Smoke painted black strokes across the dawn as Kael Vorrin trudged the muddy road toward his village for the last time.
Fog curled low around the trees in half-dead tendrils and the ground squelched beneath his boots. His cloak, once dark green, was now the color of old soot, ragged along the bottom after three days of silent travel across unforgiving woodland. He could taste the damp on his tongue, could feel the creeping chill of winter nipping early at his spine. In the grey sky above, crows circled—not with their usual aimlessness, but as though they had sensed a prophecy of death on the wind.
Kael tightened his grip on the strange blade at his side. No ordinary sword, it was carved with runes along the fuller—letters from no living language. He didn't know what they meant, only that it was the last thing his true father left behind before he was murdered. Until yesterday, it hadn't glowed.
But in the dead of night, far from any civilized town, it had given off a faint ember-like pulse...as though something had awakened.
"Bad omen," he muttered, brushing dark hair from his eyes.
Ahead lay Hallowford, the quiet river-village he'd called home since his childhood refuge. Smoke should not be rising from the rooftops before sunrise. And not that color—ashen black and angry.
His heart hammered.
He sprinted.
The road sloped down into the valley, winding between fields where wheat should have been tall and golden. But what Kael saw made the breath freeze in his lungs. The fields were scorched. Entire acres reduced to soot and bone-white stalks. Fire had swept through, wild and unchecked.
And beyond the fields...the village smoldered.
Houses were charred husks. Thatched roofs collapsed inward. Wooden carts were burned down to wheels and iron frames. Horses lay stiff in the road, arrows sticking from their sides like bristles from a hedgehog. No… not bandits. Bandits didn't use war arrows tipped in iron.
Kael knelt beside a broken doorway. He steadied his breath, forcing himself not to gag from the stench of burnt flesh.
Then he heard it — faint.
A whisper of a sob.
He darted toward the sound, sword drawn. Behind a stone well, under fallen beams, a young girl trembled. Soot smeared her face; tears cut pale lines down her cheeks. She couldn't have been more than ten.
"Hey," Kael crouched, voice soft. "I won't hurt you. What happened here?"
Her eyes were wide and glassy. "Soldiers… came before dawn..." she whimpered. "They wore black armor... no banners. They killed everyone."
Kael swallowed. "Did they say what they wanted?"
She blinked like she didn't understand. Then: "They were... looking. They kept shouting 'Where's the Vorrin boy?'"
Kael's blood ran cold.
"Do you know my name?" he asked.
She shook her head, sniffing. "Papa said to run. I hid…"
Footsteps crunched down the road behind him. Heavy. Armored.
Kael cursed and swept the girl up in his arms, sliding behind the well just as a squad of six men came into view. Their plate armor wasn't the polished silver of the king's regular army—no, this was different. Matte black steel, etched with sigils he didn't recognize, like twisting fire and snarled chains. Their helmets had ridges like dragon spines.
One of them knelt, touching the still-glowing embers of a ruined doorway.
"He's close," the tallest said, voice muffled behind his visor. His gauntlet pressed to the ground, as if he could feel vibrations through the earth itself. "I can hear the heartbeat. Vorrin blood."
Kael's grip tightened around the hilt of his sword. His mind screamed to run—but the girl trembled against him, soft whimpers threatening to draw attention. He breathed slowly, trying to calm her shaking shoulders.
The tallest soldier stopped. His helmet turned slowly... toward the well.
Kael sprang.
He vaulted over the stones, swinging the rune-blade in a low arc. The closest soldier barely raised his sword before Kael's cut sheared through iron as though slicing butter. The man screamed—no, gargled—dropping with half a helmet and a ruined face. The other five froze for a heartbeat too long.
Bad mistake.
Kael stepped in, swinging again.
The runes ignited fully now—burning amber along the blade—and in that instant he felt something else move inside him. Not rage. Something… older. Like a shadow uncoiling in his blood.
He didn't fight like a boy barely trained. He fought like someone born in war. Steel clanged. Sparks flew. Blood spilled across cobblestones. When the last soldier toppled with a wet crash, Kael stood panting amid corpses.
The girl stared, shocked.
Kael wiped gore off his chin. "We need to get you somewhere safe. Do you have any family left?"
She shook her head in numb disbelief.
"Then you'll stick with me," Kael said softly, though inside his chest was chaos. Why were they after me? How did they know I was coming back? And why... why does this blade burn like wildfire now?
He looked at the charred village—the only home he'd ever known—reduced to ruin because of him. If he stayed, others would die too. Whoever those soldiers were, they wouldn't stop.
He sheathed the rune blade.
First step: find out who sent them.
Second step: make them pay.
Kael lifted the girl into his arms as stormclouds gathered above, bleeding faint lightning across the broken sky. From somewhere far beyond the hills came the distant toll of a war horn — deep, harsh, and ancient.
The world was changing.
And KaelVorrin had just stepped into the fire