There was no fire in the sky.
Only cold earth beneath him. Damp, gritty. Salt crusts. Chains rattled nearby.
Ashen opened his eyes to darkness—not the black of night, but the void of a mine tunnel sealed from light. The air stank of sweat, blood, and the bitter bite of raw salt.
He did not breathe. Not yet.
Because he remembered the moment he died.
The final strike of the Heavenblade, curved like a crescent moon, piercing his divine heart. His own disciple—his most trusted, most beloved—kneeling before the gods with Ashen's soul bleeding across the altar.
They cheered.
A god fell, and the world rejoiced.
But now… he lived.
Ashen's fingers twitched. The skin was raw, blistered. Not his own. Too small. Too thin.
"Not death," he thought. "Not reincarnation. Regression."
He was in the past. Far in the past—before divine cities crowned the skies, before temples ruled nations. The weight of time pressed against his mind like thunder held in a cage.
And his name… he had no name now.
No throne. No title. No god-killing spear.
Only silence.
"Hey!" A gruff voice barked nearby. Footsteps scraped on stone. "That one's breathing again. Thought he was gone."
Another voice replied, chuckling, "Rotten luck. We'll get another day of work out of him, at least."
Ashen felt rough hands yank him up. His bones groaned. A chain collar scraped against his throat, and the taste of rust filled his mouth. He did not resist.
He could not afford to.
They called him Ashen.
He did not choose the name. A slave overseer muttered it on the second day, staring at his soot-colored hair and eyes like burnt coal. It stuck. He did not speak to correct it.
Ashen learned quickly: speak little, bow low, never meet the overseers' eyes. The mine was run by the Temple of the Golden Throne—a minor theocracy in a fractured land, but still favored by a sleeping god.
The work was brutal. Shoveling salt veins with bloody hands. Dragging wagons heavier than men. Some slaves cried out for mercy. Others prayed.
Ashen watched them die just the same.
He spoke to no one.
But he listened.
On the fifth day, a girl stared at him from across the firepit.
She was younger. Mute. Her lips were scarred, sewn shut once, perhaps, and later healed. Her skin was pale from lack of sun, but her eyes—storm-grey and wide—shimmered with something he recognized:
Madness. Or prophecy.
She drew symbols in the dirt when she thought no one watched.
He recognized them.
Old sigils. Forgotten tongues. Words once whispered in prayers to gods long devoured.
When the others slept, Ashen crept close and finished one of her broken glyphs with his own hand.
Her eyes widened.
For the first time, Ashen felt something he hadn't in lifetimes.
A thread.
Not of friendship. Not yet.
But of fate.
That night, the whispers returned.
Not voices. Not clear.
Just… echoes.
"𝘙𝘦𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥…"
"𝘍𝘰𝘳𝘴𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘯…"
"𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳…"
Ashen sat alone in the mine's cold dark, listening to the echoes of unanswered prayers bleeding through the walls. Weak. Distant. But real.
They were not his. They belonged to the broken. The damned. The abandoned.
And they would feed him.
By the seventh night, he carved a sigil in blood beneath the sleeping slaves. A crude, simple thing. Just enough to draw in one sliver of divine rot left in the rocks.
He whispered no prayers.
He called no names.
He merely remembered.
And in remembering, he desecrated.
His soul burned.
Just for a moment.
Then the sigil dimmed… and vanished.
Ashen opened his eyes with a faint hiss. The collar on his neck remained. His body still ached.
But he felt it.
A flicker.
A parasite of divinity anchoring to his soul—not holy, not pure.
But Evil.