The wind carried the scent of ash. It clung to the air the way dust clings to a long-forgotten book, coating everything with a reminder of what once was.
Kael adjusted the strap of his pack and kept walking, boots crunching over cracked stone. The landscape around him stretched in silence: broken towers leaning at impossible angles, shards of obsidian littering the ground like the bones of some enormous beast, and empty streets carved into shapes no sane builder would design.
This was Veyrath's Fall.
People called it a cursed scar, a wound left by sorcerers who reached too far. Five centuries ago, this place had been a kingdom of brilliance, where the study of magic rose higher than anywhere else in the world. Now, it was a graveyard.
Kael had heard the stories since childhood—whispers traded around campfires or in taverns when the ale flowed too freely. Some said the mages had summoned gods and been struck down for their arrogance. Others swore the entire kingdom had been dragged into another world, leaving only husks behind. Whatever the truth, one fact remained: no one who ventured deep into these ruins returned.
And yet here Kael was, lantern in hand.
He was not much to look at, at least not compared to the knights and mercenaries who strutted through towns. His armor was a patchwork of old steel and boiled leather, beaten into shape by years of use. A long cloak, once black but now faded to gray, trailed dust behind him. His face was sharp, narrow, with skin bronzed by travel and eyes of an iron-grey hue that missed little. His hair was dark, reaching just past his jaw, tied loosely to keep it from falling into his vision.
He carried himself with the stillness of a hunter rather than the swagger of a soldier. People often mistook that silence for weakness—until they saw how quickly he moved when danger struck.
Kael wasn't here for treasure or glory. He had seen too many corpses left behind by men who wanted both. His reasons were simpler. Beneath these ruins lay something the world had chosen to forget, something the old texts called the Ashen Gate. If the stories he had gathered were true, then it was not just a relic but a wound still festering. A wound that could one day reopen.
He needed to see it with his own eyes.
The lantern in his hand flickered faintly. It was no ordinary light—inside the glass cage floated a crystal shard, glowing with a pale blue flame. It had cost him more than coin; it had cost him trust. But in places where no natural fire survived, this lantern was the only way forward.
Kael stopped at the edge of what had once been a plaza. At its center stood the remains of a statue, wings stretching skyward, half its body eroded by centuries of weather. Around its feet lay a mosaic of black and blue stone, spiraled in a pattern that drew the eye inward. Even beneath the dust of ages, faint sigils glimmered.
"Still beating after all this time…" Kael muttered.
The glyphs pulsed faintly as his lantern drew near, resonating with the shard within. He crouched low, brushing dirt from the spiral with calloused fingers. The hum beneath the stones told him enough—this was no common ruin. Something below was awake.
He exhaled slowly, scanning the plaza.
The silence here was not natural. Not the quiet of abandonment, but the waiting stillness of a held breath. His hand fell to the hilt of his sword, a straight-edged weapon etched with runes that slept until light stirred them.
Only then did he notice movement at the far edge of the plaza.
Figures crawled from the rubble. Their limbs bent wrong, their bodies blackened and cracked like burnt wood. Where eyes should have been glowed embers, faint but hungry. They were not alive, yet neither were they dead.
"Wraithspawn," Kael whispered.
He had been warned of them. Remnants of the Calamity, the last scraps of humanity devoured by whatever force had destroyed Veyrath. They lingered in the ruins, drawn to any spark of life as moths to flame.
The first one lurched forward, its jaw distending far wider than it should. Kael drew his sword, the lantern's glow spilling across the runes on its steel. They flared to life, lines of silver fire that hissed softly against the ash.
The creature lunged.
Steel met husk. Kael's blade cut through it in a clean arc, and the body shattered into cinders that scattered across the stones. But more came. Dozens now, crawling from shadows and cracks, their whispers rasping in forgotten tongues.
Kael's face hardened. This was no chance encounter. Something had stirred them.
The lantern pulsed violently in his grip, its light growing sharper. Kael slammed the sword into the ground, runes blazing. A shockwave erupted outward, blue fire sweeping across the plaza. The spawn screamed as their forms unraveled into dust, their voices fading into silence once more.
Breathing heavily, Kael retrieved his sword. The plaza lay quiet again, but not empty.
At the heart of the spiral, the stones had cracked.
Beneath them, faint and black as midnight, yawned a staircase leading down into the depths.
Kael's jaw tightened. He adjusted the lantern and began his descent.
The staircase carried him deep into the earth. The air grew colder, pressing against him like water, thick and suffocating. Whispers crawled along the edges of his thoughts, faint and almost familiar. Words he did not know but somehow understood.
Turn back.
You are not meant to see.
The Gate is not for you.
He pressed on. Whispers were for the weak-willed.
The stairs ended in a cavern vast enough to dwarf cathedrals. Pillars of jagged stone rose like claws, and from them stretched enormous chains, each link the size of a cart. They converged upon a single structure at the chamber's heart.
Kael stopped breathing.
The Ashen Gate.
It loomed like a monument to despair. A frame of black metal, runes crawling across its surface like living veins. Inside it swirled a liquid darkness, swallowing light, rippling as though something beneath stirred.
The chains groaned as if alive, straining, holding the Gate shut.
Kael's lantern flared brighter. The shard inside hummed, vibrating so violently he nearly dropped it.
The Gate pulsed once, like the beat of a heart.
And for the first time, Kael felt fear.
This was no ruin, no relic. This was not history.
This was waiting