Morning bled into Ravenstone with a weak, red light, the kind that made the smoke look thicker and the blood look darker. Ithan sat slumped outside the mercenary hall, knees drawn to his chest, staring down at the body stretched across the trampled dirt. Garrick's body. The man's face, once loud with laughter and anger, was still now—eyes glazed, jaw slack, his chest unmoving beneath the dented armor.
The square around them reeked of soot and iron. The Dionians had withdrawn at last, leaving behind shattered doors, burning thatch, and the butchered cries of livestock. Women wailed as they searched for their families among the wreckage; men staggered with bloodied arms, dragging corpses into rows. Overhead, the first crows circled low, black wings catching the sunrise like carrion banners.
Ithan's breath came shallow, each one trembling against the sour taste of smoke. He could not stop thinking that he still lived. Garrick did not. The thought wrapped around his chest like a vice.
And then—
"What are you doing?" Garrick's voice broke through, not from the broken corpse beside him, but from somewhere buried deep in memory.
The years peeled away.
Ithan was small again, maybe ten winters old, his skinny arms trembling as he gripped a wooden shaft taller than himself. The tip had been sharpened with a knife until it gleamed rough and splintered in the light. His palms were raw from whittling it down. He tried to hold the weapon steady, though it wobbled with every breath.
Garrick stood over him, broad-shouldered and dark-eyed, a jar of ale in one hand. He tilted it to his lips, wiped his mouth with the back of his arm, and eyed the boy with a smirk.
"Spear art?" he echoed, voice thick with drink. "What for?"
Ithan's fingers clenched tighter around the wood. His ash-gray hair fell across his face, hiding the flush in his cheeks. "To become one of you," he said. "A mercenary."
The word lingered between them like smoke. Garrick's brow lifted. "A mercenary, huh?" He gave a rough chuckle that faded as quickly as it came. "Why in the hells would you want that life?"
The boy's voice came quiet but steady. "To be free."
Images crowded the edges of his mind—his mother's grave fresh in the earth, the sideways stares of the villagers, the hissed words they thought he couldn't hear. He'd grown up in the shadows of the mercenaries' hall, watching men no one dared command, men who drank and fought and laughed like kings of their own small world. He wanted that same freedom, that same untouchable place.
Garrick squinted at him for a long moment, then reached down and plucked the spear from his hands. He turned it over, testing the balance, running a finger along the crude point.
"You carve this yourself?"
"Yes."
A grunt of approval. Garrick lowered the weapon, studying the boy again. Something flickered across his face, softer than his usual hard lines. "Alright then," he said at last. "I'll show you the basics. But the rest—you'll have to learn the hard way. No one's gonna hand you freedom."
"I understand," Ithan said, the words almost lost beneath the hair shadowing his eyes. But Garrick caught the glint in them anyway—the raw, hungry spark that refused to die.
"Good." Garrick shoved the spear back into his hands, more gentle than rough this time. "Then make sure you grow into a mercenary worth a damn. Don't waste it."
"I won't," Ithan promised.
The memory unraveled like smoke, and the boy with the spear faded. Ithan blinked hard, and he was back in the present—the air thick with ash, the stench of blood, and Garrick's cold body lying beside him.
A shout cracked across the square.
"There he is!"
Ithan turned, slow and unsteady. A group of villagers was gathering at the edge of the mercenary hall, their faces gray with soot and streaked with tears. Some clutched broken tools, others nothing but their fists. The grief in their eyes twisted into rage when they looked at him.
"You brought this!" one spat, a woman with her apron stained dark from carrying the wounded. "Curseborn!"
More voices rose, sharper now.
"He's the reason they came!""Bad luck follows him—just like his mother!""Look what he's cost us!"
The words struck harder than thrown stones. Ithan staggered to his feet, his ash-gray hair falling into his eyes, his fists trembling at his sides. His throat closed tight, no answer coming.
The villagers pressed closer, their cries building into an ugly chorus. A man hurled a broken jug at him; it shattered at his feet, spraying mud and sharp shards across the dirt. Children clung to their mothers, glaring at him with the same fear and suspicion.
Ithan's gaze fell back to Garrick, lying lifeless and silent on the ground. For a heartbeat, he wanted to curl up beside him, to let the mob do what they would. But the memory of Garrick's voice echoed in his mind: Make sure you become a good mercenary. Don't waste it.
The words cut through the villagers' jeers like a blade, keeping him rooted even as every eye in Ravenstone turned on him.
