The laughter didn't stop, even when Kairo could no longer hear it.
It echoed in his bones. Laughter soaked in venom. Claine Morvan's smug grin burned behind Kairo's eyes as vividly as the mud drying on his cheek. He didn't remember pushing through the crowd, didn't remember shoving past the guards, didn't even feel the gash across his palm where someone's elbow had caught him in the scramble. All he knew was that he had to get away.
Away from the Trials.
Away from the Academy.
Away from the eyes that looked through him as if he were less than air.
He didn't stop running until the buildings of the outer slums faded into broken stone and creeping silence.
Kairo stood alone at the edge of the forbidden zone—ruins that even the desperate avoided. This was a place where the old world had bled out. Charred bones of towers jutted from the earth, blackened like the ribs of a fallen beast. Smoke never rose here, though the land always smelled faintly of ash.
The elders said the ruins were cursed. That things had once lived here—things not of this world.
Kairo didn't care.
He wandered deeper, his boots scraping dry soil, his mind still reeling. His body ached from the beatings, his lip swollen, but none of it compared to the fire behind his ribs.
"Bloodless."
They always spat that word at him like a curse. As if his existence was a blemish on the hierarchy itself. As if he'd dared to be born without permission.
His breathing slowed. The wind howled low through the cracked bones of a long-dead dome.
That's when he saw it.
Tucked between two jagged monoliths, half-buried by moss and broken stone, was a temple.
Its stone was darker than the rest—slick, like obsidian—but pulsing faintly with a red hue beneath the surface. Like a heartbeat.
Kairo took a step closer, then another.
There were no doors. Just a wall, smooth and unbroken, with a single round mark etched into the stone.
His breath caught.
It was the same symbol burned into his chest. The birthmark no one could explain. A ring of crimson, jagged at the edges, like a sun swallowed in shadow.
This can't be…
As he reached out, the ground trembled beneath his feet.
A voice—thin and low, not quite sound—brushed his ear.
"Ash-marked… come home."
Kairo flinched and turned. No one.
He faced the temple again. The seal on the wall cracked silently down the center.
A seam split. A door opened.
And the red light inside reached out like a tongue.
Don't, something in him screamed.
But he stepped forward anyway.
Inside, the temperature dropped. The air hung heavy, thick with dust and something else—something old. Each step echoed into silence. The corridor sloped downward, cut from the same black stone. Crimson veins pulsed faintly along the walls like dormant arteries.
Torches lit one by one as he passed, each igniting with a hiss of red flame.
And then came the murals.
Carved into the walls, ancient and terrifying: gods of war bleeding stars dry. Armored kings slaying giants. A woman with flame for hair holding a blade made of bone and blood. Each figure wore the same sigil as his mark—either on their armor, their chest, or burned into the air behind them.
A crown of thorns wrapped in red.
In the final mural, a figure sat alone on a throne of corpses, a halo of crimson chains above their head.
Kairo stared.
He should have been afraid. But the fear had hollowed out, leaving something colder.
Recognition.
A whisper echoed down the hall again.
"Kairo…"
His blood chilled.
"How do you know my name?" he whispered.
No answer.
He reached a final chamber—a circular sanctum with a high dome and a single pedestal in the center. Upon it, an altar carved with symbols older than the Empire. Chains hung from the ceiling. A crimson mist curled around the room like smoke trapped in time.
He approached, drawn by a force deeper than logic.
The altar pulsed. Lines of red light flared to life along the floor—spreading outward like veins. One line touched the wall and revealed a massive inscription, written in a jagged tongue that translated in his mind the moment he read it:
THE FIRST BLOOD SHALL RISE.
THE REIGN SHALL BEGIN WITH PAIN.
ASH TO SOVEREIGN.
Something stirred above.
Kairo looked up—and froze.
Eyes.
Dozens of them.
Not flesh. Not beasts. Just impressions of eyes… blinking open in the darkness above the dome. Shadows moved without form, coiling along the ceiling like smoke with purpose.
"You bled long enough," a voice whispered from everywhere and nowhere.
"You were cast out. Forgotten. Hunted. Why?"
Kairo's throat dried. "Because I'm nothing."
The altar brightened, as if in anger.
"You are not nothing. You are ash-marked.
Born of exile. Bred in silence.
Made to reign."
The stone beneath him shook. The altar split open—revealing a hollow cavity filled with dark liquid. It smelled of rust. Of death. Of blood.
A new voice entered his mind.
Colder.
Mechanical.
[Initializing Sovereign Core…]
[Lineage: Ashmarked – Forbidden Thread Detected]
[Sovereign System Request: Do you accept the Reign? Y/N]
Kairo stumbled back. "What—what the hell is this?!"
[Awaiting user input…]
The ceiling groaned. Shadows began to descend, twitching, clawing toward the edges of the room.
Kairo's heart slammed against his ribs.
"Y-Yes!" he shouted.
[Reign Accepted.]
Pain exploded through him.
Crimson lightning struck from the altar and wrapped around his limbs. His chest burned. The mark flared like a brand being seared into him all over again. His vision blurred—flashes of other lives, other deaths.
He saw an army kneeling before him.
He saw a woman screaming as her world burned.
He saw himself—older, darker, cloaked in chains—laughing as blood rained from the sky.
Then… silence.
Darkness.
Kairo woke lying on the cold stone, staring at the ceiling.
The eyes were gone.
His breath hitched. Something floated in front of him.
A red screen. Glowing. Silent. Waiting.
[SOVEREIGN CORE: ACTIVATED]
[Blood Core Level 0 – Incomplete]
[Awakening Potential: 2%]
[Objective: Bleed. Evolve. Reign.]
His chest ached.
He was no longer bloodless.
He was something far worse.
And far greater.