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Chapter 1: Shards of the Sky
The first one fell like a star made of screams.
It tore across the midnight sky, trailing violet fire and warping clouds into spirals. When it struck the earth, it didn't explode—it sang. A dissonant hum, a hymn in a language no human had ever spoken, rang out across the plains of the broken world.
That night, the world changed. Again.
The sky never recovered from the cataclysm. Where once were constellations, now only the Ring of Ten hung overhead—ten shifting symbols orbiting a tear in space, pulsing slowly like a dying heart. The people below began to whisper of Law Shards, fragments of the heavens, fallen embers from the throne of the gods.
Some were beautiful. Others, cursed.
And those who touched them… changed.
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Two Weeks Later — Outskirts of the Craterlands
Kael Varin gritted his teeth as the fever spiked again. He collapsed to his knees in the dusty red grass, clutching his chest where the shard had burned its way into his flesh.
> "I shouldn't be alive," he whispered.
But the shard wasn't killing him. It was binding to him.
The fragment—no larger than a dagger hilt—still pulsed faintly beneath his skin, embedded in his sternum. Not metal. Not stone. Something beyond. Something that whispered of fire, memory, and old rage. The moment he touched it, the world had blurred—his mind filling with symbols, storms, and visions of titanic figures wreathed in elemental glory.
He had seen ten thrones.
Nine were awakening. One stood empty, its sigil broken.
> "The Law of Flame," he breathed, the words not quite his own. "It... chose me."
Kael remembered the crater—the moment he saw the shard lodged in the earth like a meteorite blade. Others had tried to take it. They were ash now.
He had survived. Not by strength. Not by destiny.
Something inside him had matched the shard.
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That night, as the cold crept across the Craterlands, Kael stood atop a bluff and looked out over the blackened plains. Far in the distance, he saw the light again: another shard falling—this one glowing with deep green and gold.
> "Another Law finds its vessel," said a voice behind him.
Kael spun around, readying the strange fire now living in his palm. But the figure before him didn't flinch.
He was cloaked in smoke, skin bronze and cracked like magma. His eyes burned, literally, with golden flame. The air shimmered around him as if resisting his presence.
> "You bear the Mark of Ignarion," the being said. "You are now more than flesh. You are Flamebound."
Kael opened his mouth to speak, but words failed.
The figure stepped closer and pressed a hand to Kael's chest. The shard pulsed, and the air ignited around them in a swirling dance of ember and light.
> "I am Ignarion. Law King of Flame. You carry my shard. That makes you my vessel—and possibly my successor."
Kael staggered.
> "Successor? I—I'm just a scavenger. A nobody."
Ignarion's face was unreadable, but his voice was solemn.
> "And yet, the Law chose you. The Balance has broken. One Law King has fallen to corruption. The others begin to wake. And the Devourer stirs in the void between Laws."
> "The... Devourer?"
Ignarion looked up toward the Covenant Seal.
> "He who unmade the Eleventh Law. The one even we fear."
Then he turned, beginning to fade into smoke and flame.
> "When the tenth shard falls, the world will either be reborn—or consumed."
> "Wait—what do I do?" Kael called after him.
The Law King paused only once more, his voice distant as a dying star.
> "Survive the Awakening. And don't trust the shadows."
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Far away, beneath the ocean's deepest trench, a pale figure stirred.
Another shard had found its home.
The Law of Tides was waking.
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End of Chapter 1
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