The wind carried the scent of ash.
Kael stood alone on the edge of the ruined village, a broken silhouette against the fading dusk. The sky above bled hues of orange and gray, like bruises stretched across heaven. Smoke still curled from what was once a home — his home — now reduced to little more than rubble and memory.
He didn't cry.
He couldn't.
Tears belonged to those who had something left to mourn. Kael had lost everything. Not just the orphanage that took him in. Not just the makeshift family of misfits and survivors who promised they'd never leave him. He had lost the final shreds of belief — the hope that loyalty meant something in a world built on betrayal.
They had left him.
Not during the fire, but before it truly began.
And they hadn't looked back.
---
The attack had come at dawn, swift and ruthless. Bandits? No — more organized. Soldiers, perhaps, or worse. They claimed the village held a threat. Some said it was because of him. Whispers that Kael was cursed. Marked. Different.
And maybe he was.
Even now, his left arm throbbed — the strange, spiraling mark etched into his skin glowing faintly beneath the torn sleeve. A sigil no one had seen before, that had appeared the night he turned sixteen… the night everything changed.
He had kept it hidden.
And still… they had known.
---
A gust of wind kicked up dust and ash, stinging his eyes. He turned away, pulling the hood tighter around his face. The cold had settled in now, though it was summer. Or perhaps it was just the kind of chill that came when you realized you truly had no one.
A memory flickered, sharp and sudden.
> "No matter what happens, we'll stick together. Right, Kael?"
Lira's voice. Bright. Full of life. Full of lies.
He clenched his jaw. His fingers curled into fists, knuckles white.
> "You're not like us," one of the elders had once whispered. "That mark… it's dangerous."
Funny, how those who promised to protect him were the first to run when the fire started.
Funny, how even those he saved had chosen to save themselves when it truly mattered.
---
Kael walked forward, passing the skeletal remains of a wooden post — the very one he was chained to when the village burned. The flames had spared him, somehow. No one had come back to check if he lived. No one had dared.
He had unshackled himself with a broken shard of metal and a mind full of rage.
Now, he walked with silence as his only companion, the mark on his arm pulsing faintly with each step.
Where would he go?
He didn't know.
But he did know this:
He would never forget.
The people who left him behind had made a mistake — not because they abandoned him.
But because they thought he would never rise again.
---
As the final light of day dipped below the horizon, Kael turned toward the wilderness beyond the ashes.
Behind him was the life that betrayed him.
Ahead… was the path that would awaken something far greater than anyone had dared imagine.
And for the first time in days, Kael allowed himself a single word:
> "Goodbye."
To the boy they left behind.
To the boy he no longer was.