Ash never stopped falling.
Not from the sky, not from the crumbling towers, and certainly not from the war. It drifted between shattered buildings like snow from a fallen god--weightless, endless, choking.
Kaelith crouched behind a broken cart, eyes narrowed beneath a hood blackened by soot and blood. His breath came quiet and slow. He watched the soldiers pass down the main road—soul-banners crackling with holy light, armor gleaming like the gods still cared.
They didn't. Not for people like him.
"Keep moving," he muttered under his breath.
The words weren't for the soldiers. They were for Ren—the wide-eyed boy trembling behind him.
The kid was maybe eight. Skin stretched too thin over bone. Big eyes. Hopeful. Stupidly hopeful. He'd been following Kaelith for weeks now. Kaelith had told him to leave. Ten times.
"You'll die if you stay with me," Kaelith had said.
Ren replied "I would die alone anyway."
The soldiers passed, and the soul-scanners came next—hooded priests with relics of glowing crystal, pulsing like veins. The light hummed, searching.
Scanning for the impure.
Kaelith clenched his jaw. Every time those relics hummed, something inside him twisted. Like it knew. Like it remembered.
"Come forward!" one of the priests shouted. "All slumborn under the age of twenty—step into the light!"
No one moved. Not at first. Then the beatings started. Screams. Children dragged from homes like trash from gutters.
And then—Ren was taken.
"No—let me go! Let me go!" the boy screamed as two armored fists dragged him toward the scanning circle.
Kaelith's vision blurred. Not from rage. From memory.
His mother screaming.
His soul glowing black.
The fire they used to cleanse her.
He moved.
Kaelith slipped through the shadows like breath on glass. He didn't think. Didn't plan.
He just got close.
And that was when everything snapped.
The scanner's light flickered—then shattered. The relic cracked down the center. The air grew cold.
The priest turned sharply. His eyes locked on Kaelith. And for a heartbeat… he saw something impossible.
"His soul… it's black—"
"The Abyss lives!"
The priest raised his staff, light gathering into his palm—but Kaelith moved faster. He didn't run. He didn't cower. He reached for the priest's arm.
Their skin touched.
And Kaelith's world erupted.
Searing pain tore through his veins—fire magic, holy magic, purity—trying to burn him from the inside out.
But his soul didn't reject it.
It Devoured it.
Twisted it.
Darkness erupted from Kaelith's hand—not fire, but something fouler.
Black flame. Chained light. Twisting ash.
He screamed—not in fear, but from something deeper. A ripping sensation across his chest. His spine cracked. His heart thundered.
Something grew from his palm—bone and void, shadow and steel.
A blade.
Nameless. Born of hate. Alive.
The priest backed away, whispering prayers. Kaelith stepped forward.
"You said impurity had no place in this world," Kaelith whispered.
"I agree."
He drove the blade through the priest's chest.
The holy man gasped once—and the light died in his eyes.
Kaelith stared at the weapon in his hand—jagged, breathing, slick with blood and still humming with stolen fire.
Ren's voice cracked behind him.
"What… are you?"
Kaelith didn't answer.
Because he didn't know yet.
But the world would learn.
And one day, this blade would earn its name.
------------------------------------------
Silence followed the kill.
Not peace. Not relief. Just… silence.
The kind of silence that fell when even the gods stopped watching.
The priest's body lay twisted at Kaelith's feet, still smoking, his robes curled and blackened where the voidfire had touched them. The relic he carried—a soul scanner crusted in divine gold—flickered with a dim, broken pulse… then cracked apart with a hiss.
Snap.
Fragments of holy crystal clattered to the ground like shards of heaven, and that sound was all it took.
"Demon!"
"He's cursed!"
"The prophecy! It's him!"
Screams tore through the crowd like wildfire. The slumborn scattered—some running, some dropping to their knees in prayer, others too stunned to move.
Kaelith stood still.
His hand trembled. Not from fear—but from the thing still coiled in his fingers. The blade. Not forged. Not summoned. Born. Black as the spaces between stars, its surface shimmered with oily smoke. It vibrated in his grip like it was breathing.
And somewhere, beneath the panic and fear, he heard something.
You were never meant to kneel.
"Kaelith?"
The voice was small. Fragile.
He turned.
Ren stood a few feet away, his eyes wide—not with terror, but confusion. He looked like a boy trying to understand a monster, and praying the answer was no.
"What was that?" he whispered. "What… what did you do?"
Kaelith looked at the sword again. It was already fading—crumbling into dust and shadow, sliding from his fingers like a dream refusing to be remembered.
"I don't know," Kaelith said quietly. "But I didn't mean to."
Behind them, another horn screamed—closer this time.
Soldiers.
"We have to go."
He didn't wait for Ren to agree. He just grabbed his wrist and ran.
They tore through the alleyways of Ashward, deeper into the ruin, where no banners flew and no soul-scanners dared follow. The air here was thicker. The ash, darker. The ground cracked underfoot like bones.