The crowd surged closer, voices rising into an ugly roar. Someone's hand drew back, ready to strike, when a door slammed open.
Martha stormed out of the mercenary hall, her heavy skirts swaying, her broad shoulders filling the doorway like a wall. She still clutched a blood-spattered rag from binding wounds, her arms streaked with soot and sweat.
"Enough!" she barked, her voice slicing through the air like a whip. "Cowards, the lot of you!"
The villagers froze, but only for a breath.
"He's a curseborn—" one man started.
"Curseborn?" Martha cut him off, spitting into the dirt. "You blame a boy because you've no spine to fight your own battles? A child didn't burn your houses. A child didn't put a blade through your kin. You let Dionians do that while you stood shaking in your doorways."
The man's face flushed, but he looked away. The rest muttered, shame warring with their fury.
Martha strode forward, planting herself between Ithan and the villagers. She spread her arms wide, daring them to move. "If you've breath to curse someone, curse yourselves. Or curse me. But you will not lay this on him."
The square fell silent, save for the crackle of dying fires and the low caw of circling crows.
Then the slow, deliberate sound of a staff striking earth carried through the hush.
The villagers parted as the chief came forward—a bent old man wrapped in a heavy cloak, his weathered face drawn and grave. His cane sank into the blood-soaked dirt with each step.
"Enough quarreling," the chief said, his voice low but carrying. "We have dead to tend."
He paused at the center of the square, letting his tired eyes sweep across the ruin of Ravenstone, the broken homes, the weeping families. His jaw tightened.
"They will be buried in the Ashen Field, as our forefathers were," he declared. "Gather your dead. At sundown, the village will walk together."
Murmurs rippled through the crowd—grief, anger, resignation—but no one argued. Slowly, the villagers turned from Ithan, bending again to the grim work of lifting the fallen.
Martha cast one last withering glare at them before laying a rough, steadying hand on Ithan's shoulder.
"Come inside," she muttered. "You shouldn't be out here with carrion and cowards."
****
By sundown the village had gathered, a somber procession winding out from the broken gates. The Ashen Field spread before them in rolling gray, a wasteland of charred earth where smoke still rose from fissures in the ground. Here the villagers always laid their dead—where the soil was blackened but soft, and the crows never strayed far.
The air was heavy with incense and grief. Families carried their kin on crude stretchers, cloaks pulled tight over faces that had gone pale and stiff. Women whispered prayers under their breath, while men dug shallow graves with spades and trembling hands.
Ithan walked at the tail of the procession, Garrick's body borne ahead by two mercenaries. Every step felt heavier than the last. His ash-gray hair caught the dying light, and villagers glanced back at him with narrowed eyes, muttering to each other as though his presence soured the ceremony.
"Curseborn," someone whispered as he passed."Shouldn't be here," another spat, low but not low enough.
Martha's glare kept them from saying more aloud, but the distance they left around Ithan was louder than any word. No one walked beside him. No hand reached out in comfort. He was a shadow following the dead.
At the edge of the area of the field where the villagers' resting place for their dead was, the chief raised his staff, and the murmurs faded. "Let the Ashen Field keep them," he intoned. "Let their spirits be carried by the smoke, and their memory held by us who remain."
The villagers bowed their heads. Earth thudded against cloth as graves were filled. Wailing rose and fell like waves, raw and unrestrained.
When Garrick's turn came, the mercenaries lowered him into the earth with rough care. They stood silent, faces grim, while Ithan edged closer, heart pounding. Martha kept the villagers at bay, her bulk a shield, as the boy knelt by the grave.
The last of the light caught Garrick's face before the dirt began to cover it. Ithan swallowed hard, his throat dry, and whispered so low only the dead could hear:
"I'll become the mercenary you wanted me to be. I promise."
A spadeful of earth fell, muffling Garrick's features forever. Ithan stayed kneeling, hands pressed into the cold ash, until the others moved on and the crows began to gather in the fading light. Alone, he lingered by the grave, the words of his promise hanging in the smoky air.
The graves were closed one by one, mounds of dark earth rising in uneven rows across the Ashen Field. When the last prayer was spoken, the villagers drifted back toward Ravenstone, their lanterns bobbing like weary stars in the dusk. Soon only Ithan remained, kneeling before Garrick's fresh grave, his fingers pressed into the ash-soft soil until his nails blackened.
