[Fangwood Lodge, Two Days Later – Rainfall]
The sky wept over Fangwood.
Rain trickled from pine limbs. Fires hissed in their pits. The training yard emptied early. Even beasts huddled near their pens, restless.
Inside the Lodge archives—a half-buried chamber of damp scrolls and moss-covered carvings—Jumong turned a page with calloused fingers. His bow leaned against the table. A flask of blackroot tea steamed beside him.
He wasn't ordered here.
He came because he couldn't sleep.
Ever since the Revenant, a sound lingered in his mind—not a voice, but a memory. Metal clashing, pines burning, soldiers in ash-carved armor standing in a circle.
It wasn't fate calling.
It was curiosity.
And a need to understand what the Lodge refused to speak of.
He flipped through a dust-rimmed ledger:
"In the final decade of the Hollow Wars, the 7th Flameguard fell near the Gravepine Weald. Led by General Yeth, their final act was to seal an Emberfont—the last known, before the veins began to fade."
The margin notes mentioned Flamebearers, not as heroes, but as technicians of war—soldiers who carried controlled Veinfires on their bodies, used for purging corrupted lands and constructs.
Flamebearers weren't chosen.
They were volunteers—those with enough mental clarity and physical tolerance to carry semi-bound flame runes without dying.
A death rate of 7 in 10.
Jumong swallowed hard.
Not fate.
But sacrifice.
___
Later that day, Harken summoned Jumong before three senior hunters—Torren, Lira, and a stoic figure from another Lodge: Vorn, the Ironmark of Crestpine.
They sat behind a carved table, eyes sharp.
"You've trespassed on relic ground," Vorn began. "You awakened an Echo. You engaged with forbidden Vein-sand. And now you sit alone in the archives, looking into sealed Flameguard records."
Torren added, "Some think you're hunting answers too loudly, boy."
"I'm hunting them because no one else will," Jumong replied, voice tight.
"There's a reason no one does," Lira snapped. "It's not just danger—it's contamination. Memories like that cling. And sometimes they shape."
"I'm not possessed," Jumong said. "I don't hear them. But I saw what they were willing to die for. I want to understand that."
Silence.
Then Harken spoke.
"You don't carry their blood, Jumong. You're no lost heir or buried soul. But you stepped into their memory and didn't break. That matters."
He reached into a leather pouch and handed Jumong a folded scrap.
Inside: a brittle diagram—partial Vein rune etched in red ash. An early Flamebinding pattern.
"Study it," Harken said. "Don't let it burn you."
"Veinburn" is the practice of channeling latent energy from the world's broken veins into temporary states—combat boosts, forging, purification.
"Embercraft" refers to ancient techniques used by Flamebearers to bind residual flame energy to weaponry, skin, or constructs. It is painful, unstable, and requires an attuned constitution.
[Class Index]
D-Class – Basic fauna (goblins, wild wolves)
C-Class – Trained beasts, revenants, ogres
B-Class – Magical entities, vein-anchored horrors
A-Class – Ancient Echoes, Wyrmkin, corrupted wardens
S-Class – Veinstorm incarnates, living calamities
Hunters are ranked from Ash Initiate up to Embermark based on trial completion, monster-class kills, and tactical command.
That evening, as Jumong fed Ashwing, he noticed something off.
The hawk's right eye shimmered faintly—flickering with the same dull orange seen in the Revenant's gaze.
"Ashwing?" he murmured.
The bird tilted its head. No hostility. No corruption. But… something new.
Not infection.
Adaptation.
Ashwing had absorbed a trace of Echo-fire.
Lira approached him at night, under the eaves where rain fell like whispers.
"You remind me of someone," she said. "A hunter I trained with. He got obsessed too. With Veins. With Echoes. Thought knowledge would save him."
"What happened?"
"He bound a rune to his spine. Didn't tell anyone. Used it during a chimera run. Got the kill. But we found him two days later—singing to a rock he thought was his mother."
Jumong looked down.
"I'm not trying to be more than I am."
"Good," she said. "Because the moment you start thinking you're special—the forest will teach you how wrong you are."
Jumong returned to the training field that night. No sparring. No drills.
Just the rune.
He laid the Flamebinding scrap in the dirt and copied its curve in chalk.
One breath.
Two.
He tried channeling the smallest trace of energy into it.
A flicker of heat bloomed in his hand—then pain surged through his veins. Like a hot needle threading through bone.
