Chapter 1 – The Day the Sky Bled
The night my village burned, the sky bled red—and something ancient woke up inside me.
I remember the smell first.
Ash always has a smell. Not just smoke, but something bitter and sharp, like the world itself is choking. That scent did not belong in Ashvale. Our village smelled of baked bread in the mornings, iron and sweat from the forge by noon, and spilled ale by nightfall. It was a small place, unimportant, forgotten by maps and kings alike—and that was why we believed we were safe.
I stood at the edge of the barley fields with firewood stacked against my shoulder, watching lanterns flicker to life across the village. The sun had just dipped beyond the hills, painting the clouds orange and gold. Old Bram was laughing too loudly outside the tavern again, his voice carrying farther than it should have. Someone was playing a flute—badly—but no one complained. Children chased each other between houses, their shadows long and stretched thin by the firelight.
I remember thinking how peaceful it all felt. How ordinary.
"Kael!" my father called from the forge. "If you keep staring at the sky, you'll trip over your own feet."
I laughed and waved back. "Just thinking."
He shook his head, smiling, and turned back to his work. The rhythmic clang of hammer on steel followed me as I started toward home.
That was the last time I ever heard his voice.
The scream came from the eastern road.
It was short. Sharp. Cut off too quickly.
For half a breath, the village didn't react. No one ever expects disaster to announce itself clearly. Then the warning horns sounded—low, brutal, wrong. The sound tore through Ashvale like a blade, freezing blood and shattering calm.
Flames erupted.
Armored figures poured into the streets, moving with brutal discipline. Their tabards bore a sigil I recognized from whispered sermons and forbidden texts: a crown pierced through by a blade.
"The Crown Inquisition!" someone shouted.
Panic swallowed Ashvale whole.
People ran in every direction. Doors slammed open and shut. I saw a woman I had known since childhood stumble backward with an arrow buried in her throat, her hands clawing uselessly at the shaft as she fell. A man tried to shield his family and was cut down before he finished raising his sword. A boy—no older than ten—reached for his mother and never made it to her.
I stood there, frozen.
My mind refused to accept what my eyes were seeing. This wasn't supposed to happen here. We weren't important. We weren't powerful. We were nothing.
Steel slammed into my shoulder, spinning me to the ground. Pain exploded down my arm as I hit the dirt hard enough to knock the air from my lungs. The world rang. I tasted blood.
That shock saved me.
I crawled, half-blind, toward the forge. The door hung open, flames inside flickering wildly as if afraid. Bodies lay in the street behind me, unmoving. Someone screamed my name—but the sound was swallowed by fire and steel.
Inside the forge, the heat wrapped around me like a familiar memory. I staggered to the weapon rack and grabbed the first sword my fingers touched.
It felt heavier than it ever had before.
A soldier followed me inside, his armor blackened and his blade steady. He raised it without hesitation.
I swung.
The sword shattered.
Metal screamed as the blade broke apart, fragments flying across the stone floor. The hilt tore free from my hands, leaving me staring in disbelief at empty air.
The soldier laughed.
That was when the sky cracked open.
Light—red and violent—poured down through the roof as if the heavens themselves had been wounded. Heat crushed me to my knees. My thoughts scattered, drowned beneath a pressure so vast it felt like the weight of the world.
A presence coiled around my mind.
Ancient. Vast. Uncaring.
**BEARER FOUND.**
The words were not spoken. They were engraved into my soul.
Black fire erupted from my palms.
It devoured the forge. It devoured the soldier. And worst of all—it felt right. Not good. Not evil. Necessary.
I screamed as power tore through me, reshaping something deep inside. Above Ashvale, a crown of ash and fractured light formed against the bleeding sky, its silhouette burned into my vision.
Then everything went dark. The last thing I felt was the fire tightening around my heart, not as an enemy, but as a promise—one that whispered survival, ruin, and a future soaked in ash.
In that fading moment, I understood one terrible truth. Ashvale had not been destroyed by chance or cruelty alone. It had been erased to silence what slept inside me. And somewhere beyond the burning sky, those responsible were already turning back, certain the threat had been ended. They were wrong.
The darkness did not take me gently.
I fell through it, weightless and burning, my thoughts scattering like embers in a storm. Voices brushed the edges of my mind—whispers in a language I did not know, yet somehow understood. They spoke of crowns and thrones, of cycles ending and beginning again. I saw cities turned to dust beneath black fire, banners falling, kings screaming as shadows devoured their names. At the center of it all stood a throne carved from ash and bone.
It waited.
Something inside me reached for it—and something else recoiled in terror.
I gasped awake.
I woke among ruins.
Ashvale no longer existed.
Smoke drifted lazily upward as if the world itself was exhausted. Bodies lay where they had fallen. I tried to scream. No sound came out.
"That's impressive," a woman's voice said calmly. "Most people don't survive their first awakening."
She stood among the ashes as if she had always been there.
"Mira," she said after I asked. "And you just manifested something the world tried very hard to erase."
"The Ashen Crown," she finished quietly. "Crown of Ruin and Rebirth."
Far away, unseen eyes turned toward the ashes of my village.
"And now," she said, meeting my gaze, "it chose you."