The crows had fallen silent. The field, usually restless with their cries, now held a strange stillness, as though listening. The smoke rising from fissures curled low and heavy, coiling about Ithan's legs. He lifted his head, breath caught in his throat.
A whisper stirred against his ear, though no one stood behind him. Survive.
The boy shivered. The voice was neither Garrick's nor any he knew, yet it throbbed with an ancient weight that made his bones ache. He turned, scanning the shadows of the field. And that was when he saw it—half buried at the edge of a nearby grave, where the earth had cracked from old burn scars.
Something gleamed faintly beneath the ash.
Ithan crawled toward it, brushing away the soot with trembling hands until his fingers closed on a length of blackened chain. Cold, heavier than iron, it seemed alive with its own warmth, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat. He drew it free, the links scorched but unbroken, and for a moment the dying firelight caught upon it as though it burned with its own ember glow.
His chest tightened. The whisper came again, stronger now, curling through his skull. Survive… endure… ignite.
Ithan's breath shook. He glanced back to Garrick's grave, then down to the chain clenched in his fist. A spark, no bigger than a coal, flickered at the edge of his vision. He blinked—and it was gone.
The night air stirred. Somewhere in the distance, a crow cawed once, sharp and lonely, before silence reclaimed the Ashen Field.
Ithan tucked the chain beneath his tunic, its weight resting against his heart. He didn't know why, but he knew this: the field had given him something, and whatever it was, it would not let him remain the same boy who had knelt at Garrick's grave.
The Ashen Field stretched silent behind him, the rows of graves swallowed in smoke and shadow. Ithan walked alone along the narrow path, the scorched chain hidden beneath his tunic pressing like a brand against his chest. Each step felt heavier than the last.
Then—something shifted.
The air turned brittle, sharp as winter glass. A chill crawled over his arms, raising the hairs on his skin. He stopped. The night was utterly still, yet his breath came out in clouds as though the field itself exhaled frost.
And in that stillness, a pulse of memory struck him—like the tearing scream of the raid, the firelight against the walls of his hut, Garrick's blood spraying across his face. Rage erupted in his chest, unbidden and hot, as though some ember deep inside had been struck awake. His teeth clenched, his vision blurred.
Smoke rose faintly from his olive skin, curling like a phantom flame. He didn't notice. All he felt was the storm building in his ribs, a fury that burned hotter than grief, hotter than fear.
They're back.
His legs lurched forward before thought could catch up. He ran, the chain rattling faintly beneath his shirt with each pounding step. The world around him narrowed to the path, to the hammering of his feet against the ash. Branches clawed at his arms, but he didn't slow, didn't stumble. The rage drove him onward, faster, harder.
By the time he reached the edge of the village, the night was already ablaze.
Flames leapt from rooftops, hungry tongues clawing at the sky. The mercenary hall, once a place of raucous laughter and spilling ale, stood blackened and half-collapsed. Figures clashed in the streets—mercenaries locked in desperate combat with Dionian raiders who had returned like a swarm to finish what they hadn't destroyed the night before.
Screams tore the air, the sound of steel biting into flesh, of shields cracking under axes. A horse shrieked as it collapsed, its rider pulled down beneath a tide of painted raiders. The smoke of burning thatch stung Ithan's eyes, but even through the sting he could see the carnage clearly: the village was being ripped apart again, blood and fire staining every corner.
The chain against his chest throbbed once, faint but deep, as though echoing the rage in his heart.
Ithan stumbled into the village square, his lungs dragging in smoke and ash. A mercenary's body lay sprawled across the dirt, face crushed beneath a raider's mace. Beside him, his spear still gleamed, slick with blood.
Ithan's hand moved before his mind caught up. He tore the weapon free from limp fingers, the wood warm and sticky against his palm. The weight nearly buckled his arms, but rage steadied him. His knuckles whitened on the shaft as he drew the weapon close, smoke still whispering from his skin.
Shouts tore across the square. A Dionian came barreling toward him, axe raised. Ithan pivoted clumsily but drove the spear forward in a wild thrust. The point slipped beneath the raider's collarbone, crunching through leather and bone. Hot blood sprayed across Ithan's cheek as the man crumpled, and for a heartbeat, silence roared in his ears.
Then the air shifted—thick, heavy, unnatural.
The crowd of raiders parted as though pushed aside by an unseen force. The clash of steel and cries of the wounded seemed to dim, swallowed under a deep pressure that pressed against Ithan's ribs.