He collapsed to one knee, teeth clenched.
But the rune stayed stable.
Not powerful.
Not glorious.
But it held.
And Jumong whispered, "Not chosen. Just willing."
Deep beneath the earth, where the last sealed Emberfont slumbered, the remnants of old fire stirred.
Not in prophecy.
But in response.
___
[Emberhold Forge, Deep Evening – Fangwood Lodge]
The heart of the Lodge beat beneath its stone roots—Emberhold, a forge not lit by fire, but by fractured veins of red crystal embedded in the earth. Every emberstone pulse was slow and steady, like a buried heartbeat.
Jumong stood in its center, sweat already beading under his brow. Before him, a blackened anvil. At his hip, a short hunting blade—the weapon he'd chosen to risk burning.
Around the forge ring, others gathered.
Some out of curiosity. Some to judge.
---
My fingers won't stop trembling.
The chalk rune I etched last night—it held. But that was on dirt, alone, in silence.
Now I'm under watch. Lira leans on a pillar. Vorn's arms are crossed. A few younger hunters whisper my name like I don't hear them.
Ashwing circles above, wings catching orange light from the forge veins.
I unsheathe the blade. Iron-forged, goblin-tempered. It's nothing special. But I've carried it through mud, blood, and bone. If I'm to learn Embercraft, it starts here.
I place it on the anvil.
The flamebinding rune—four spiral curves, each to anchor one flow of vein-energy—glows faintly under my breath.
One mistake, and this becomes a molten curse. But I have to know.
I press my palm to the metal. It sears immediately.
I channel breath, focusing the flicker of Ember-sense I've barely begun to grasp.
It feels like trying to light a torch in the rain—nothing catches.
---
POV 2: Lira – Watching the Boy Burn
"He's slow. Good.'' Lira thought.
Too many first-time burners rush the draw. They're eager to prove they can hold the flame. They end up with scarred arms or charred weapons—or worse, Echo-stirring if the flame reacts to instability.
But Jumong… he hesitates.
He falters.
And he endures.
Not powerfully. Not gracefully. But with intent.
Still, the runes are flickering wrong. His inner flow is tangled. If he pushes now—
"I watch from the second ring. My hands twitch like I'm holding a blade too tight." Tyen said.
He's just like us, isn't he? An orphan. No noble name. No Lodge-blood. But he fought revenants. He returned with Vein-sand in his satchel.
He should be special.
But he's struggling.
Part of me wants him to fail.
And part of me doesn't.
"He's not built for this yet." Kirr added.
He should be training with beasts, perfecting his taming calls, not threading runes. But he never listens. He has to know why the Revenant saw him.
Still… he's not breaking.
He's just—burning slower.
___
My vision dims at the edges.
The rune's second curve pulses. The Ember begins to flow—just a thread—into the blade.
But something's wrong.
The core is off-balance. My rhythm is—
Suddenly, the flame rejects.
A flash surges down the blade and explodes at the base. I'm thrown back, shoulder slamming against stone. The air smells of ash and blood.
Ashwing screeches.
My hand's burned.
Not gone. But burned.
The blade smokes on the anvil—cracked, but intact.
The rune is ruined.
I cough. My throat tastes like iron.
---
He lived.
That alone places him above a dozen initiates I've buried.
But his technique is wild. Unanchored. He tried to bind all four curves at once, without anchoring the vein-flow to the hilt. Foolish.
But I saw something in his face when it failed.
Not despair.
Not rage.
But a flicker of calculation.
He'll try again.
And next time, he'll do better. Vorn said proudly.
Lira helps bind his hand. She says nothing at first.
Then:
"You're still small," she says. "And you'll stay small if you let failure freeze you."
"I thought I had it."
"You never have it, Jumong. You borrow it. And it burns you every time."
Jumong stares at the ruined blade.
"Then I'll let it burn again."
She smiles—barely.
"Good."
Later that night, he sits alone, watching the forge veins pulse like old blood.
He sketches the rune again on old parchment—each line slower. Measured.
Ashwing perches quietly.
"I'm not the chosen," he murmurs. "I'm just the one who showed up again."
The parchment smokes slightly as he finishes the fourth line.
But it doesn't catch fire.
It holds.
And far below the Lodge, in caverns no hunter dares map, a shard of the Emberfont glows brighter—just for a moment.