The dead didn't scream in Arvenmoor.
They only watched.
Kael crouched behind the half-toppled wall of an old bell tower, shrouded in ash and shadow. Firelight danced across the bones of the city, flickering in puddles of rainwater and soot. He could smell the burn — not just wood, but fabric, hair… flesh. The stink of another pyre.
Another child.
Another offering.
The square below had filled again. A crowd gathered like moths around the flame, desperation clinging to their ragged cloaks. Their eyes were hungry — not for justice, but for meaning. Something to blame. Something to fear more than their own emptiness.
At the center of the pyre, lashed to the pillar, stood a boy.
Barefoot. Maybe seven. He looked too small to hold a sin, too soft to carry damnation. His arms trembled, and though he tried to stand tall, his knees kept buckling beneath him. His smock had been torn open at the chest, revealing skin marred by something black — something wrong. The sigil curled over his heart like ink spilled in water, pulsing faintly.
Kael felt his own sigil stir in response, buried beneath his collarbone.
Not pain. Not even warmth.
Just… awareness.
A priest stepped forward, face masked in scorched silver, robes dragging through the soot.
> "This child bears the mark. Abyss-touched. Eclipse-born. A door through which the corruption flows."
His voice rose with the wind, each word practiced, ritualistic.
> "To burn the gate is to bar the darkness. We offer him to the Hollow Flame, that it may consume the sin before it becomes rot."
Kael couldn't look away from the boy's face.
He was crying now. Silently, yes, but the tears streaked down his soot-smeared cheeks, shining in the firelight. His mouth quivered, lips trying to form words.
> "Please..."
Just a breath. A whisper. Almost too soft to hear.
And the crowd didn't. Or didn't care. Their murmurs built, fed by fear, by hunger.
> "Look at the mark..."
"That thing's not human."
"I saw one twist, years ago. Became a beast."
"Burn it. It's mercy."
The boy sobbed once, sharp and sudden, and Kael's fingers clenched into fists.
He shouldn't feel anything. He couldn't afford to.
But still — that sound carved into him, deeper than fire.
The priest raised the torch.
> "By flame, we cleanse. By ash, we seal. Hollow Flame, guide us."
The fire kissed the wood. Oil caught. Smoke exploded upward.
Kael flinched as the heat surged toward the rooftops, watching the boy twist against his bindings. He screamed — not in terror, but agony, raw and animal.
> "Mother—!"
The crowd chanted louder to drown it out. To make themselves feel righteous.
Kael turned away, breath catching in his throat. The sigil beneath his collarbone throbbed, hard enough to ache.
It was feeding.
It always fed after the burnings.
---
He ran.
Through side alleys and bone-littered paths, through ruins too broken to hold names. His boots splashed through puddles that had once been cellars, then tombs, now both. Arvenmoor was a dead city, but it hadn't fallen quiet.
The dead still breathed here. Not in lungs, but in memories. Whispers in the stone.
Kael ducked beneath a collapsed archway, gasping, chest heaving. The scent of smoke clung to his coat. He could still hear the boy.
Not his words — just the sound. That final sound.
He pressed his back to the cold stone and slid down until he sat in the ash.
> You could've stopped it, a voice whispered in his head. You were close enough. You've stopped them before.
> But not this time.
> Because you were afraid. Because you wanted them to burn the wrong child instead.
His eyes stung. But he didn't cry.
He never cried anymore.
---
This wasn't the first time someone else had paid for his silence.
Three months ago, a girl with a shaved head and scarred hands had shouted his name when they dragged her before the pyre. "I'm Kael," she'd lied. Smiled while she said it. She thought it would give her an extra second of life. Or maybe she thought it would buy him one.
He let her burn.
"Survival," he told himself. Not cruelty. Just survival.
But tonight, he didn't feel alive.
---
As dusk slipped into night, Kael descended into the undercity — an old sewer line cracked open by age and abandonment. He found his usual hiding place beneath the rusted bones of a collapsed bridge, where water trickled and steam rose from old tunnels.
He lit no fire. Ate no food.
Just sat in the dark, hugging his knees, listening to the world choke on smoke above.
His thoughts drifted to the boy's eyes. To the scream. To the way the priest's voice shook when he said "guide us."
> They're afraid, he thought. Even the ones lighting the fires.
He traced his fingers over the skin above his heart. The mark pulsed again — slow, steady. Still.
But hungry.
It always wanted more when something died nearby.
Kael clenched his teeth. "I'm not a door," he whispered to the dark. "I'm not like them."
But the silence didn't answer.
The sigil only pulsed.
---
Above, bells rang once more.
Another fire. Another soul.
Arvenmoor didn't run out of children.
It only ran out of names.
Kael closed his eyes and tried to forget the sound of screaming.
He failed.
---
End of Chapter 1
Character Profile: Kael
Name: Kael
Age: 17–18
Gender: Male
Origin: Unknown — believed born during an eclipse in the Hollow Wastes
Current Status: Hiding in the ruins of Arvenmoor.
---
Appearance:
Lean and sharp-featured
Black hair, often hidden under a weatherworn hood.
Grey eyes, quiet and watchful.
A black sigil carved over his heart — jagged, shifting, and painful near death or Veil disturbances.