The hiss of scorched metal echoed through the ruins. Flames licked at the jagged walls of what had once been a Nexus outpost, now reduced to ash and smoke. Beneath a cracked dome of transparent alloy, Kael Drayven gasped back to consciousness.
His body trembled, muscles seizing with each breath. He lay half-buried in debris, shattered consoles and splintered steel pressing against him like the weight of a dying world. Somewhere in the haze, emergency klaxons wailed a final time before cutting to silence.
But it wasn't the devastation around him that burned in his mind, it was the fire within.
Kael's hand moved to his chest, and he felt the unnatural heat radiating from just below the skin. He tore open the remains of his scorched tunic, revealing a faintly glowing sigil pulsing beneath his sternum. Lines of molten-orange energy traced veins outward like rivers of flame, centering on a smoldering shard embedded in his flesh: the Ember Core.
"What… is this?" he croaked, voice raw and foreign.
He remembered the explosion, the void rift tearing open during the experiment, scientists screaming, shadows erupting from the breach. He remembered reaching for his sister, Lyra, as she was pulled into the rift. And then, nothing.
Now he was alone, alive when he shouldn't be, with a relic of impossible power bonded to his soul.
A sudden movement jolted him upright. Figures moved through the smoke, their outlines sleek and mechanical. Crimson lenses glowed from beneath polished helms, Syndicate Enforcers.
"Subject located," one intoned. "Ember Core has activated."
Panic surged. Kael stumbled to his feet, vision doubling. His instincts screamed. The Enforcers raised their arms, forearm-mounted cannons humming with energy.
Kael raised his hands defensively, and the world ignited.
A pulse of fire burst from his core, swirling around him in a radiant shield. The Enforcers fired, but their bolts evaporated mid-air. Kael's mind blanked. The Emberfire moved on its own, lashing out like a living thing.
One Enforcer melted into slag, another was hurled into the shattered wall. Kael screamed, not from pain, but from something deeper. A voice. A presence in his mind.
"Burn, or be consumed."
The fire surged again. With no idea how, Kael turned and ran, the flames forming a blazing path in his wake. He didn't look back.
_____
He didn't know how long he ran, only that when he collapsed again, it was beneath a broken sky lit by fractured auroras. Somewhere deep in the borderlands of Sector Delta, far from the Syndicate's watchful eyes.
Kael staggered to his knees beside a rusted transport track. The Ember Core still pulsed within, but softer now. Dormant.
From the shadows, an old man stepped forward.
"Not many survive Ember fusion," he said calmly. "Fewer still retain their soul."
Kael raised a trembling hand. "Who are you?"
The man knelt, offering a flask. "Shao Jinzhen. You're lucky I followed the fire trail. Come, you'll need more than luck to survive what comes next."
Kael drank.
It tasted like smoke.