He woke to heat.
Not warmth — heat.
Charged, suffocating, burning beneath the skin like coils wound too tight for too long.
Dren's eyes snapped open. The hut was dim, stone walls pulsing with shadows from dying firelight. The roof creaked. The silence held too long — wrong. His chest rose in shallow gasps, muscles twitching before his mind caught up.
And then—
Lightning.
It raced across his arm like a serpent striking from under the skin, flaring to life in his fingertips. Sparks popped from his knuckles. A copper bowl beside the cot cracked in half.
His breath hitched.
The air was wrong — dry and sharp, too many smells, too clean and too alive. He wasn't on Khar-Tor. This wasn't the cold silence of dust. It wasn't metal. It was… growth.
Something inside him recoiled. Instinct surged.
He threw off the furs, stumbling to his feet — barely steady before a pulse of static burst from his shoulders and flared across the walls. The clay jars shattered. Braziers sparked and fell.
Someone outside shouted. Footsteps.
Dren ran.
He crashed through the hut's flap, bursting into crisp morning light — and straight into a crowd. Villagers backed away in shock, voices rising. Faces stared. Hands pointed.
Lightning cracked from his shoulders, veins glowing yellow-white.
He looked down — his arms arcing, heat rising in visible waves. He couldn't stop it. It wasn't like before — not surgical, not clean. This was unstable. Vibrating. His body wasn't obeying.
He panicked.
"MOVE!" a man yelled. Others scrambled.
Dren screamed, more from panic than fury, as he burst into the air — his feet left the ground in a violent blast of charged wind and dust. The crowd below dove away. One older woman was thrown into a tree. She didn't get up.
Above it all — Dren rose.
He didn't know how high. He didn't care.
Clouds split around him. The air grew thin. His eyes wide, his jaw tight, his heartbeat a thunderclap in his ears.
And still — the lightning grew.
⸻
He hovered.
Alone.
Above forests, hills, and mountains he didn't recognize.
And for a moment…
He thought he was dying.
The sky was still, but Dren was not.
He hung in the air, a flickering mass of tension and voltage, breath coming sharp as glass. The lightning pouring from his skin no longer obeyed rhythm or command — it danced, twisted, spilled.
His hands trembled. The veins across his neck glowed bright as molten wire.
And then — it started.
A pulse behind his eyes.
Then another.
Then a voice.
Not from outside. Not from the ship. Not even from memory.
From within.
"You should've stayed buried."
"This isn't your world."
"You're the curse now."
He screamed and clutched at his skull. The world around him tilted, but he didn't fall. The air held him, pulled him tighter, as if the storm itself wanted to watch him break.
Dren thrashed midair, bolts firing from his legs, his spine, his fingertips. Forests far below sparked with flame as stray arcs struck trees. A shockwave cracked the clouds as a ring of energy burst from his chest.
"STOP—WHAT IS THIS?!"
"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"
He writhed in place, screaming, voice raw, body shaking.
And then…
He laughed.
Low at first. Then louder. Harsh. Crooked. Wrong.
"You want a monster?" he whispered to no one.
"Fine. I'll give you one."
His fingers spread. Lightning detonated outward.
Below him, creatures screamed and fell. The treetops ignited into a wall of fire. Stones burst from hillsides as the sheer voltage ripped through soil and bark.
Dren's face twisted. His laughter curved into something unrecognizable.
He had never felt so alive.
He looked at his hands — vibrating, radiant, splitting with power — and for a moment, he smiled like it was a gift.
But only for a moment.
⸻
Then something clicked.
His eyes widened. His breathing faltered. The smile broke.
"No… no no no—"
He looked down.
Smoke. Ruin. Burned forest. Blackened bodies.
The silence that followed was worse than the screams.
Dren's heart lurched. He pulled his arms in close, shaking. The laughter was gone — replaced with the horror of what he'd become.
"What am I doing…"
He began to fall. Not from lack of power, but from shame. From grief. From the slow, crawling realization that something inside him was slipping.
And he didn't know how to stop it.
He crashed to the earth in silence.
Not the violent slam of bone on rock — but a slow, trembling descent, lightning still twitching across his body as he staggered to one knee in the scorched dirt. The trees behind him smoked. The wind was gone. Even the birds had vanished.
