The smoke of the forest still clung to Alonso's cloak when
the ambush struck.Kael had warned him: "Power breeds attention."He hadn't
realized how soon. They came at dusk mercenaries draped in gray armor, faces hidden behind iron masks. Arrows hissed through the trees; Kael's magic flared in reply, a wall of flame roaring between trunks. For a heartbeat, the forestbecame daylight.
"Run!" Kael shouted. "I won't leave you!" "You will obey!"
A shadow crossed the firelight something blacker than night,alive with runes of smoke. Varyn's magic. The shadow speared through Kael's chest. The old mage staggered but stayed standing long enough to hurl his staff
to Alonso.
"Live, Flameborn!" Then the fire consumed him.
Alonso screamed and unleashed a burst of power so fierce
that the trees themselves ignited. But grief blinded him. Hands seized him from behind. A blow to the head turned his world to darkness.He awoke in chains. The air stank of salt and iron.A slave galley rolled beneath him, creaking on gray waves.
"Welcome back to the land of the living," a harsh voice
said. A scarred man with dead eyes grinned at him. "Name's Captain Thorne.
You're my property now."
Alonso's wrists were bound in rune-steel. His fire couldn't
break it. He stared through the bars of his cage at the horizon, where storm clouds gathered. Again a slave, he thought. But not the same boy.
Days turned into torment. The whip, hunger, labor below
deck. The guards whispered that they were bound for the pits of Vaelra, where men were sold to die as gladiators.
At night, Alonso felt the faint flicker of his power whisper
beneath his skin. The mark still burned, patient as an ember beneath ash."I will not die in chains," he swore to the sea.