The night bled red
A swollen moon hung over the valley, its light warped by smoke and flame. Ashwood was burning. Roofs caved, beams shrieked as they split, sparks leapt into the black sky like fireflies fleeing a dying world. What had been Kaelen's village — his home — was no longer a place but a wound carved into the land.
Kaelen ran barefoot through the mud, a ragged wolfskin clinging to his shoulders. His chest heaved, ribs tight as iron bands, every step stabbing fire into his lungs. Behind him came the sound of boots and hounds, steady as a drumbeat. The Black Sons.
They hunted without words, only the thud of steel and the low growl of their dogs cutting through the night. Men sworn to the Ash Choir, draped in ash-colored mail, their helms marked with the burning sun. To them, this was not slaughter but ritual.
Kaelen's foot caught a root. He crashed to the ground, ribs biting sharp. He tasted blood. The forest spun above him, leaves shaking in the orange glow. He forced himself up, dragging one arm, staggering forward into a clearing.
There, alone, stood a tree.
Its bark was black, glistening like wet stone. Its branches reached out like claws, and its leaves were bone-white, pale against the firelight. It did not belong to the forest. It belonged to something older, something watching.
Kaelen stumbled to its roots and dropped to his knees. His hand pressed against the trunk.
The tree whispered.
No mouth. No sound. And yet the words struck through him like iron hammered into marrow.
"Run, little king."
The breath left his chest. He collapsed.
Darkness swept in, and with it—dreams.
He saw a throne made of twisted roots and broken skulls. A woman screaming, blood soaking the earth beneath her knees. A man crowned in silence, faceless, seated on the throne. And then a shadow moved behind him, smiling.
Kaelen's eyes snapped open.
The fire was gone. He was lying on cold stone, his body shivering beneath torn wolfskin. The ceiling above was half-collapsed, shafts of moonlight piercing through the ruin. Walls broken by time, moss clawing between the stones. A forgotten chapel.
And someone sat beside him.
A girl, no older than seventeen, her back against the wall. One eye covered with a strip of black cloth, frayed at the edge, but the other—gray, sharp, unblinking—watched him. A blade rested across her lap, long and slender, gleaming in the flicker of a small fire between them. She moved a whetstone across the steel with steady strokes, the sound rasping in the silence.
Kaelen tried to sit up. Pain seized his chest. He winced.
The girl didn't move her eye from the blade. "You breathe like a king, but crawl like a rat," she muttered.
His throat was dry, voice cracked. "My mother… they took her. The men with the black sun. They said she had the mark. They said I did too."
The girl turned the blade, catching firelight along the edge. For a moment, she said nothing. Then: "Then you run. Like I did."
Her words held no comfort. Only truth, hard and bare.
Kaelen lowered his gaze to the fire. The flames trembled, throwing long shadows against the walls. The chapel felt less like a refuge than a tomb.
Far above, the night still burned.
On the hill overlooking the Vale, Lord Vorcen of the Ash Choir stood watching his work. His armor was heavy, darkened by smoke, relics dangling from his shoulders—finger bones strung on cords, scraps of scripture nailed to steel. Upon his brow sat a broken crown, cleft down the center, jagged as if torn apart by claws.
Beside him a priest swayed, robed in black, lips sewn shut with iron thread. He carried a censer of cracked brass, smoke seeping from it in slow coils. The fumes twisted into shapes as they rose—first a boy's face, then a crown, then a tree with pale leaves.
Vorcen narrowed his eyes. His voice was a whisper, yet it cut the night like a blade. "The Hollow Throne remembers."
The priest bent lower, as if in prayer, though no words could pass his mouth.
The valley groaned beneath its own ruin.
Later, in the half-buried tavern at the edge of the forest, Kaelen and the girl sat in the shadows. The tavern was carved partly into the earth, stone walls sweating with damp, timber beams cracked from years of weight. The air was thick with mead, rot, and the sweat of men who had nowhere left to go.
Kaelen's eyes lingered on the hearth. Weapons hung above it—rusted swords, broken spears, a cracked shield with a lion scorched into its face. Relics of old wars. Ghosts.
He finally asked, voice low: "Why did you help me?"
The girl sipped her drink, blackroot ale bitter on her lips. Her one good eye flicked toward him, then back to the fire. "Because I watched my brother burn," she said. Her voice did not waver. "And you remind me of him."
A bard sang in the corner, voice hoarse, strings of his lute dull with age. The song told of a nameless king who sat upon a hollow throne, wearing a crown of bone, forgetting his own name as the world withered. Few listened.
Then the ground trembled.
The tavern door slammed open, wood shattering against the wall. A figure lurched inside.
Its flesh was pale as milk, stretched thin, its eyes sealed shut, its mouth weeping blood. It moved like a man but carried the weight of something wrong, something not meant for this world. The smell that followed it was rot and gravesoil.
A God's Hand.
The bard's song choked silent.
For a moment, no one moved. Then a man at the bar drew steel and charged, roaring. The creature caught him by the throat. A sickening crack split the air. The man fell lifeless, neck twisted.
Screams erupted. Tables overturned, men scrambling, women pressed against the walls.
The girl—the one-eyed stranger—stood. Her blade sang free. She faced the creature without a word.
Kaelen's body froze. His hands trembled. His heart thundered against his ribs. He could not breathe. He could not move.
Then came the whisper again.
Not from the girl. Not from the tavern. From within.
"You are not made to run."
His eyes darted to the floor. A spear lay broken near the hearth. His hand seized it before thought could argue.
The creature turned. Its mouth opened, and from the torn lips came a voice that was not its own.
"Kaelen… help me…"
His mother's voice.
Something inside him broke loose. He screamed, hurling himself forward, driving the spear into the creature's chest. The wood cracked, the blade sank deep.
The God's Hand shrieked, not in one voice but a hundred, layered, stolen. Smoke poured from its wounds. It staggered, clawed the air, then collapsed into ash and silence.
The tavern froze.
Men gaped. Women clutched their mouths. The girl's single eye locked on him, unreadable.
Kaelen stood, chest heaving, hands trembling around the broken shaft. His ears rang with the echo of the voice.
The girl whispered, barely audible. "Maybe you are him."
That night, Kaelen dreamed again.
He was standing before a throne. Not carved, not forged, but grown—roots twisted with skulls, ribs of giants bent into arches. A crown hovered above it, dripping blood, the drops hissing as they struck the earth.
In the shadows around it, something smiled.
And a breath touched his ear.
"Wake up, little king."
The world drowned in black.
To be continued...