Kaelen had never liked the silence. It had always felt like a predator, circling, waiting to pounce. Now, it wrapped around him like a shroud as he stood before the ruins of his ancestral hall. What had once been the heart of the Embercrest line was now nothing but blackened stone and the skeletal remains of towers. The banners that had flown for centuries were gone—burned, stolen, or buried under the ash that covered everything like a final, mocking crown.
He knelt in the courtyard, brushing his fingers over a cracked tile where the family crest had been carved. It was barely visible now, but he could still trace the edges of the phoenix rising—his house's emblem, and the promise it carried. "We will rise again," he whispered, but the words felt like a plea more than a vow.
Kaelen remembered the night it all burned. The screams. The choking smoke. The strange shapes moving through the fire—not men, not beasts, but something else. Something older. He had been barely sixteen, dragged away by his father's sworn knight while the keep collapsed behind them. That night, the heir to Embercrest had become nothing more than a fugitive.
And yet, here he was, years later, following rumors of survivors, piecing together fragments of his family's past like shards of a shattered sword. There was talk of an artifact—the Heart of Ash—said to be hidden deep in the ruins. A relic of the first Phoenix Lord, and perhaps the key to reclaiming the power his house had once wielded.
But Kaelen was not alone. From the edges of the courtyard, shadows shifted. Figures moved—too fluid for soldiers, too quiet for looters. His hand went to the hilt of his blade, the steel whispering free as the air grew colder.
The silence was gone now. In its place came a low, almost imperceptible breath… the sound of something ancient waking.