The cold wind carried whispers down the narrow alleys of a ruined city—some said it was cursed, others that the world had simply moved on without it. Among the crumbled stone and ash-covered streets, a lone figure stood atop a fractured stairwell, staring into the hollowed remains of what had once been a cathedral. His golden eyes, glinting with eerie light, scanned the darkness as if it might answer the questions clawing at his soul.
Asher Vale gripped his left wrist. The blue fabric wrapped tightly around it was worn and frayed at the edges, but it served its purpose. It hid what he was. More importantly, it hid what he bore.
The sigil.
All Sigilbound bore a mark on their left wrist—unique symbols that manifested upon their Awakening. They were proof of power. Proof of their right to wield the world's invisible threads and bend reality to their will. Most people lived their lives hoping to receive one. Sigils gave a person a place in society, a class, a calling, a future.
But Asher's sigil was different. Forbidden. Silent. Eclipsed.
He'd known from the moment it burned into his skin. The twisting shape—neither rune nor beast—had formed with no one else around, no Catalyst Stone, no Arcane Conduit. And it came with a cost.
He'd died the moment it appeared.
Or at least, the version of him from Earth did.
---
It had been a rainy night—slate gray clouds hanging low above the city skyline, spitting rain like venom. Asher Vale had been just another face in the crowd, blending into the gray life of corporate routines, spreadsheets, and coffee-stained ties. Twenty-four years old, underpaid, overworked, and unnoticed.
He didn't remember what had pulled him into the alley. Maybe a scream, maybe a shadow. But the man who stabbed him hadn't hesitated. Cold steel slipped between his ribs as if seeking the warmth he never knew he lacked. Blood painted the wall behind him in a dark, flowering bloom.
The last thing he saw was the glint of lightning reflected in a puddle—and then darkness.
And then…
Voices. Whispers. Not from the world he'd known.
"One who is broken may carry what is forbidden..."
"He's unmarked. No... wait... that's not right."
"He's not from here."
And just like that, he awoke in a body that felt both foreign and familiar. Naked under starlight, surrounded by ruins and the pulsing ache of something ancient burning beneath his skin. His left wrist glowed with a soft silver fire, curling into a sigil that resisted language or logic. It wasn't found in any Arcane Codex. No Seeker or Scribe could read it. Because it didn't belong.
It shouldn't exist.
And it was his.
---
The wind shifted, tugging at Asher's coat. He stepped down from the ruined stairway and made his way into the hollow cathedral. Ivy had overtaken much of the stone, and the roof was caved in, letting shafts of moonlight stream through like heaven's spears. He remembered this place—or rather, the boy whose body he now inhabited remembered.
This had been a temple once. A sanctuary for Sigilbound exiles.
He walked slowly through the debris-littered nave, past shattered benches and an altar cracked in two. His fingers brushed the remains of a mural etched into the floor: a wheel of fire surrounded by twelve sigils. The twelve known schools of Binding—Flame, Ice, Wind, Stone, Flesh, Shadow, Light, Mind, Spirit, Iron, Beast, and Thread.
But his wasn't among them.
A pulse of warmth tickled his wrist, and for a moment, the blue fabric flared faintly. Asher froze, glancing down.
The sigil was reacting again.
Ever since he woke in this world, it had moments like these. As if it was... watching. Breathing. Aware.
"I know you're hiding something," he muttered under his breath, tightening the fabric. "But I'll find out what."
He sat down on the broken altar and drew from his coat a worn, leather-bound journal. It had belonged to the previous Asher Vale—this world's Asher. The boy whose body he'd inherited. The boy who had died during a failed Awakening Ritual two years ago.
He flipped through the pages, reading the shaky notes and half-mad scribbles. Most of them were about the sigil, about how he felt watched, marked. About dreams.
About voices.
Asher's grip tightened.
He heard them too.
Not just at night. Even now, as the wind curled through the cathedral like breath through a dying lung, he could hear them murmuring at the edges of perception.
Not words. Not yet. But intent.
He had the growing suspicion that the sigil wasn't just a mark. It was a prison. Or a key. Maybe both.
---
Far beyond the ruined temple, in the city of Ardent Hollow, a bell tolled—soft and distant.
Asher looked up.
It was time.
He slipped the journal back into his coat and stepped outside. The wind felt colder now, as if the world knew he was about to rejoin it. He pulled the hood of his cloak up and began his walk down the cracked stone road.
Ardent Hollow was a place where secrets died in silence. Once a thriving center for Sigilbound academia, it had fallen into ruin after the Eclipse War. The war had ended five years ago, but its scars still bled across the city in the form of shattered towers and haunted slums.
And still, the Academy remained.
The Bastion of Threads.
It was where all Sigilbound went to train, to register, to be judged.
But Asher wasn't going to be judged.
He was going to infiltrate.
A friend—or what passed for one in this world—had managed to forge him papers under the identity of a low-class Threadbinder named Kael Vintor. A throwaway name. A throwaway class. No one would pay attention to another Threadbound initiate in a school of war mages and alchemic prodigies.
That's what he was counting on.
Because within the Bastion's libraries and dungeons were records and relics even the ruling Houses feared to touch. He needed answers. Answers about the sigil. About the voices. About why this world had chosen him.
And what it expected from him.
---
By the time he reached the city's outer wall, twilight had stained the sky in shades of violet and ash. Ardent Hollow's gates loomed ahead—rusted, half-collapsed, guarded only by two men in threadbare armor who barely glanced at him before waving him through.
No one cared who entered anymore. The war had seen to that.
He kept his head low, slipping past torch-lit alleys and graffiti-covered stone. The city pulsed with a kind of hungry life—merchants, drunkards, ex-soldiers with glass eyes and broken sigils on their skin. The scent of burning tallow and spoiled grain filled the air.
And just above it all, towering in the distance like a dagger aimed at the stars, was the Bastion.
Built atop a cliff that overlooked the sea, its black spires twisted like bone, and its great iron gates shimmered faintly with Arcane seals. Beyond those walls lay the heart of power, and the rot that came with it.
Asher's breath fogged in the night air. He pulled the forged letter from his coat and walked toward the checkpoint.
A Sentinel—an automaton carved from obsidian and powered by a visible, flickering sigil in its chest—stepped forward.
"State your name and purpose."
He held up the letter.
"Kael Vintor. Initiate. Here for orientation."
The Sentinel took the letter, scanned it with an eye that glowed blue, then returned it.
"Confirmed. Proceed. Tampering with Bastion records is a high crime punishable by soul-binding."
"I'll keep that in mind," he muttered.
The gates opened with a groan.
And Asher Vale—Sigilbound of the Eclipsed Mark, bearer of the forbidden symbol—stepped into the lion's den.