The boy was born beneath a tree that had no name.
It stood alone at the edge of the Grieving Wastes, its bark silver and smooth, its branches spread like wings toward the dying sun. No village surrounded it, no path led to it. Just a cradle of roots and a crying child wrapped in thornvine silk.
The sky watched, as it always did.
Years passed, and the boy grew. They called him Thorn, after the sharp vines he'd been found in. The name stuck—perhaps because he rarely spoke and always seemed to draw blood from those who tried to hurt him.
He lived in the border-town of Brael, a wind-worn place of shepherds and secrets. The people there did not trust magic, or the sky, or boys who walked out of nowhere with silver-barked branches carved into their skin.
Mom
But they needed him.
Thorn could speak to storms.
He could whisper to lightning and taste lies on the wind. Magic was forbidden in Brael, but when wolves came from the Hollow Hills or when fire leapt too high in the summer fields, the townsfolk still came knocking.
He always helped. Never for coin. Never for thanks.
Only for silence.
One autumn evening, when the moons were both full and the fields shimmered with ash-colored frost, a stranger arrived. She rode a stag with antlers of bronze and wore armor shaped like falling stars. A ribbon of sky followed her, trailing behind her feet as if she walked on the very breath of the heavens.
Thorn watched from the roof of the bakery, his usual perch.
The stranger stopped in the square, raised a silver horn, and blew.
The sound didn't echo—it rang, like glass breaking inside the bones of the world.
"I seek the one born beneath the Nameless Tree," she said, voice low but clear. "The one who can wake the Skybound Roots. The Crownless Heir."
Thorn flinched.
He had never told anyone about the dreams. About the whispers in the roots. About the voice in the wind that called him not by name—but by title.
Skyborn.