Chapter 1: The Unspoken Name
No surname. No legacy. No mother's embrace. No father's name.
That was how Arose began.
Born in the shadow of Fort Salem's grand towers, Arose came into the world not as a celebrated child of a great bloodline, but as an unwanted consequence of a union that should never have happened. In a society where bloodlines were everything—where women bred power and men barely held a place—he was a mistake. A stain. A male witch born out of wedlock.
Yet the moment he cried out for the first time, the wind shifted.
The matrons of Fort Salem felt the ripple in the air—a distortion of Work. The sound of his newborn wail echoed through the compound like a bell. They knew then that he was not ordinary. Still, to the world, he was nameless. Just "Arose," for he had arisen from nothing, unwanted but undeniably potent.
They cast him out from the heart of the fortress. He was raised not by the leading women of the great lines, but by the forgotten men—the male witches of the outer rings, those not fit for combat or leadership. Yet among them, Arose found teachers. Not women of voice and command, but men of study, experimentation, and resilience.
He learned not just the primary disciplines of Work, but also the lost, obscure, and discarded magics—the ones considered too inefficient or too strange to be used in war. While the female witches trained in formation spells and war songs, Arose delved into sound resonance, harmonic convergence, frequency channeling, and the weaving of raw tone into matter.
His voice became a weapon. His body, a tuning fork. His soul, a conduit.
By age 17, whispers surrounded him. Not only could he replicate most of the female witches' Work, but some of his own inventions—crafted through male-taught theory and field experimentation—outperformed theirs. The rumors stirred both admiration and unease. Arose was not supposed to be this powerful.
At 20, Fort Salem permitted him—begrudgingly—to test for access to the Mycelium Project. The mycelium, a vast network of underground spores, held the memories, knowledge, and even consciousness of countless witches who had died in service. Only select candidates were allowed to commune with it. It was an honor, but also a test. Some never returned. Others came back... changed.
But Arose saw it as a way forward. To finally belong. To prove that his gender and birth meant nothing in the face of what he could achieve.
And so, at 22, he volunteered.
The process began smoothly. His tuning harmonized with the spores. The voices of dead witches whispered ancient truths into his ears. He could feel centuries of knowledge surging into him. Rituals forgotten. Spells forbidden. Languages lost.
But then, the whispers grew louder. The harmony became discordant. The spores—once gentle—began to consume. And then Arose understood.
He was not a candidate. He was a sacrifice.
The women who had approved his entry never intended for him to return. A male with power rivaling theirs? No. He was fertilizer. The Mycelium fed on powerful souls, and his was ripe.
But Arose did not surrender.
As the spores dragged his soul into the fungal network, he did something no one had done before. He used his core—his soul-tuned resonance—and screamed. Not a scream of terror, but a Work. A Soul Work. So powerful it tore the frequency of his essence from the spore's grasp. A burst of raw, unshaped magic—his last spell.
He did not know what he had done.
But then he woke.
Cold, weak, and aching. In a body not his own.
The air reeked of smoke and garbage. Sirens echoed in the distance. A rusty ceiling fan creaked above him.
Gotham.
He was not dead. But this world... this was not Fort Salem.
And he was not Arose anymore. Not exactly.
Yet the name still echoed in his bones.
He had escaped death. He had escaped Fort Salem. But what awaited him in this chaotic, violent world was unknown.
One thing was certain: his magic—his Work—was not gone. Not completely.
And even here, it would rise again.