Prologue: The First Gift
Does the Sun bleed,
or does the Serpent's bite sting?
Long ago, the Primordial One poured out His blood—
seven streams bursting radiant, unending, alive.
That blood became colour.
That blood became crown.
Green to wake the fields.
Red to warm the hearth and kindle flame.
Blue to guide the waters in their flow.
And others besides,
each a jewel to adorn the earth.
Humanity saw and rejoiced.
They called Him the Sun,
for He gave light,
and His blood clothed the world in splendour.
But in the shadows, another stirred.
The Serpent—mighty, grieving,
a heart cold with envy—
longed for worship,
longed for the throne of the Primordial One.
He whispered: "Bow to me."
And mankind answered: "What have you given,
that we should bend the knee?"
But the Serpent was selfish.
His scales would not be pierced for humanity.
No blood of his would ever flow.
Instead he gave poison:
a gift twisted,
a colour sharpened into blade.
And those who bore colour—
those marked by the blood of the Primordial One—
rose above all.
They bowed to the Serpent,
naming him their god.
The Primordial One wept.
His gift was defiled.
His children deceived.
So He tore a veil between Seen and Unseen
and sealed the Serpent in a tomb of shadow.
Yet his worshippers endure.
They whisper. They wait.
They cling to his promise:
that when the seals are broken,
he will rise to claim the throne of the Unseen.
That when he comes,
they too shall rule over all.
But the Primordial left a word—
a prophecy sealed in fire and ash:
One will come, bearing all His blood.
Son. Heir. Bridge between realms.
The Serpent desires him. The world needs him.
He will be liberator. He will be ruin.
And even now, upon a narrow road—
cold where there should be warmth,
fire where there should be light—
a boy flees with his mother.
From ashes, he is born.
From flames, he is forged.
And when he rises,
the world shall bleed anew.
---
"Breathe too deep, and the ash will kill you before the whip does."
The words rasped from a scarred man's throat as the morning bells tolled. He coughed into his palm, spat black, then hefted his hammer again. Around him, thousands bent under the weight of fire and stone.
Pyrrathis never woke gently. It screamed itself awake.
The furnaces roared with a sound like the earth itself splitting, rivers of molten slag dragging sparks into the sky. Ash fell ceaselessly from the black clouds above, thick as snow, choking the lungs of those forced to breathe it. Children hacked until they bled, and their cries were swallowed by the endless thunder of hammers.
"Keep your hands moving, slag-rats!" The overseer's whip cracked, lightning in the smoke. His hood bore the bleeding sun, crimson threads gleaming in the firelight. A Cloaker. Faceless. Ruthless. His voice carried over the clang of steel. "One breath idle and I'll spill your hide across the stones."
Kael's mother bent to her work, her body slick with sweat. The heat flayed her skin, yet her arms did not falter. Hammer down. Ore split. Hammer again.
A hiss of leather split the air. The whip kissed her back, hot and sharp. She staggered, caught herself, and did not cry out.
"Faster," the Cloaker intoned. His mask gleamed with sweat and ash.
She lowered her head and moved her lips without sound. He is watching. He must be.
Inside her belly, the child shifted. Not a flutter — a deliberate press, as if responding.
---
Two furnaces away, a boy fell. His hammer clattered, his body folding into the ash.
"Ryn!" a woman gasped, dropping beside him. "Stand—"
The Cloaker's whip uncoiled. The strike landed across the boy's shoulders. He wailed, tried to crawl, collapsed again.
"Up," the Cloaker commanded, voice flat.
The boy coughed blood. His body shook. He could not rise.
The whip cracked again. A rib gave. His scream broke off into choking silence.
By dusk, his corpse was dragged to the slag-heaps, nameless and unmarked.
Kael's mother turned her head away too late. The Cloaker's gaze caught hers, and pain seared her back as the whip struck.
"Work," the soldier growled. "Or join him."
She bit her tongue until she tasted blood, lifted her hammer, and struck the stone. Again. Again.
He is watching. He must be.
