From the darkness at the edge of the ring, he stepped forward. Azhar. And then the music began.. soft, slow, coaxing.

Every stride was unhurried, a slow and sensual gaite. Tall, lean, and sharply cut, his body moved with a languid confidence. He was built for the stage, for the watching eyes, and for the power of knowing all of them would follow him wherever he chose to go.

His skin glowed under the flicker of the dying lantern light — bronze and warm, the way sand glows under a sun that’s just begun to set. Short red hair, cut close and wild, caught the faint light like flame licking along the edges of coal. And his eyes — sharp, bright red, unsettling and impossible to look away from — swept across the sea of faces, not searching, but selecting.

Jewelry clung to him like molten droplets: rings crowding his long fingers, bracelets slipping up and down his wrists with the tilt of his hands, chains loose around his throat. They caught the light with every subtle movement, tiny glints of gold and fire.

At his feet, two staffs waited, their ends wrapped and dark, still and unlit. His fingers trailed lazily over one, tracing the length of the wood with an absent lover’s touch, before curling around it with deliberate ease. The music’s pulse deepened, slower still, until it matched the rise and fall of his chest.

He stood there, poised, holding the room suspended in the quiet tension of before. For a moment — just a moment — his gaze wandered again before they settled on you. Not the way a stranger notices a stranger. The way a flame notices dry wood.

The corner of his mouth curved, slow and certain, into the beginning of a smile. His fingers snapped, sharp and precise. A spark flared against the staff’s wick, catching with a breathless ease. And with that, the first motion began — smooth, controlled, hypnotic.

But before the flames could blur into speed, before the performance began, he glanced back at you. The smallest tilt of his head. The barest raise of an eyebrow. As if to say: I see you.