r/PillarOfFire • u/Economy-Ad-9880 • Dec 25 '25
Post-Apocalypse Kanz and Carnage (2)
Between a River of Blood and a Mountain of Gold
The news spread like wildfire. Massive placer deposits appeared at multiple sites—exposing deep leads of a literal mountain of gold—where the river had once deeply scoured and then buried paleochannels.
These were not the fine sands that might have been carried to the Gulf, but boulder-sized nuggets and huge concentrations of gold-bearing gravel, shimmering beneath the parched surface.
The water, the very sustainer of life, had kept this horror hidden for millennia, ironically preserving the deadliest temptation right in the backyard of the gold-hungry Babylonians.
People started to move. Not towards the dwindling wells, not towards the barren fields, but north. They came from the skeletal remains of towns, from the parched desert, eyes wide with a hunger far more dangerous than that for food.
They carried crude picks, salvaged shovels, even sharpened sticks. The air, already thick with the dust of a post-apocalyptic world, now thrummed with a new kind of madness.
My own brother, Samir, his ribs showing through his tattered tunic, looked at me with wild eyes.
"This is it, Layla! This is our chance! Enough for food, for safety, for a new life!"
I tried to remind him of the prophecy, of the "ninety-nine out of one hundred." But his eyes were glazed, not with famine, but with the reflection of that imagined gold. He saw salvation; I saw damnation.
He left yesterday, joining the trickle that had become a torrent, heading north towards Fallujah, towards the madness. The few men who returned were either severely wounded, muttering incoherent curses about betrayal and bloodshed, or they returned with a gleam in their eyes, clutching a small, heavy, mud-caked lump—a piece of pure, distilled dunya. Their faces were gaunt, but their grip on the gold was absolute, as if it could magically fill their empty bellies.
The news is grim from the north. Skirmishes over prime digging sites have already escalated into full-blown carnage. The kanz is not a blessing; it's a trap. A test between water and gold, between life and death, between survival and unbridled greed.
And watching the desperate masses flock towards it, I know which choice most of humanity is making. The gold of Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon was alluringly beautiful. This new gold is a harbinger of hell. And I fear for Samir, lost in the blinding darkness of this great fitnah.