The stench of rot clung to the gutters of Dravemire like a second skin.
Kael Valen crouched beneath the rusted remains of an overpass, his breath shallow, his eyes trained on the flickering lamplight beyond the trash-strewn alley. The rains had stopped, but the wind still carried the scent of soaked ash and blood. Somewhere above, the city's towers pierced through the smog like broken teeth—untouchable, indifferent.
He waited.
Footsteps echoed. Heavy. Patterned. Military boots.
Enforcers.
Kael pressed tighter against the wall. His heart pounded, but his hands were steady. He'd learned long ago that panic got you killed. The patrol passed without noticing him, the masked figures vanishing into the mist like wraiths.
He exhaled slowly. One more close call.
In this city, being Forsaken wasn't just a curse. It was a death sentence.
Kael reached beneath the folds of his ragged coat and pulled out a small, rusted medallion. The sigil etched into its surface—an eye split by a single crack—glimmered faintly with silver threads. The Mark of the Forsaken. A divine decree etched into his very soul when he was a child. A label. A warning.
Unworthy.
Once, he'd asked what he'd done to deserve it.
No one had an answer. Not even his mother—before the flames took her. Not even the priests—before they threw him into the slums.
Only silence. And then survival.
Now seventeen, Kael was a shadow in the city's ruins, scavenging scraps, dodging patrols, avoiding the Echoborn who hunted Forsaken for sport—or worse. But tonight felt different.
The city had changed.
It began with the sky.
A pulse.
Not a sound, not a light, but a feeling—like the air itself had blinked.
Kael stumbled, hand clutching his chest as pressure coiled inside him, unfamiliar and sharp. Around him, the lamplights buzzed violently before exploding into sparks. The ground trembled, a low groan reverberating from deep beneath the earth.
Then silence.
The world seemed to wait.
And that's when he heard it.
A whisper.
It wasn't spoken in any language he knew, but he understood it. Not with words. With something deeper. Older. Buried.
> "Come..."
He should have run. Every instinct screamed to hide. But something pulled at him—an invisible tether dragging him toward the old train tunnels in the city's underbelly.
Toward the dead place.
---
The tunnels were sealed decades ago, after the collapse. Rumors said the last collapse was no accident. That something woke down there. That the city built walls not to keep people out—but something else in.
Kael climbed through a broken ventilation shaft, dropping into pitch blackness. He lit a salvaged torch from his coat, flame hissing to life. The shadows here didn't scatter—they watched.
He pressed deeper, stepping through abandoned rails and rusted doors until he reached what looked like the remnants of a ritual chamber. Circular. Faint carvings glowed on the walls. At the center lay a jagged stone monolith, half-swallowed by roots and decay.
And on it—a mirror.
But not of glass.
The surface shimmered like liquid obsidian, untouched by dust or time. Kael moved closer, heart hammering.
The whisper came again, louder.
> "You are broken… but not lost…"
The mirror rippled. A figure formed within—his own reflection. But twisted. Its eyes glowed with silver fire. Black veins crept up its neck. It grinned.
> "Do you seek power, Kael Valen?"
He didn't know how it knew his name. Or what it was. But the hunger in his chest, the fury at a life stolen, the desperate ache to matter—it roared to the surface.
"I want to survive," he said. "No... I want to rise."
The mirror shattered.
But instead of shards, a wave of shadow exploded outward, swallowing him whole.
---
He fell.
Through memory. Through dream. Through echoes.
Pain lanced through every fiber of his being. Visions flooded his mind: creatures made of nightmares, eyes like stars, screams of the forgotten. He saw cities in ruin, skies of fire, thrones built on bones. A great labyrinth spiraling inward forever.
And within that labyrinth… a chain.
Forged from light and shadow. Writhing. Waiting.
It struck him.
Chains coiled around his soul, latching onto something deep within—something other. A fracture.
Kael screamed.
And then—
---
He awoke gasping on the cold stone floor of the chamber. The torch had gone out. His heart was still racing, but… he was alive.
Barely.
His skin burned with invisible heat. His veins pulsed with silver threads. And etched into his right arm, just below the Forsaken mark, was a second sigil—shifting, fluid, alive.
An Echobrand.
A cursed birthright.
His hand trembled as he raised it. With a thought, darkness rippled from his palm. He felt it—power, fragmented and unstable. The first of many.
Kael didn't smile.
He stood.
Because whatever had just awakened in him—whatever the cost—he was no longer powerless.
---
End of Chapter 1