The sky above the mines of Ashlar was ever veiled in soot and sorrow. No star dared pierce the veil, and the sun—if it yet remembered this cursed dominion—bestowed naught but a crimson glare through the smoke-choked clouds. Beneath that blood-stained firmament, men toiled as beasts, their backs bent, their souls spent.
Among them labored Kaelen, last son of no house, born in shackles and suckled by silence. His name held no weight, and his breath was deemed less worthy than coal. Yet in his gaze stirred the glint of something unbecoming to a slave—defiance.
"Oy! Curséd wretch!" barked the overseer, a hulking brute with a lash as long as justice was dead. "Ye pause again, I'll carve the flesh from yer bones an' feed it to the flame-wolves!"
Kaelen bowed his head and returned to his toil, yet his fingers moved with purpose not known to any who watched. In the black dust he drew lines—not runes, not yet—but echoes of what once was known. The memory of an ancient sigil whispered to him in dreams, though he knew not its tongue nor its source.
That night, when the others lay broken in sleep, Kaelen crept to the farthest end of the mine—a place long abandoned, where no man dared tread. There, in the bowels of the world, he found it: a stone of pale fire, pulsing with forgotten breath.
He touched it—and the world changed.
Visions assailed him: cities in flame, thrones sundered, a crown forged of ash and sorrow. And amidst it all, a voice like thunder murmured in a tongue lost to all save the stars.
> "He who riseth from embers shall bear the Mark. Not of blood. Not of crown. But of fire unclaimed."
Kaelen fell to his knees, breathless, as searing pain coiled 'round his spine. A sigil burned itself upon his flesh—ancient, defiant, alive. The mark of a forgotten order. A curse. A destiny.
He was no longer slave.
He was kindling.
And the world would burn for it.