The ring of hammer against steel echoed across the sleeping village of Eldermere. Kael wiped the sweat from his brow, his muscles aching from a day's work at the forge. The glow of fiery metal flashed in his dark amber eyes as he worked on a new sword.
"You're getting better, boy," Master Orin, his instructor and village blacksmith, snarled. The old man was gruff but gentle, with fists as worn as the blades he forged. "But a sword is not just iron and flame. It's an extension of the man who wields it."
Kael nodded, despite having never drawn a sword in battle. He had spent his entire life in Eldermere as far as he could remember, adopted by Orin and raised in ignorance of his true birth. In his mind, he was nothing more than an orphan, a simple apprentice blacksmith.
Fate, however, had other plans for him.
That night, driving home, he encountered a woman in darkness near the village well. The figure turned about and revealed silver eyes that gleamed in the shadow beneath her cowl. "The time is upon you," she whispered.
A word was not yet uttered by Kael when the village bells clanged—a signal to alarm. Shrieks erupted in the streets as soldiers with the black crest of Malagar the Usurper burst in. The villagers hid for cover, but the soldiers were not here to pillage.
They were searching for someone.
"Run!" the woman spat, tugging on Kael's arm. "They are here for you!"
Kael's heart pounded. "Me? Why?"
"No time!" she insisted, pulling him away from the village as it burned. "You are the last of the Solarian blood—the rightful ruler of the throne!"
Kael's world was shattered in an instant. He had spent his entire life believing he was nobody. But now he was being hunted—for a life he had never known he had.
With the village burning behind him, Kael had no choice but to follow the mysterious woman into the unknown.
The journey of the last king began.