The mines of Black Hollow stank of blood, sulfur, and rot.
Kael Varian lay in the dark, a fresh gash running across his ribs, sticky with sweat and ash. Around him, men coughed black, rasping breaths. The ash dust never left you once it settled in your lungs. It buried itself, just like the broken bones and burnt corpses deeper in the pits.
He was seventeen, though he felt twice that. His muscles were rope-hard from years of swinging a pickaxe, his skin leathered by the choking air. But it was the eyes—sunken, watchful, tired—that aged him most. A slave long enough forgets softness. He learns silence, obedience, and hatred.
Hatred was the only thing Kael had never let go of.
A thunderous crack echoed down the tunnels. Another cave-in? No. The Overseer's voice followed, barking orders. That meant someone had tried to escape again. Stupid. You don't escape Black Hollow. You survive it—if the ash doesn't kill you first.
"Varian! On your feet!"
A boot slammed into his side. Kael groaned but rolled upright, catching the Overseer's cruel grin. That grin had haunted his dreams for years. Overseer Marn was a tall brute, his face permanently smeared with soot and sadism.
Kael stood slowly, gritting his teeth. "Here."
"Good. Time to dig. You're on Layer Thirteen."
That made Kael pause.
Layer Thirteen was forbidden. Too deep. Too unstable. Too… old.
"Didn't think anyone was allowed there," Kael muttered.
Marn grinned wider. "You are now."
Kael descended alone.
The deeper he went, the less he could breathe. The tunnels narrowed, the supports rotted, the torches hissed with strange blue fire. Whispers crept through the silence—not voices, not quite. More like thoughts that didn't belong to him.
He reached the dead-end chamber. His pickaxe vibrated in his hand, humming as if sensing something beyond the stone.
There, buried beneath ash and rubble, it pulsed.
A dull red glow. Like a heartbeat made of embers.
Kael dropped the pickaxe and knelt, brushing the ash away. It stung his skin. Burned cold.
The object buried beneath was a shard—like glass, but pulsing. Alive. It called to him. Not in words, but in hunger.
And he touched it.
The world split open.
Kael's scream never left his throat. His body was flayed by invisible flame. His memories flooded backwards—his mother's face, the whip on his back, the chains, the pain—burning away, leaving only raw essence.
A voice spoke, old and endless.
"You are broken. Good. Only shattered things can hold me."
Kael collapsed. When he opened his eyes, the glow had vanished. But something had entered him. He felt it in his blood, in his breath, in the way the world seemed… quieter. More fragile.
He picked up his hand.
It was smoking.
When Kael returned to the surface, the Overseer sneered. "Find anything?"
Kael looked up, eyes glowing faintly red in the dark.
He smiled, and said: "Yes."
Then Marn screamed as Kael's hand ignited with black flame.
The Overseer didn't die quickly. He burned, screaming in a voice that echoed across the mines.
And Kael walked into the night, free for the first time in his life.