Here stood the Dead Zone—what remained of the old rebellion, where divine weapons once leveled entire city blocks. Nothing lived here anymore.
Except ghosts. And maybe them.
Kaelith found shelter beneath a crumbling shrine—once devoted to a forgotten god of judgment. Its headless statue stood like a warning, wings broken, vines choking its arms.
He dropped to the floor. Let the silence wrap around him. Tried to catch his breath.
Ren sat beside him. Didn't speak for a while.
When he finally did, his voice was barely a whisper.
"You didn't have to kill him."
Kaelith said nothing at first. He stared at his hands—burned, cracked, the skin still faintly glowing from whatever magic had tried to devour him.
"I didn't want to," he said.
"But I will again."
Ren looked at him. Truly looked.
"Are you going to hurt me?"
Kaelith blinked.
"No."
"Then I don't care." Ren Added.
That stopped him.
Ren pulled his knees to his chest, curling up beside the fallen statue like it still offered protection.
"You could've ran," Kaelith said.
"You should've."
"I would've died alone," Ren replied.
"At least this way… I know someone's watching."
Kaelith didn't answer. He stared into the ash and the dark and the smoke rising above the city.
The world would hunt him now. The prophecy was alive.
And yet…
For the first time, he wasn't just surviving.
He was becoming.
On a rooftop far above, cloaked in smoke and moonless sky, a figure watched through eyes that did not blink.
A Shadari.
Its mouth curled in a silent smile.
"Abyssborn… and still just a boy."
"The others will come. But they will fail."
It turned, stepping into shadow—vanishing into nothing.
The gods had seen their end today.
And its name had no face.
Not yet.
------------------------------------------------------
Night fell like a bruise.
The sky above Ashward never cleared. No stars. No moons. Just a thick veil of smoke and clouds, lit faintly by the glow of distant fires. The war never stopped, even when the sun was gone. It only got meaner.
Kaelith sat hunched in the broken shrine, back against stone, eyes half-lidded. His breathing had slowed, but sleep never came easy. Not anymore.
The blade was gone—dissolved into the ether—but the feeling of it lingered. His hand still burned. The bones in his arm ached. His veins felt… full. Crowded.
Something inside him was moving.
Across the room, Ren had curled against the statue's base. He slept lightly, twitching every time the wind blew through the cracks. Even in sleep, he looked like he expected the world to turn against him.
Kaelith closed his eyes.
And instantly, the world changed.
He was no longer in the shrine.
The sky was gone. The walls were gone. There was no floor beneath his feet—just endless, swirling darkness like smoke trapped in water. It was still and suffocating. Too quiet.
Kaelith turned, and then he saw it.
A figure stood across from him. Humanoid. Smoke-skinned. Its eyes burned like coals left too long in the dark.
Its face was his own.
But twisted.
Sharper. Taller. And the smile it wore was not kind.
"You want to know why you're in pain?" the figure asked. Its voice echoed like it came from inside his skull.
Kaelith didn't answer. He took a step back, then forced himself forward again.
"Where am I?"
"Within," the thing said. "Where the truth lives. Where I live."
The shadows curled tighter. The figure walked slowly, barefoot across the nothing beneath them, a jagged blade of bone growing from its right arm. It dragged behind him like it had weight, even here.
"You think you woke something today?"
"I didn't think anything."
"No. You felt. That's why I answered."
Kaelith's fists clenched.
"What are you?"
"A shard. A whisper. A reflection."
"Of what?"
The figure's smile faded.
"Of you, Kaelith Duskborn. The you they tried to erase. The part of you too wild, too hungry, too old."
It circled him now, slow, deliberate. Smoke trailed in its wake.
"You were never born to fit inside their order. You weren't made to shine. You were made to swallow the light."
Images flashed in Kaelith's mind—cities collapsing, temples burning, gods screaming as they bled black fire. At the center of it all stood him—taller, cloaked in living shadow, eyes hollow with power.
And in his hand: the sword, fully formed, pulsing with the weight of a thousand fallen souls.
Kaelith growled and stepped forward.
"You're not real. Just a dream."
"Then wake up."
A blinding pain snapped through his body like a whip.
Kaelith gasped and sat up in the shrine—truly awake this time. His shirt was soaked through with sweat. His fingers curled against stone.
"Kaelith…?"
Ren's voice came soft, barely audible.
Kaelith looked down at his right hand.
A thin line of black blood slid down from his palm. His skin pulsed faintly, like the energy inside was trying to break through again.
He tore a piece of cloth from his shirt and wrapped his hand.
"You're bleeding," Ren said, sitting up. "What happened?"
Kaelith didn't answer.
He stood, walked to a crack in the wall, and stared out toward the city.
Smoke rose in columns. Light flickered like distant stars. The soldiers were still searching. The hunt had already begun.
"They'll keep coming," Kaelith said flatly.
"Then what'll you do?" Ren asked, stepping beside him.
Kaelith didn't look at him. He just stared into the distance, eyes steady, the ache in his soul still burning.
"I'll become what they fear."
End of Chapter One.