The stench of rust, blood, and damp ash clung to the air like a second skin.
Riven Kael crouched low behind the shattered husk of a fallen watchtower, his breath shallow, his fingers wrapped tight around the worn leather grip of a stolen dagger. The tower's ruins groaned with age above him, echoing the quiet creak of broken stone and twisted metal—remnants of a world that had tried and failed to resist the Abyss.
Beyond the ruined wall, the screams had finally stopped.
The scavenger camp was silent now. Too silent.
"They're all dead." The thought slid cold down his spine, heavier than fear. Riven hadn't seen who attacked. Only flashes. Shadows flickering through smoke. Screams choked by something wet and wrong. By the time he returned from his forage run, the camp had become a massacre site.
He swallowed hard and peeked over the edge of the rubble.
Bodies littered the clearing—some whole, most not. Fire danced along the edges of canvas tents, casting flickering shadows over the corpses. Ash snowed down in slow motion.
And standing in the middle of it all, back turned, was a man cloaked in crimson silk.
Not armor. Not rags. Ceremonial garb.
Riven's pulse spiked. He knew what this was. The slavers sold stories of them, laughing. Ascenders. People who entered the Tower, touched its madness, and came back twisted. They climbed, gained power, made pacts. And sometimes, when they came back down… they hunted.
This one was tall. His arms were bare, covered in black script that crawled like worms beneath the skin. A chain floated above his open palm—hovering, twitching like it was alive, dripping something black onto the earth.
Then, a sound.
Thmp.
A heartbeat—but not his.
The air trembled. The world bent inward.
Thmp.
Riven clutched his chest, gasping. Something burned beneath his skin. No—not burned. Awoke. A heat pulsed deep inside his ribs. A second heartbeat. One that didn't belong to him.
Then it spoke.
"Do you wish to live?"
The voice wasn't sound. It was a thought sharpened into a blade, a whisper buried under a scream.
"Say my name, child of blood. Open the chain. Release me."
Riven choked. His vision flickered. Around the crimson-cloaked man, the world rippled—and changed. Chains erupted from the air, millions of them, crisscrossing the camp, embedded in every body, every soul. They pulsed with memory, fate, agony.
One such chain, slick with rot and guilt, slithered toward him.
"No." Riven hissed.
But the chain touched him anyway.
And something snapped.
Memory, not his:
A battlefield. Endless. Screams like a thousand choirs. He stood atop a mountain of corpses, armor cracked, eyes black with galaxies. Wings of ash. A chain of light in each hand, dragging gods by the throat.
"I am the end of endings."
Riven's scream ripped through the silence.
He fell forward, clawing at his chest as crimson energy flared from within him—his veins igniting, his eyes blazing with symbols he'd never learned. Chains spiraled from his back like spectral wings before shattering into black mist.
The man in the center of the massacre turned, finally noticing him.
Their eyes met.
The Ascender smiled.
"Ah. So the Chainseer awakens."
End of Chapter 1