The flames didn't hurt anymore.
Kael Ardyn lay motionless on the cold marble floor of the university's west wing, the firelight dancing across the shattered glass and blood-slick tiles. Smoke curled around his face like a lover's final breath. Somewhere in the distance, alarms wailed, but no one came. No one ever came for him.
He blinked slowly, vision flickering between the present and the past—between betrayal and the moment it all began.
They had locked the doors. His so-called friends. His research partners. The ones who smiled with him, drank with him, and then—when his discovery threatened their power—turned on him like wolves.
He had uncovered something ancient. Something buried beneath the layers of myth and madness. A theory of soul resonance, of reincarnation not as a cycle, but as a weapon. And for that, they burned him.
Kael coughed, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. His body was broken. His mind frayed. But his will—his will was iron.
"I'll come back," he whispered to the fire. "Even if I have to crawl through the void itself."
And something heard him.
The flames around him stilled. The smoke thickened, then twisted, forming a shape—no, a presence. A voice, ancient and genderless, echoed in the space between his dying heartbeats.
"You would trade your soul for vengeance?"
Kael didn't hesitate. "Yes."
"You would burn the world that burned you?"
"Yes."
"Then rise, Ashborn. Your throne awaits."
The fire surged. Kael screamed—not in pain, but in defiance—as his body was consumed. His last breath was not a plea, but a promise.
---
🌑
He awoke to silence.
No alarms. No fire. No pain.
Just cold earth beneath his back and the scent of ash in the air.
Kael sat up slowly, blinking against a sky he didn't recognize—violet and gold, with twin moons hanging like watchful eyes. Around him stretched a forest of petrified trees, their bark blackened and cracked like charcoal. The wind carried whispers, and the ground pulsed faintly beneath his fingers.
He looked down at his hands.
They weren't his.
Slimmer. Paler. Marked with faint runes that shimmered when he flexed his fingers. He stumbled to a pool of still water nearby and stared at the reflection.
A stranger stared back. Young—maybe seventeen. Silver hair. Eyes like molten iron. And a scar across his throat, as if someone had tried to silence him once.
A memory surfaced. A name.
Prince Kael of House Vireon. Executed for treason.
He laughed, bitter and hollow. "Of course. They didn't just kill me. They made me into a traitor in another world."
But this time, he wasn't alone. This time, he had power.
And he would burn the throne of stars to the ground.