The world above was colder than Kael remembered.
He stood at the mouth of the mine, wind scraping across his skin like broken glass. For the first time in ten years, he saw the sky—not that it was beautiful. The heavens above Black Hollow were permanently choked in layers of ash and storm, a ceiling of soot that turned the sun to a dull orange smear.
Still, it was sky. It wasn't chains.
And that was enough.
Kael took a step forward and winced. His bare feet bled against the gravel path winding away from the mine. The fire that had erupted from him in the pit hadn't left him untouched. His veins glowed faintly beneath the skin—like magma behind glass. His right arm, especially, throbbed with a dangerous heat, blackened up to the elbow like cooled obsidian.
He clenched his fist. The fire answered.
His power was real.
But it was hungry.
The forest beyond the slave camp was a twisted thing. The trees, starved of sunlight, had grown sideways and sickly. Their leaves were black, bark gnarled. The ash fall covered everything like snow.
Kael moved carefully through the gloom. Each step felt surreal—freedom still tasted false in his mouth. At any moment, he expected the collars to reappear, the whips to crack, Marn's laughter to echo from behind.
But Marn was dead. Burnt to nothing. Kael had made sure of it.
He smiled at the memory.
It wasn't joy. It was satisfaction, like the slow exhale after holding your breath for too long. Kael had spent years dreaming of that man's death. He had expected it to feel more triumphant. Instead, it felt… necessary. Like killing a rat before it chewed through your throat.
Hours passed. His body screamed for rest, but his mind burned brighter.
The shard—the Sovereign Ash, he had named it—still pulsed inside him. He could feel it, curled like a serpent around his soul. It whispered in emotions rather than words. Fury. Hunger. Pride. It didn't want to control him. No. It offered him power. A pact.
Break the world that broke you.
He stopped at a shallow creek, filthy and slow-moving, and collapsed beside it. He cupped water to his lips, wincing at the taste of metal and rot. He hadn't eaten since the day before. Hunger clawed at him, but pain kept it distant.
He stared at his reflection.
His face was different. Not in shape—but in presence. His eyes, once dull grey, now shimmered with faint red light. His skin had darkened slightly, the veins beneath blackened like ink. He no longer looked like a slave.
He looked like something becoming.
"Thirsty?"
Kael froze.
The voice was soft, but wrong. It had come from behind him, too close, too quiet.
He turned slowly, already reaching for the fire in his veins.
She stood no more than ten paces away.
A woman—tall, wrapped in a grey hooded cloak, hair white as snow and eyes… not human. Not entirely. They shimmered like polished obsidian, reflecting nothing.
Kael said nothing. He stood, letting a flicker of ashfire dance along his fingers.
The woman raised a hand slowly. "Easy, child. I'm not your enemy."
He narrowed his eyes. "No one follows a man into cursed woods unless they are."
Her lips curled into something between a smile and a smirk. "You're not just a man anymore, are you?"
Kael tensed.
"How do you know that?"
"I saw the fire," she said simply. "From the ridge. It's not every day someone burns a man alive with Sovereign ash."
Kael's mouth went dry.
She knew.
And still, she wasn't afraid.
"What do you want?" he asked quietly.
"To offer you a choice," she said. "You've touched something forbidden. Ancient. You can't go back to what you were. The fire will consume you if you don't learn to command it."
Kael hesitated.
"And you'd teach me?"
"I can teach you to survive it. But you must understand—there is a price."
Kael stared at her.
Everything had a price. He knew that already.
"I've paid enough."
"No," she said, stepping closer. "You've only begun."
She introduced herself as Eira. No surname. No title.
She led Kael deeper into the forest, moving like smoke between trees. He followed, unsure whether it was instinct or madness that kept his feet in motion. Eira spoke little. When she did, it was in riddles, hints. She knew about the Ash Realms. About the gods that had died. About the fragments they left behind.
The Sovereign Ash was one such fragment, she said. A piece of something that had once ruled gods. Lost for millennia.
"You weren't meant to find it," she told him. "And yet, here you are."
Kael laughed bitterly. "Slaves don't get meant for anything."
Eira glanced back. "Then maybe it's time that changed."
They arrived at a ruin near midnight.
A circle of standing stones, ancient and cracked, surrounding a pool of still water that shimmered despite the darkness. Kael felt the air vibrate around it. The stones whispered, the same way the shard had whispered.
"This is where your training begins," Eira said.
"Training?" Kael arched an eyebrow. "So I can what—control the fire? Become a mage?"
"No," she said. "So you don't become a monster."
Kael's laughter died in his throat.
He looked again at his hands. At the blackened skin. At the pulsing veins. At the power curled beneath.
Too late for that.