Ash Draven stood in the rain, the cold soaking through his thin clothes as he gazed out at the skeletal remains of his family estate.
What had once been a proud manor—the seat of the noble House Draven—was now a rotting carcass of timber and stone. Vines crawled up broken pillars. The main gate leaned on one rusted hinge. Windows were boarded, shattered, or simply missing.
And yet, this place had once held honor. Legacy. Power.
Ash took a breath. Inhaled the rot of decay. Let it fill his lungs.
"Let them laugh," he whispered. "Let them think I've died with this place."
Every crack in the stone, every splinter in the wood—it all fed a growing furnace inside him. Not hatred, not yet. But purpose.
He turned back toward the house.
Inside, his father sat by a dwindling hearth, still staring into that same empty cup.
"Did you… go outside?" his father asked, not lifting his head.
Ash said nothing. The answer didn't matter.
Baron Ardan Draven had once been a lion. A commander, respected across Ravenmark's courts. But watching his family fall, watching his wife executed under false charges, had broken him beyond repair.
Ash moved slowly to the fire, then sat across from the hollow shell of his father.
There was silence between them.
The kind only two people bound by ruin could share.
"I'll leave soon," Ash said softly.
Ardan flinched. "Why? There's nothing out there for you."
"No," Ash said. "Not yet. But there will be."
His father looked up. For a moment—just a flicker—something human returned to his eyes.
"You sound like your mother," he murmured. "She believed in dreams too. She died for them."
Ash didn't respond. Not out of spite, but because the weight in his chest was heavier than grief. His memories of her were few… but sharp.
He could not afford grief. Not now.
Instead, he stood.
"I'll need food. A cloak. A weapon if there's still one that hasn't rusted."
Ardan blinked. "Weapon? Ash, what are you—"
"I won't die here," Ash said. "I won't be buried in this forgotten house. If the world has no place for me…"
His gaze turned to the open door, rain misting through.
"…then I'll carve one out with my own hands."
That night, he searched the ruins of the old armory. Dust choked every corner, but beneath the cobwebs, he found what he was looking for:
A short iron blade.
Dull. Scarred with time.
But it would do.
He strapped it to his side and wrapped his chest tighter, hiding the bruises beneath layers of old cloth. The pain was real—but so was his resolve.
Ash returned to his room only briefly. He retrieved a torn satchel and tucked into it dried roots, scraps of bread, and a faded pendant once worn by his mother.
Then he knelt.
Not in prayer. Not in fear.
But in remembrance.
"I was Ashen Demon. Sovereign of the Shadow Flame. And now… I am Ash Draven."
He pressed the pendant to his chest.
"Let the world forget. I will make it remember."
Before dawn, Ash left the manor.
Not a soul noticed him. No guards patrolled the outer edges of Ravenmark anymore—no one cared what happened beyond the capital's golden gates.
Ash walked past the abandoned graveyard where generations of Dravens lay buried. Past the weeping willow his mother used to sing beneath. Past the stone well where he first learned to climb and fall.
He didn't look back.
The world ahead was cold. Full of war, rot, and rulers who wore silk over sin.
But none of that mattered.
Because he remembered who he was.
And step by step,
Ash Draven would rise.