Rebel of the Sands

The same night the monster child and Ahmed disappeared.
Fourteen years later, the time for the trials came. It was the way the Sultim, the successor to the throne, had been chosen since Miraji began. As per tradition, the twelve eldest princes were to compete for the crown.
...
On the day of the contest, the twelve sons lined up and the whole city gathered to watch. Then a thirteenth man joined the princes. When he pulled back his hood, he was the picture of Sultan Oman as a younger man and no one could deny his claim that he was Prince Ahmed, returned. No matter what suspicions surrounded the sudden return of the prince, the law of tradition was upheld. Prince Ahmed would compete, and the youngest of the twelve princes was expelled from the contest.
...
Ahmed beat the other eleven princes in the test of intelligence, a huge maze full of traps built in the palace grounds, and the test of wisdom, a riddle posed by the wisest of the Sultan's advisors. When he came to the test of strength, trial by single combat, Ahmed won every fight until only he and Prince Kadir, the firstborn of the Sultan's sons, were left standing. They fought all day, until Kadir surrendered. Instead of executing his eldest brother Ahmed spared his life.

They'd built a cannery there. Legend says they were open about a month before the First Beings who lived in the earth had enough and tore apart the ground under the town and flooded the ruins. The same thing happened everywhere. So after a while folks stopped building factories. Except in Miraji. Your First Beings are the only ones who seem to put up with it."

So I listened close as he told of a golden age when only First Beings roamed the earth. How, after time beyond counting had passed, the Destroyer of Worlds came from deep within the earth. She brought with her a huge black snake who swallowed the sun and turned the sky to endless night, and a thousand new creatures the monsters she called children, but that First Beings named ghouls. And when the Destroyer of Worlds killed the first First Being, he exploded into the first star in the newly black sky. God had made the First Beings with endless life, so when they learned of death they were afraid. That was the dawn of the first war, and as First Beings fell, the night sky filled. The Djinn, the brightest of God's First Beings, feared death so much, they came together and gathered earth and water and used the wind to mold a being and set it alive with a spark of fire. They made the First Mortal. To do what they feared most, but what needed to be done in any war: die.
So the First Mortal took up steel, and with it he beheaded the huge snake who had swallowed God in his sun form. The sun was released from the monster's throat and the endless night ended.