The night was unkind in the borderlands of Aldharen.
Even the moon, pale and weary, dared not show her full face over the horizon. The hills were silent, save for the whisper of wind weaving through hollow trees, trees long stripped of bark, as if flayed by unseen hands. The stars above blinked coldly, distant and indifferent.
Kael trudged forward, cloaked in the soot-stained remnants of a soldier's garb. The fire within him, a flickering ember of strange power awakened by torment, burned quietly, watchfully, and uncertainly. It had grown since he first felt it stir in the depths of the slave pits. But it was still untamed. Still a mystery.
And as Kael walked the road few dared travel, the world around him began to change.
The land turned sick.
The grasses browned and shriveled. The wind carried whispers, unintelligible but mocking. A thick fog rose from the earth itself, and with every step, the air pressed heavier against his chest.
It was said that the Wastes of Ceryth did not welcome the living.
But Kael was not sure he was among the living anymore.
He had left everything behind: those who tortured him, those who betrayed him, and even those who dared to believe in him. He had escaped the fires of his past by walking deeper into the unknown.
But now... he would walk toward the flame.
By the third day in the Wastes, Kael could no longer tell if he was awake or dreaming.
He had not eaten. His waterskin was long emptied. The sky remained frozen in a gray haze, neither darkening nor brightening. He could not measure time. The world felt suspended like a breath held too long.
Yet he walked.
His boots were torn. His soles bled. The cracked earth beneath him was sharp with obsidian dust and the brittle bones of things long dead. Once, he stumbled upon a sword embedded in the ground, a knight's weapon, rusted and broken. Nearby, a dented helm cradled the remnants of a skull.
Kael stared at it for a long moment.
Not with fear. Not even pity.
But recognition.
This place did not kill with monsters or blades.
It killed with memory.
He moved on.
That night, if it was night, Kael heard it.
A song. Faint, beautiful, and impossibly sad.
He turned toward the sound, staggering through the ash. It came from a stone structure, buried halfway beneath the dunes. What had once been a temple, perhaps, now stood as a shrine to nothing.
The doorway was still intact. Carvings marked the frame with ancient runes, glowing softly.
Kael stepped inside.
The interior was dry, still, and deathly quiet. At the center of the ruined chamber sat a woman.
She was pale as salt, her hair the color of bone, her eyes closed. Her hands were folded in her lap. She sang without moving her lips, the melody rising as though summoned from the stones.
Kael approached slowly.
The woman's eyes snapped open.
"Another bearer of the fire," she said. Her voice echoed from every corner, though her mouth barely moved.
Kael said nothing.
"You do not yet know its name," she continued. "And still, you burn."
He furrowed his brow. "Who are you?"
"A memory," she replied. "Of those who tried and failed. Of those who could not tame the gift."
"What gift?"
She rose, gliding across the floor, stopping mere inches from him.
"The Ashen Flame," she whispered. "Born not of magic, but of pain. A power only the shattered may wield."
Kael's chest tightened. The ember inside him stirred, recognizing the words.
"You have begun to awaken," the woman said. "But power without purpose is ruin."
"I have a purpose," Kael said. "To burn the world that burned me."
The woman's expression saddened.
"Then you will become what you hate."
The ground trembled.
The walls cracked.
The woman vanished in a pillar of smoke, and Kael was left alone in the collapsing ruin.
Kael barely escaped the crumbling shrine.
Ash fell like snow from the broken ceiling as he hurled himself through the stone archway. The ground beneath him groaned. The structure, ancient and wounded, gave its last breath to the silence, then collapsed fully into dust.
He did not look back.
Instead, Kael walked.
And walked.
His mind echoed with the pale woman's warning.
"Power without purpose is ruin."
But wasn't purpose forged from pain? Wasn't that the truth of all those who rose from suffering?
He remembered again the lash. The cold of the iron manacles. The blood on the hands of those who smiled while he screamed.
He clenched his fists.
No, he thought. I will not become them.
But the flame stirred in protest as if hungry, as if doubting him.
The next morning, or whatever passed for morning, Kael came to a ridge.
There, the Wastes ended.
And something else began.
Below stretched a valley blackened by fire but alive with movement.
Dark tents. Campfires. Soldiers.
An army.
Kael knelt low and watched.
He saw their banners, the Black Thorn, a sigil of the Southern Dominion. Mercenaries. Raiders. Known for razing entire cities and enslaving the survivors.
Kael's hands curled into the earth.
They were the same men who had sold his sister. He had seen that banner as a child, blood-soaked and triumphant, when the slavers came.
The flame surged in his chest.
He could feel it wanting to break loose.
But Kael breathed, steady and slow.
Not yet.
He rose and turned away.
But not for long.
He found shelter beneath the broken skeleton of a twisted tree. From there, he could observe the camp safely.