---
When the furnaces dimmed for their hour's rest, the workers slumped where they stood, voices rasping low under the shroud of smoke.
"She doesn't belong here," one woman muttered, her eyes narrowing at Kael's mother. "Look at her. Look at her belly. No husband. No kin. No man to claim the child."
"Quiet," hissed another. "Do you want the Cloakers to hear?"
The first woman leaned closer, her breath foul with soot. "Then tell me how she carries. Tell me whose bed she warmed. No miner touched her, I swear it. And yet she swells like a wife. How?"
A man spat into the ash. "You're saying what we all wonder."
The woman smirked. "Unless it wasn't one of us. Unless it was a Noble."
Murmurs stirred.
"Don't say that."
"She'd be dead already if a Noble touched her."
"Not dead. Hidden. Look at her! She hides him because he's not hers to keep."
The woman's eyes gleamed. She leaned closer, whisper sharp as broken glass. "Or worse… a Priest of the Bleeding Sun. They come at night, cloaks black, eyes red as flame. You think she's clean of them? No. This one's carrying their seed."
The murmurs thickened, turning hungry.
"If that's true, the Priests will take him."
"They never leave their blood to rot in the dust."
"He'll be born theirs. Mystery child."
Kael's mother froze. Her hammer slipped in her hand.
The woman's sneer widened. "Mystery child. That's what he is. Not yours. Not ours. A curse waiting to be claimed."
Kael's mother's jaw tightened. She whispered back, voice brittle with defiance:
"He belongs to no one but me."
"Liar," the woman spat. "He belongs to them already. All will see it."
The words spread like sparks in smoke.
Mystery child.
Illegitimate.
Curse.
Kael's mother bent her head lower, hammer striking ore in rhythm with her heart. She whispered a prayer the others would never hear. He is watching. Protect us, Sun.
Her belly shifted. The child stirred again.
---
The ground quaked.
At once, silence fell. The workers froze, heads bowed, as a tremor shook the stones beneath their knees. Even the furnaces seemed to pause, flames bending low.
"They're coming," someone breathed.
And they did.
The Nobles.
They drifted forward in ash-black robes etched with the bleeding sun, their obsidian masks streaked crimson. Their feet never touched the ground. Behind them marched the Priests of the Serpent, towering, cloaks heavy with crimson sigils, staves tipped with molten crystal. The very air bled red where they walked.
Cloakers dropped to their knees, heads bowed. Workers prostrated themselves, foreheads pressing to the ash.
A prisoner was dragged forward, chains choking his neck. His eyes darted desperately across the kneeling crowd.
"Stole bread," a Cloaker barked.
The Noble tilted his mask. His voice was silk, stretched thin, glistening with disdain. "Bread. From whose hand?"
The prisoner's lips trembled. "Forgive me, lord. My child—"
The Priest raised his staff. Fire burst forth, devouring the man whole. His scream was short, bright, and gone. Ash blew away on the wind.
"From mine," the Noble finished.
No one moved. No one breathed.
Kael's mother pressed her hand to her belly.
The child struck — sharp, violent, urgent — as if he knew, as if he hated.
She bit her lip until it bled.
The Noble paused mid-stride. Slowly, his masked face turned toward her.
Every heartbeat froze. Furnace flames flickered low. Ash fell soundless.
The Priest leaned in, whispering into the Noble's hood. The Noble lingered, then inclined his head and turned away.
The crowd exhaled as one.
---
"Your hammer, woman," a Cloaker barked. "You dropped it."
She bent swiftly, hands trembling, retrieved the tool, and forced her body still.
The overseers shouted anew. Hammers rose, fell, struck stone in dull rhythm.
But Kael's mother's thoughts were far from ore and fire.
They were on the whispers already spreading.
On the stares that lingered too long.
On the violent stir inside her when the cloaked lords passed.
The secret was cracking.
The child she carried was no secret anymore.
And soon, the Serpent's priests would come.
---
The bell tolled three times, iron upon iron, a sound like chains rattling in the dark.
