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Chapter 4 - Ash and Chains 

The first thing he noticed was the heat.

Not the kind that warmed.

This heat scraped the inside of his lungs, turned every breath into ash, and clung to his skin like a curse.

The air shimmered with dry cruelty. The wagon wheels groaned under the weight of its captives, creaking across sun-cracked stone and scorched dirt.

Ahead loomed a fortress of obsidian and hate.

Blackstone Keep — though he didn't know its name.

But the fear in the air told him everything.

The walls weren't just tall — they were jagged, spiked like the ribs of some long-dead god fossilized in black.

The chained were silent.

Slaves shuffled forward, manacled and hollow. Their gazes fixed on nothing. Their steps were not walks, but the weight of survival.

He moved among them, wrists shackled, throat dry.

Every jolt of the cart rattled the iron around his limbs. It didn't feel like metal anymore.

It felt like it had fused to bone.

Shame made flesh.

He didn't know how long he'd been here.

Didn't know his name.

Didn't know who he was before the chains.

Only that something pulsed under his skin.

A burning brand beneath his chest.

Not visible — but alive.

Not pain. Not quite.

Something waiting.

Beside him walked the beastkin from the caravan — the one with snow-blood hair and eyes that burned too bright for this wasteland.

She hadn't said a word since the desert.

But he could feel it.

The same stillness from before.

Not fear.

Surveillance.

Like she wasn't just watching him — but weighing him.

"Welcome to Blackstone," a guard sneered, his voice thick with sun and cruelty.

"Where ash feeds the strong... and buries the weak."

No one laughed.

Not even the guards.

They were processed like livestock.

Tattooed. Branded. Measured.

Stripped of names. Given numbers.

He was Eighty-Eight.

She was Eighty-Nine.

When the guards bickered over a cracked slate and faded ink, there was a rare pause in the chaos.

He turned to her.

Their eyes met.

Just for a moment.

And in that fragile breath of stillness — something in her gaze softened.

Not sympathy.

Not pity.

Recognition.

"Still chasing stars?" she murmured, barely audible.

"Even in chains?"He managed a dry smile.

"What gave me away?"

"The eyes," she said. "You still look for stars."

A shout snapped the moment like a whip.

Guards barked orders in a language he didn't understand.

One slammed a spear butt into her ribs.

She grunted, snarled — but didn't lash out.

Another struck him with the flat of a blade.

The blow rocked him, set his teeth ringing — but he stayed upright.

He wouldn't fall.

He didn't know why.

He didn't know who he was.

But something inside whispered, again.

Not yet.

Not here.

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