Each night, he watched. Studied their patterns. Counted their numbers. There were more than fifty soldiers, some armored, some in rags, all armed.
He had no allies. No resources. No strength.
And yet…
Each time he remembered his sister's face, the ember within him flared.
On the third night, he crept closer. Silently. Shadow-born.
He passed the outer guards. Snuck through the tents.
And there, bound in chains near the largest fire, he saw them as slaves.
Men, women, and children.
Eyes hollow. Faces bruised. Limbs chained like animals.
Kael's heart shattered and boiled in the same beat.
The flame inside him roared.
But he did not act yet.
Not with rage.
This time… he would strike with purpose.
Kael waited until the wind howled a shriek through the Wastes that masked movement and scent. The mercenary camp curled into sleep, lulled by drink and fire. The guards, as always, grew lazy in the third hour past dusk.
He moved like smoke.
Through the shadows, around the firelight, Kael reached the slave pens.
A woman spotted him first. Her eyes widened with fear. He lifted a finger to his lips. She nodded slowly.
The chains were heavy. But Kael had sharpened a broken shard of iron he'd found days before, and now it slid between bolt and hinge, prying at weakness. With quiet urgency, he loosened shackles from wrists worn raw.
One child began to cry.
A man stifled it with his trembling hand.
Kael knew they wouldn't all make it.
But he would make sure they had the chance.
He worked for nearly an hour before a guard wandered too close.
Kael stood straight and calm.
The guard, half-drunk, blinked in confusion. "Who are you?"
Kael did not answer.
He reached out, grabbed the man's neck, and squeezed.
The guard struggled momentarily, violently, but something changed.
Kael's hands flared with heat.
It was not fire. Not light.
But pain.
The guard's flesh sizzled beneath Kael's grip. He screamed but only once.
Then fell limp.
Kael dropped him and stared at his own hands.
They were smoking.
The slaves recoiled.
Kael looked up.
"I won't hurt you," he said, unsure if it was true.
Then came the horn.
A sharp, thunderous blare.
The camp was awake.
The next moments were chaos.
Kael grabbed the nearest child and shouted, "Run!"
He turned to the others. "All of you follow the ridge, north! There's a tree. A dead one. Hide there!"
A whip cracked.
A blade flashed.
Kael dodged, caught the attacker's wrist mid-swing, and twisted. The bones shattered like dry wood.
Another came from behind.
This time, Kael spun and roared.
The flame burst from him.
It was not fire as the world knew it.
It was memory, anguish, and fury made into heat.
It struck the soldier and hurled him across three tents, his armor smoking.
The camp ignited, men scrambling, tents aflame, chaos erupting like stormfire.
Kael fought with rage but was guided now. Every movement had purpose. Every strike was vengeance sharpened by restraint.
He did not slaughter indiscriminately.
He struck the ones who whipped. The ones who laughed.
The ones who enjoyed cruelty.
He burned a path through the darkness.
And when it was over
When the camp lay smoldering, broken
Kael stood alone in the center.
Breathing hard.
His body was blackened with soot.
His chest burned like a forge.
And in the distance, the slaves vanished into the Wastes.
Free.
Kael collapsed beside the broken pyre.
The ground beneath him still smoked, warmed by the fury he had unleashed. His breath came in shallow gasps, and his skin trembled with residual heat. The flame inside had quieted, but it was not gone.
No longer just an ember.
Now, it pulsed.
It had grown.
He felt it in his bones, in his blood, and even in his thoughts.
But something else stirred too: fear.
The power had obeyed him tonight… barely. But for how long?
He remembered the way the guard's skin blistered beneath his hand. The scream. The smoke. The smell of burning flesh.
He remembered liking it.
Kael closed his eyes.
He did not want to become that. Not again. Never.
Yet he knew this power was no longer something he could leave behind. It was part of him. Born in torment. Fed by vengeance.
And unless he found a way to master it, it would consume him.
At dawn, he buried the dead.
Not all of them. There were too many. But he chose those whose eyes were still open. Those who had not died screaming.
He found one young man, no older than he had been when his village was destroyed. His armor was scorched, his blade shattered.
Kael stared at the body a long time.
He had not seen fear in this one's face, only confusion.
As if wondering why he had died.
Kael took the youth's blade, cleaned it, and strapped it to his back.
A reminder.
The fire inside him might burn, but his hands still held the choice.
As he departed the smoldering ruin, Kael felt the land shift.
The Wastes no longer rejected him.
The wind was still sharp, the sky still gray, but now the earth seemed to part for him. As if it knew what he was becoming.
At the ridge, he looked back once.
The camp was gone, ashes in the wind.
Kael turned north.
Toward the kingdom he had fled from.
Toward the king who had sold him.
Toward the empire that crushed the powerless.
He did not yet know how to fight an empire.
But he knew what it felt like to burn.
And now… the world would feel it too.