CHAPTER 1
The first thing Kael felt was the cold.
It wasn't the biting chill of a winter night, but a deep, seeping cold that seemed to come from the very air, from the stone and splintered wood pressed against his small body.
Dust and fine grit coated his skin, sticking to a shallow cut on his cheek. The texture was rough against his cheek and hands as he lay still, his consciousness flickering like a weak flame. His limbs ached, his head throbbed dully, but the pain felt distant, muted by a thick fog in his mind.
Slowly, with a child's awkward struggle, Kael pushed himself up. Rubble shifted and scraped, a minor noise in the suffocating quiet. He stumbled to his knees, shaking off debris.
His ears registered a sound, or rather, the absence of sound. A profound, unnatural silence hung in the air, muffling the usual creaks and whispers of a village settling into the night. It pressed in, a heavy blanket that stole away noise and somehow, felt like it stole away something else too.
He blinked dust from his eyes, the action raw against his lids. When his vision cleared, he saw only grey. The sky above was a bruised, uniform grey.
The familiar houses around him were reduced to grey skeletons of stone and timber. Objects he recognized – a overturned cart, a shattered barrel, a simple wooden doll – were coated in a layer of fine grey ash, their colours leached away, leaving them looking like ghosts of themselves.
A thin, uneasy mist, also grey, coiled near the ground. The air tasted of nothing.
Where… where am I? The thought was a fragile thing in the overwhelming silence.
He looked around, a primal fear beginning to stir beneath the numbness. "Mom?" he whispered, his voice thin and reedy in the vast quiet. "Elara?"
He tried to picture their faces, their warm smiles, their voices. Images flickered in his mind – his mother's kind eyes, Elara's bright laugh as they played by the stream.
But the images were blurry, fractured, like reflections in shattered glass. He reached for them, tried to hold them, but they dissolved like smoke, slipping through his mental grasp.
In their place, a chilling sensation spread through his chest – a physical emptiness, a hollow ache that mirrored the desolation around him. It hurt, not like a bruise, but like something vital had been scooped out from within. It was the first touch of the Bedel.
A whimper escaped his lips, a small, lost sound in the suffocating Void that had consumed his home. He felt utterly alone.
Just as the panic threatened to swallow him whole, a new sensation bloomed within him, a stark contrast to the cold and the emptiness.
A warmth, soft and gentle, like a hand placed over his heart. It wasn't physical heat, but a feeling of absolute safety and tenderness that seemed to radiate from within him, or perhaps from just beside him.
A pale, almost invisible light flickered at the edge of his vision, accompanying the warmth. It felt familiar, comforting, like… like being held. Like his mother.
He instinctively leaned into the feeling, his small body orienting towards the source of the warmth and light. He didn't understand it, but it was a lifeline in the grey sea of ruin. It was Vispera, though he wouldn't know her name for a long time. For now, she was simply not alone.
But the fragile peace was shattered by a subtle shift in the oppressive atmosphere.
The silence around them didn't break, it somehow deepened, becoming heavier, more menacing. The grey mist on the ground seemed to coalesce, swirling with unnatural purpose.
From the edge of the ruined square, a figure detached itself from the grey. Not human, not animal. It was a shimmering, indistinct silhouette, made of the same grey dust and mist, but holding a semblance of form – a twisted, elongated shape that drifted forward without sound. An Echo Stalker, drawn by the faint flicker of life and the raw emotion in the air.
Pure, instinctual fear seized Kael. His heart pounded a frantic rhythm against his ribs, a loud, desperate sound in the unnatural quiet. He didn't understand the figure, but every cell in his small body screamed 'danger'.
The warmth of Vispera intensified, becoming an urgent pull, a definite direction away from the approaching threat and the ruined village. It wasn't a suggestion, but a strong, non-verbal command: Flee. Go this way.
Without hesitation, driven by terror and guided by the silent, powerful pull, Kael turned and began to run. His legs were shaky, his breath hitched, but he moved away from the grey figure, away from the place that was once his home and was now just... dust and silence.
He ran through the desolate ruins, past the grey husks of buildings, guided solely by the warmth that felt like a hand in his own. Behind him, the silence of the village deepened, swallowing the last echoes of its past.
Before him lay the vast, unknown expanse of The Void's domain. It stretched to the horizon, a sea of grey under a grey sky, broken only by the occasional, unnatural twist of the landscape or a distant, unsettling structure born of decay.
Kael ran, a tiny spark of light fleeing the consuming darkness, the warmth of Vispera his only guide. He carried the raw power within him, and he carried its terrible cost – the Bedel – already etched onto his soul, an aching emptiness where precious memories used to be.
The journey had begun.