the buildings like splitting wood.
Men were killing each other over dust.
Prospectors fought over sacks of ore. Drunken miners swung pickaxes like clubs. Outlaws rode into town with rifles drawn. A group of mercenaries, hired by a distant mining company, opened fire from the ridge above the settlement, shooting anyone who tried to run.
No sheriff.
No court.
Only the sound of bullets and screaming.
Seventeen-year-old Jones Morcant stood at the edge of the street and watched.
He was thin then, almost fragile. His coat was too large for his shoulders. Dust clung to his boots. The revolver hanging from his belt felt heavier than it should have.
His father had once told him that the frontier was a place where a man could become anything.
Jones was beginning to understand the truth.
Out here, a man became what the world forced him to be.
A gunshot rang beside him.
A miner collapsed into the dirt, blood spilling from his chest. Another man rushed forward and ripped a small leather pouch from the corpse's hand. Gold dust spilled into the wind like yellow smoke.
Then another gunshot.
Then another.
The town descended into madness.
Men shot from windows. Horses trampled bodies in the streets. A store caught fire, and the flames climbed its wooden walls as if eager to join the slaughter.
Jones felt something cold inside his chest.
Not fear.
Something quieter.
Something emptier.
A man suddenly stumbled toward him through the smoke. His beard was gray and tangled, his face wet with sweat and dust. In one trembling hand he carried a revolver.
The old man stopped when he saw the boy.
For a moment they simply stared at each other.
The man's eyes were wild, not cruel, only desperate.
"Boy," he rasped, "move aside."
Jones did not move.
Behind the old man, two bandits ran down the street with rifles raised. One shouted something Jones could not hear over the roar of the burning buildings.
The old man turned halfway toward them.
Then his gaze returned to the boy's revolver.
For a long moment, the town seemed to hold its breath.
The bandits were getting closer.
The old man slowly lifted his gun.
Not at Jones.
Past him.
But the boy did not understand that yet.
He only saw the movement.
The world shrank into a single moment.
A hand.
A gun.
A decision.
Jones Morcant drew his revolver and pulled the trigger.
The sound exploded through the smoke.
The bullet struck the old man in the chest.
For a heartbeat nothing happened.
Then the revolver slipped from the man's fingers.
He collapsed to his knees in the dust.
Jones stared down at him, the gun still shaking in his hand.
It had been easier than he imagined.
The bandits ran past them without even stopping.
The old man lay on the ground, coughing blood into the dirt.
Jones slowly approached.
The dying man's eyes searched his face, not with anger, not even with hatred.
Only with a strange kind of sadness.
"First time," the old man whispered.
Jones said nothing.
The fire in the town had grown stronger now. The saloon roof collapsed with a thunderous crash. Sparks spiraled into the sky like dying stars.
The old man struggled to breathe.
Then he spoke again.
His voice was barely a whisper.
"Listen… boy."
Jones knelt beside him.
The old man's hand weakly grabbed the front of his coat.
"Blood… calls for blood…"
His breathing became ragged.
"Blood calls for blood… until the world itself is drowning in it."
Jones felt the man's grip tighten with the last of his strength.
Then the old man said something stranger.
Something that would follow Jones for the rest of his life.
"Until… you walk to Himmelsturm."
Jones frowned slightly.
"Himmelsturm?"
The old man's eyes had already begun to fade.
"Where… God still listens…"
His hand loosened.
Then fell.
Silence.
Jones slowly stood up.
Around him, the town had become an inferno. Flames devoured wooden buildings. Horses ran screaming through the smoke. Bodies lay scattered across the street like discarded tools.
No law.
No order.
Only fire.
Jones looked down at the revolver in his hand.
His first kill.
The wind blew through the burning town, carrying the smell of ash and blood across the desert.
Somewhere far away, beyond mountains no map had ever drawn, there existed a place that men only spoke about in whispers.
A place at the center of everything.
A palace where God was believed to be.
Himmelsturm.
Jones Morcant stood alone in the middle of the burning town.
Seventeen years old.
A killer for the first time.
And somewhere deep inside the endless wilderness of the world, something ancient had already begun to watch him.