The fire hadn't burned out by morning.
Kael stared into the still-flickering embers, wondering why they hadn't gone cold. The wood had vanished, consumed without a trace, but the heat remained—quiet, watchful. Like it waited for him to move first.
He didn't like how it made him feel.
The cloak he wore itched at his neck, the bloodstains from the last soldier who'd worn it having long dried into the fabric. He hadn't slept—not really. Dreams had clawed at him every time his eyes closed. The altar, the priests, the word Herald echoing over and over in voices that didn't belong to any man.
He stood.
The tower felt smaller in the daylight. Like the night had stretched it, twisted it, made it something else. Now it was just stone and rust. A broken thing. Like him.
Kael wrapped the cloak tighter and stepped outside. The air was cold and thin, but it no longer bit into his skin. The strange warmth inside him never faded. Not fully. Not since the ritual.
Not since he survived.
The path forward was half-eaten by snow and tangled roots, but he followed it anyway, moving with careful steps. The mountain sloped down into a ravine choked with black trees. The sun didn't reach far here. The deeper he walked, the quieter the world became.
No birds. No wind.
Just the sound of his boots in the frost.
Then the pull started again.
It wasn't a direction. Not exactly. More like a weight in his chest. Like the thing inside him—whatever had awakened during the ritual—was remembering something, and dragging his body along with it.
Kael hated how natural it felt.
A mile or two passed. Maybe more. He didn't stop to measure. The trees shifted—taller now, with bark like ash and branches that bent toward him as he passed. The road leveled out, curving between two ancient statues nearly toppled by time. Each one was cracked down the middle, their faces erased by weather or something far worse.
Kael paused.
He recognized the shape. A sigil carved into the base, barely visible beneath moss and dirt.
A broken flame.
He'd seen it once in the scrolls of Ashmoor—an outlawed symbol. The mark of a forgotten order that had once stood against the Empire and been burned from the histories.
The Oathbound.
He didn't know what it meant that he was here, now. But the symbol made the thing inside him stir again.
He didn't like that either.
Further down the road, the trees thinned into a clearing.
And there, kneeling beside a shattered stone marker, was someone else.
Kael froze.
The figure didn't move. Cloaked, hood drawn, hands stained with something dark. Blood or ink, he couldn't tell. But there was something wrong with them—something in how they didn't breathe, didn't shift, didn't fit.
Then they spoke.
"You walked through fire, didn't you?"
The voice was neither male nor female. Smooth as a whisper, but heavy like it knew secrets he hadn't spoken aloud.
Kael didn't respond. His hand reached for the rusted blade he'd taken from the tower. Useless maybe, but better than nothing.
"I felt it," the stranger continued, still kneeling. "The world flinched. Something old moved. You woke it."
Kael took a step back. "Who are you?"
The figure rose slowly. Not fluid. Not stiff. Just… wrong.
"Someone who remembers what the gods tried to forget."
Kael hated riddles.
"You're with the priests?" he asked, gripping the sword tighter. "Ashmoor?"
The hood shook.
"No. The priests are scavengers digging through graves they don't understand. I serve something older. And so do you, now."
Kael stepped forward. "I didn't choose anything."
The figure turned its head, and Kael finally saw their face—or the lack of it. Where eyes should've been, there were only hollows. Empty. Shadowed. The mouth never moved when they spoke.
"You bled on the altar. That was enough."
"I should've died."
"You did."
Kael's blood turned cold.
Before he could speak again, the figure raised a hand—and the ground breathed.
Roots burst from the soil around him, curling like serpents, reaching not to bind him… but to touch him. They brushed his ankles, his wrists. They felt curious.
The fire inside Kael flared.
He shouted, slashing the blade in panic. The roots recoiled. The figure stepped back.
"You are still fighting it. Good," they said, voice unchanged. "The ones who surrender burn too quickly."
"What are you talking about?" Kael snarled.
The figure gestured around them.
"This road you walk—the Ashwake Path—was once sacred. When the Oathbound still drew breath, this was the spine of their rebellion. You feel it, don't you? In your blood. In your bones."
"I feel nothing but death."
"Exactly. That's where it begins."
Kael took another step, but the figure was already fading, like smoke unraveling in the wind.
"Wait—what do you mean begins?!" he shouted.
But they were gone.
Only the marker remained, cracked down the center. Beneath it, something glinted in the snow.
Kael knelt and brushed it clear.
A pendant. Black iron. Shaped like a broken flame.
The same sigil as the statues.
He turned it over in his hand. The metal hummed, just slightly. Enough to make the scar on his chest—where the blood had poured into the altar—ache in response.
It was connected.
Everything was.
He didn't sleep that night. Not after what he saw.
The forest didn't return to silence. It watched him.
Eyes in the branches. Footsteps that never approached. Echoes without source.
And the dreams…
He saw cities swallowed by roots. Towers bending under the weight of stars. Children born with mouths full of ash, singing songs in languages no living soul should know.
He woke with his own name on his lips, but it sounded wrong. Like it belonged to someone else.
Kael gritted his teeth and kept walking.
There was no turning back.
Not anymore.