.
The world didn't die screaming. It died in silence—the kind that comes between a breath and a blade's descent. One moment, the Veil stood, an unseen wall separating humanity from the spirits. Then, it was gone and the spirits fell upon the earth like rain.
Tresh remembered the way his father's hands had tightened around his shoulders, the way his little sister's laughter had cut off mid-breath as the ground split open. He remembered the things that crawled out—spirits, yes, but not the kind from bedtime stories. These were hungry. These were wrong.
Ten years later, the earth was a graveyard of the old world. Rivers ran backwards. Wolves with too many eyes prowled the ruins. And the storms—oh, the storms sang as they ripped flesh from bone. Humanity's last defense? The very monsters that ruined them.
"Spirit-bonding".
A pact. A curse. A last hope.
The night before the bonding ceremony Tresh lay awake in the orphanage attic, fingers tracing his mother's pendant—a cracked stone that hummed when the wind blew just right. Tomorrow, he turned sixteen. Tomorrow, he'd stand before the Spirit Stone and pray something found him worthy.
Most kids got one spirit—if they were lucky. The strong ones got elemental beasts spirits or shadow wraiths that were demonic spirits. The weak? A flicker of mist, barely visible. A Low-Bond, doomed to die in the Wastes before they ever reached Middle-Bond.
Tresh expected nothing then she appeared. A fire fairy, hovering at the foot of his bed. Her form was faint—translucent at the edges, her glow weak. A Low-Bond spirit, maybe Mid-Low at best. But her eyes burned with something deeper. Something old.
"You…" Her voice was embers crumbling to ash. "You're… different." Tresh held his breath. This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. Bonding was a ceremony, a ritual—not some spirit sneaking into his room like a thief.
Before he could speak, the air crackled and a Lightning Phoenix slammed through the window, wings arcing with blue-white fury. Mid-High Bond. Strong enough to make Tresh's teeth ache. "Mine," it hissed, tail lashing. The fairy bared her teeth. "He called to me first." "A weakling like you doesn't deserve—" Their voices drowned in static as both lunged for him.
Tresh's world exploded. Fire and lightning seared through his veins. His back arched off the bed as his skin glowed white-hot. The spirits writhed inside him—not merging, not yielding, but clawing for dominance. And then silence,The fairy and the phoenix hovered in his chest, stunned. "…Impossible," the phoenix whispered.
Tresh gasped, his hands shaking. Two bonds. Two spirits. The fairy stared at him like he was a storm given flesh. And then she smiled.
"Oh," she murmured. "This changes everything."
SECRETS IN THE ASHES ( Efrit's Truth) The fairy's glow flickered, her form wavering like a dying candle. She reminisced how once, her flames could've scorched cities. Once, her name had been whispered in fear. (Efrit.) The strongest fire spirit to ever exist. Now? She was a ghost of herself. A legend thought extinct and Tresh unwillingly, impossibly had just become her last hope to regain her past glory and maybe surpass it.
AUTHOR _
-feel free my dear readers to leave a comment behind of what you initially think about the start of my novel.