Snow fell in silence. Thick flakes covered the smoldering remains of the village, snuffing out what little warmth the flames had left behind. Bodies, some still twitching in the final throes of death, lay scattered like broken dolls across the icy ground. Among them, a boy stood motionless, his eyes fixed on nothing and everything all at once.
Kael Ardan was fourteen, small for his age, but his gaze held the weight of a man twice that. His breath came in quiet, controlled bursts. Not from fear, but from discipline. He had stopped trembling an hour ago. Emotions were a luxury he could no longer afford.
The Crimson Fang mercenaries had attacked just before dawn. They moved like wraiths, silent and efficient, killing with cold purpose. They weren't after gold or supplies. They were after something else—something none of the villagers had understood until it was too late.
Now Kael was the only one left.
He moved slowly, stepping over corpses with mechanical care. His mother's body lay face down in the snow, a spear jutting from her back. He didn't weep. Not because he didn't feel pain, but because it would dishonor her final words: "Live, no matter what."
He had no destination in mind, just the instinct to move. Somewhere deep in the forest, a cavern waited. A place the elders warned children never to approach. A cursed place.
But the mercenaries hadn't taken everything. Kael had stolen a map from the leader's corpse—a jagged piece of parchment smeared with blood. One word was scrawled across it in shaky runes:
"Void."
---
The entrance to the cavern yawned before him like a cracked maw, buried under roots and centuries of disuse. Cold air breathed from within, laced with a metallic scent. Kael tightened his grip on the short sword he'd looted from a dead guard. It was chipped and dull, but better than his bare hands.
He stepped into darkness.
The silence here was oppressive. It swallowed sound and thought. Only the drip of unseen water punctuated the void. Deeper and deeper he went, until the light from the surface became a memory.
Then, he felt it.
A pulse. Faint, like a heartbeat buried beneath stone. It resonated with something in him, a cold whisper threading into his bones. It tugged him forward.
He found the chamber by instinct more than sight. A vast hollow in the earth, lit by an eerie red glow emanating from a stone pedestal in the center. Resting atop it, suspended as if weightless, was a blade.
Black.
Not polished obsidian, not tempered metal. Pure black, like a tear in reality. It hummed with restrained violence.
Kael approached, unable to stop himself. The air thickened around him, pressing against his skin, his mind. The sword pulsed again.
Hungry.
His hand closed around the hilt.
The world shattered.
Pain exploded behind his eyes. Memories not his own flooded into him—a battlefield where gods screamed, a tower of screaming souls, a throne made from the bones of traitors. And at the center of it all, the blade.
Void Fang.
A voice curled into his thoughts, serpentine and cold.
"You are unworthy."
Kael fell to his knees, blood pouring from his nose and ears. The sword didn't burn his flesh. It burned his soul.
But he didn't let go.
"You are weak."
He gritted his teeth, the pain growing sharper with each second. His vision blurred, and he felt something tearing inside him—something the blade wanted gone.
Fear.
He fed it to the sword.
Anger.
He offered it freely.
Pain.
He gave it everything.
The blade pulsed once, then again. The pressure vanished. The pain faded. The voice changed.
"Good."
Void Fang's essence seeped into him, threading into his veins like ink spilled in water. His core, long dormant, shuddered. A flicker of energy ignited in his dantian, black and cold and furious.
Kael screamed, not in agony, but in release.
He was reborn.
---
When he emerged from the cavern, night had fallen. The snowstorm had worsened, yet Kael felt no cold. The blade clung to his back, a whisper of shadow against the moonlight.
He walked past the corpses without pause. Their eyes stared, empty and accusing. He didn't flinch.
He buried his mother before he left.
Not out of sentiment, but respect.
Then he vanished into the wilderness, a shadow among shadows.
The world had taken everything from him.
Now it would pay.
---
End of Chapter 1