Title: Eclipseborne: The Path of Sovereigns
Volume I: Ashes of the Sky
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Chapter 1: The Boy and the Broken Sun
The bells of Litharion chimed thirteen times—a hollow sound that echoed through the bone-walled alleyways like a dirge. Kaelen Verros paused in the shadows of a crumbling archway, breath shallow, back pressed to the cold stone. The thirteenth bell was a death knell. Somewhere in the city, another child had vanished beneath the flickering sky.
He clutched the rusted blade tighter in his fist.
Today would be his turn.
The Sanctum Guard's footsteps rang sharp against the obsidian cobbles, their halberds etched with runes that pulsed with dull golden light. Above them, the fractured sky convulsed—shards of a broken sun flickering behind pale clouds like an eye blinking open.
Kaelen didn't know what came first: the vanishing sun or the madness. All he knew was that after the Shattering, the world had ceased to be kind.
He slipped out of the alley the moment the guards turned, darting like a shadow across the outer plaza of the Sanctum District. Hood drawn low, body bent low, he threaded through market debris and broken statues—monuments to gods who no longer answered prayers.
And then he felt it.
A pulse.
It wasn't sound, or motion. It was something deeper, as if the marrow in his bones had been stirred. His vision tunneled, colors bleaching to grey as the world bent around a single point: a ruin half-buried beneath the market's western wall.
Something called to him from beneath it.
He should have run. Should have hidden.
Instead, he moved toward it.