Only the echo of destruction remained.
Dren didn't rise.
He sat still, hunched, one hand to his chest, the other dragging fingers through the ash like it could anchor him. His breath was ragged. The glow in his arms flickered and dimmed — not gone, but held back.
He didn't know how long he sat like that. Could've been seconds. Could've been hours. It didn't matter. He couldn't feel time anymore — just the thrum in his bones. The storm in his blood. The silence in his head.
Then something in him broke open.
Not physically — mentally.
Words tumbled out of his mouth in gasps, half-mad.
"I didn't ask for this…"
"I didn't want this…"
"What is this?!"
He stood suddenly, shouting at the empty air, arms trembling.
"I WAS JUST A SCAVENGER!"
"I HAD A WORLD! I KNEW THE DUST! I KNEW MY PLACE!"
Lightning hissed across his back as he shouted. The sky above responded with a single low rumble, as if mocking him.
He turned in a circle, half-maniac, half-lost, voice cracking.
"Why did it follow me here? Why does it burn when I breathe?!"
He slammed his fists into the ground, sending a ripple of electricity that cracked the nearby stone. His knees buckled. He fell again, breathing hard, pain surging behind his eyes.
And then…
The memory.
A flicker.
Just one.
But enough.
The old man's voice before the king had sentenced him — the one who whispered of the ancient power buried beneath the snow. The one the royal court feared. The one that could "restore, rewrite, or consume."
His eyes opened.
Wide.
"The magic…"
"It's still here."
"It's under me."
He stood slowly, the clarity seeping in like the calm before a second storm.
His hands flexed. His fingers curled into fists.
The madness was still there — but now it had a direction. A purpose.
He turned toward the charred trees.
And for the first time since awakening, he stopped shaking.
Dren stepped forward.
The air around him pulsed.
Every nerve in his body felt wired to the earth itself — like something beneath was waiting for him to move, to act, to strike. And he did.
He raised both arms. Lightning sparked across his shoulders, curling down his spine, coiling into his palms.
And then he slammed his fists into the ground.
The blast echoed for miles. Stone shattered. Earth cracked in jagged lines out from his feet. Dust exploded into the sky as he let go of everything — every thread of rage, fear, grief, and guilt unleashed in raw current.
He punched again.
And again.
And again.
Each strike louder. Each pulse deeper.
He wasn't just tearing through dirt. He was clawing through the barrier between himself and whatever force lay below — something old, buried, forgotten. Something tied to the whispers of ancient power before the king's trial. Something not human.
Lightning spiraled downward, carving a funnel into the earth as Dren hovered over the hole he was creating — digging without touch, drilling with voltage. Molten stone glowed beneath the surface. Obsidian and bone crumbled to dust. The earth moaned beneath the pressure.
And then—
Crack.
A shimmer of blue light pulsed upward like a beacon. Something just gave way.
He hovered above it, wind swirling from the crater. His eyes narrowed. His body ached, but the madness was gone — replaced with obsession.
"There."
He dove.
Straight into the light.
The tunnel swallowed him. For a heartbeat, there was only blue — then the wind stopped.
And he fell into a new world.
⸻
It was not a cave.
It was a chamber — the size of cities. Carved long ago in spirals, bridges, and towers that defied weight. Floating shards of crystal drifted through the air like frozen lightning bolts. Strange vines wrapped silver pylons that pulsed softly with artificial breath.
And in the center…
A power source.
Massive. Suspended. Mechanical but alive.
Its tendrils ran into every wall. Its glow beat like a heart. Purple and blue light radiated from within like trapped starlight.
It was the thing the stories whispered about. The thing hidden from the kingdom. The thing even the royal archives wouldn't speak of.
And Dren?
He stood before it, his hands still sparking, chest heaving.
He didn't speak.
He didn't pray.
He just walked forward, drawn to the core — the only thing he thought might save him from himself.
His lightning began to arc toward it, pulling without force, syncing without instruction. He could feel it — this… machine… this magic… it was like him.
Not born.
Forged.
He stepped closer.
The arcs between them thickened, buzzing like wasps.
He stopped ten feet from the core, arms at his sides, body glowing.
He whispered, not to it — but to himself.
"Please… fix me."
The light surrounded him.
And the world shifted.