And then he was there.
The leader from the night before stepped into view, his presence alone bending the battle around him. His skin was painted in black and crimson streaks, his chest bare beneath a wolf-fur cloak. But it was his eyes—glowing faintly with an otherworldly sheen—that froze Ithan's breath. In his hand he carried no ordinary weapon but a blade wrapped in dark mist, its edges rippling like smoke torn from a forge.
The Dionian war-leader's gaze swept the square before settling on Ithan. A cruel smile tugged at his mouth, as though amused to find the boy still standing, spear in hand, smoke licking faintly from his skin.
The air between them vibrated, filled with a tension that made the torches gutter and the mercenaries falter. The chain beneath Ithan's tunic pulsed again—harder this time—like a second heartbeat, answering the presence before him.
The war-leader advanced with slow, measured steps, as if he had all the time in the world. The raiders around him cheered, hammering weapons against their shields in a savage rhythm.
Ithan's grip slickened on the spear. His legs wanted to tremble, but anger drove them firm. He let out a hoarse cry and lunged.
The spear shot forward in a desperate thrust—straight for the Dionian's chest.
The man barely moved. He tilted his head, letting the point whistle past, then seized the shaft with one hand. His grip was iron, the wood groaning under his fingers. With a twist, he wrenched the weapon free and hurled it aside. The spear clattered across the cobblestones, useless.
Ithan stumbled back, arms shaking, breath ragged.
The war-leader's blade moved. Black mist curled along its edge as it swung low, a blur that hissed through the air. Ithan barely raised his arms in time, the strike grazing across his ribs. The heat of it seared even without a full cut, smoke curling from the wound as if the blade burned his very skin.
Pain ripped through him, blinding white. His knees buckled. Still, he staggered forward, fists clenched, teeth bared in a snarl. He swung a wild punch at the Dionian's jaw.
The man caught it in his palm. Just… caught it.
For a moment, their eyes locked—boy and war-leader, fury against cold amusement. The Dionian squeezed. Bones in Ithan's hand popped, pain shooting up his arm until he cried out. Then the man shoved, sending him sprawling across the dirt.
The world spun. Sparks burst across his vision. He tried to rise, coughing against the ash clogging his lungs.
The war-leader loomed over him now, his shadow long and heavy against the firelit square. That cruel smile never left his lips. He raised the mist-wreathed blade, the edge humming with dark power, ready to end the boy where he lay.
And beneath Ithan's ribs, the chain throbbed again—furious, alive—like fire trapped in iron, demanding to be unleashed.
The war-leader's blade descended.
Ithan threw up his arms, a useless defense, his broken hand screaming with pain. The edge of the mist-wrapped steel hissed closer—
—and the chain against his chest burned.
A searing heat tore through his ribs, radiating into his veins. Sparks burst along the links beneath his tunic, bright as falling stars, searing the fabric until it smoldered. The war-leader's strike faltered mid-arc, mist recoiling as though struck by an unseen wind.
Ithan gasped, arching against the pain. The world around him blurred into smoke and fire, but inside—inside his blood—a deeper flame stirred.
It wasn't the chain alone. No—it was something buried deeper, older. A fragment slumbering in his marrow, now awakened by the relic's fire. The Prometheus spark.
His vision flared orange-gold, veins glowing faintly beneath olive skin as smoke poured thicker from his body. The ground beneath him hissed, ash curling into glowing embers where his hands pressed the earth.
The Dionian war-leader stepped back, brows narrowing, his cruel smile thinning into wary interest. The mist around his blade writhed as though challenged.
Ithan staggered to his feet, chest heaving. Flames licked along the chain as he gripped it through his tunic, the heat not burning him but filling him. The promise whispered in the Ashen Field echoed again in his skull:
Survive. Endure. Ignite.
The war-leader tilted his head, eyes narrowing with a strange hunger. "So," he said, his voice low and edged with dark delight. "The boy carries fire."
The chain blazed brighter, and Ithan felt the spear he'd lost calling to him from the dirt. He reached for it—smoke coiling around the shaft—and when his hand closed over the wood, a faint ember glow spread down its length, turning splintered ash into something sharper, fiercer.
The villagers who had survived shrank back in fear, mercenaries and raiders alike pausing to stare. The boy no longer looked like a child. For a heartbeat, he looked like something forged in fire and wrath, a figure standing against the darkness with eyes lit by a stolen flame.