The furnaces dimmed, but never went out. Their throats hissed and spat sparks into the ash-choked night, as if mocking the brief mercy of rest. Overseers barked the last curses, Cloakers strode the walkways with their bleeding sun sigils glinting, and the workers—filthy, bent, coughing—drifted like a stream of shadows toward the slag-hollows they called home.
Ash fell with them, clinging to hair, to breath, to skin.
And in their wake, whispers slithered.
"She carries him still…"
"A mystery child, not sired by any man here."
"Better she smother him before the Priests sniff him out."
The words followed Kael's mother like gnats, stinging but cowardly, never said to her face. Her head stayed bowed, but her hand pressed her belly tight.
Then, out of the gloom, a hand touched her arm.
"Liora."
She turned, startled. It was Neris, a woman from the copper lines, her face streaked black, her shoulders scarred from years of furnace-work. Neris's eyes, however, burned with something rare in Pyrrathis—compassion.
The cluster of women nearby sneered. One spat into the ash. "Don't waste your words, Neris. The Priests will come for her. Her belly's cursed."
Neris turned on them, voice low but sharp as steel. "Is it only the Bleeding Sun who may carry mysteries? What of the true Sun—the one hidden by their smoke and dust? Do you not see? He still shines. He still watches."
Some women laughed harshly.
"Old songs," one muttered.
"Childish tales," another said, shaking her head.
But a third lowered her eyes, lips moving in a quiet prayer. And one man, passing with bread under his arm, bowed his head once before hurrying away.
Neris pressed closer to Liora, ignoring the mockery. Her voice softened, meant only for her friend's ears. "He will send his son, Liora. Not theirs. His. To deliver us."
Liora's throat tightened. The child kicked against her palm as if in answer.
For the first time that day, her lips trembled into something that might have been the beginning of a smile.
---
The crowd thinned as the workers split off toward their hovels. Families scattered into smoke-choked burrows, clutching whatever scraps they had managed to earn. Children whined from hunger, mothers bartered in low voices, fathers sat hollow-eyed before cold bowls.
"Bread," muttered a vendor at the corner, his stall no more than a wooden board propped on rock. "Ashbread, three coppers."
Liora counted her coins with shaking fingers. Not much. Not enough. But she pressed them into his palm anyway and took the small, hard loaf he gave her.
As she turned away, she saw him.
An old man sat hunched on the ground, his body a bundle of bones wrapped in rags. His hair was long, white, his beard matted. His eyes, clouded but sharp, lifted to hers. He said nothing, only coughed into his hand and looked aside.
Too old to work. Too poor to eat.
Her steps faltered.
She looked down at the bread in her hand, then at her belly, then back to him.
Her lips pressed together.
She broke the loaf in two.
The crack was sharp in the night. She knelt, offering half into his shaking hands.
The old man blinked. For a moment, disbelief clouded his face. Then his fingers curled around the bread.
"My thanks," he rasped. His voice was gravel, worn thin. "Few remember the useless. You will be remembered, girl."
Liora shook her head. "No. Remember him instead." Her hand pressed her belly once more.
The old man's gaze lingered there. A flicker, strange and knowing, passed across his eyes. He bowed his head, muttered words she did not catch, and began to eat.
She moved on, her half-loaf clutched tight. She did not know that his name was Thalos. She did not know that years later, the world would whisper it again. Tonight, he was only a hungry elder. But something unseen bound them in that moment, a thread spun of ash, kindness, and prophecy.
---
Night deepened. The workers disappeared into their hovels, bellies aching, bodies broken. For a few short hours, Pyrrathis would fall into restless sleep.
Above them, the furnaces roared still, spewing fire into the sky. And in their glow, the Nobles' towers loomed like black teeth against the blood-red horizon.
Steel. Always more steel.
No one knew why.
But the earth groaned, the furnaces screamed, and the Serpent's priests sharpened their blades of colour, waiting.
And in the hollow of her home, Liora lay awake with her hand upon her belly, her heart echoing Neris's words:
The true Son still shines.
He will send his son to deliver us.