Boom.
The gunfire echoed for a second too long. The kind of sound that told you everyone who mattered was already dead.
John Myers knelt in the dust beside a half-crushed Humvee, its frame smoldering with black smoke. Blood trickled down his temple, mixing with ash and sand. His ears rang like church bells struck by war.
He didn't look at the bodies. Not yet. He already knew who they were.
His unit—twelve trained soldiers. Friends, some of them. Or as close to friends as war allowed.
Gone.
He clutched his rifle like a lifeline, though the barrel was scorched and empty. The sky above Baghdad was choked with heat and smoke, a desert sun bleeding behind clouds of ruin.
In the distance, the radio crackled. Static. Then silence.
Another job. Another failure. Another massacre.
John was no stranger to war. But this one—this ambush—felt personal. Like the universe had reached down and twisted the blade just for him.
And then he saw it.
A shimmer in the air, like heatwaves rising off pavement. But this shimmer moved—twisted—hummed with something old and terrible.
Right there, in the middle of the street: a circle of light carved into the cracked asphalt, pulsing with faint blue fire. Geometric patterns swirled across it like veins. It looked like a sigil, or a rune, or something else he didn't have a name for.
He blinked. It was still there.
He stood. The pain in his leg screamed in protest, but he moved anyway. Toward the light. Toward the impossible.
The closer he got, the quieter the world became.
No wind. No fire. No birds.
Just the sound of his breath—and the slow beat of his heart, ticking like a countdown.
He reached the edge of the circle. It was beautiful in a terrifying way. Alien. Sacred. Wrong.
He should have turned back.
Instead, he stepped in.
---
The world broke.
---
Not like an explosion. Not like falling.
More like unraveling.
Color vanished. Sound twisted. The air turned to glass. His body screamed—every nerve stretched and set ablaze.
Then came the light. Pure, unrelenting, white.
It swallowed him whole.
---
When he awoke, he was in a forest.
Not a forest like the ones in Germany, where he was born. Not like anything on Earth.
The trees were tall—impossibly tall—with black trunks and violet leaves that shimmered under a sky of silver mist. Strange birds flitted between the branches, their wings glowing faintly in the dim light.
The air smelled of ash and lilac.
John coughed and rolled onto his side. His gun was gone. His armor, torn. His skin was marked by cuts and burns, but he was alive.
Barely.
He groaned and tried to sit up, but a wave of dizziness crushed him back to the forest floor.
That's when he heard it.
A voice.
Soft. Feminine. Singing.
A lullaby—foreign, melodic, and ancient.
He opened his eyes. A figure stood above him. Cloaked in silver and gold, hair like white fire flowing behind her, eyes the color of dawn.
"Sleep, flame-born," she whispered. "Your pain ends for now."
A soft light touched his brow. Warmth spread through his body. The pain dulled. His vision blurred.
Before sleep claimed him, he caught a glimpse of something shining on her breast—a pendant. A starburst wrapped in ivy.
He tried to remember her face.
He couldn't.
But her voice stayed with him.
---
John Myers slept for three days.
---
When he woke again, it was in a small chamber carved from smooth white stone. A gentle fire burned in a nearby hearth. He was lying on silken sheets, dressed in clean tunics.
A healer sat nearby, mixing herbs into a wooden bowl. She looked startled when he stirred.
"Stay still," she said in accented English. "You've crossed the Veil. Your spirit is unmoored."
"Where... am I?"
She hesitated. "In Klaniska. The kingdom of light. You were found near the Blightwood by the Queen herself."
John tried to sit up. Pain flared through his ribs. The healer pushed him gently back.
"Don't move," she said. "You're safe now."
He looked at her. Then at the fire. Then down at his hands—still trembling.
He wasn't safe. He never would be again.
---
Days passed. Then weeks.
John healed slowly, under the watchful eye of royal physicians and soft-spoken servants. He learned the name of the healer: Mira, a priestess of the Flame Mother. She taught him the language—Valari—and the customs of the land.
But more than anything, he learned about her.
The Queen.
Athena Varion.
They said she ruled not with might, but with mercy. That her magic could mend wounds both seen and unseen. That her rule was untouched by war for over a decade.
They said she found him because she heard his soul crying in the dark.
John didn't believe in fate.
But when he met her, he started to wonder.
---
It was in the royal gardens.
He had been walking, trying to regain his strength, when he saw her—kneeling beside a bed of blue lilies, her cloak swept around her like morning fog.
She turned when she sensed him.
And smiled.
It wasn't a queen's smile.
It was human.
"You're awake," she said softly.
He nodded, unsure how to respond.
"I'm told you're not from this world."
"No."
"That must be frightening."
"It is."
She studied him a moment. Then reached into her pocket and held out something small.
A pendant.
A starburst wrapped in ivy.
"This was my mother's," she said. "I wear it when I need to remember what matters."
John took it gently. His hands shook.
"I don't know who I am anymore."
"You will," Athena whispered. "In time. The flame always remembers."
---
And in that moment, beneath the silver trees of Klaniska, John Myers—the soldier, the broken man—felt something stir in his chest.
Not hope.
Not yet.
But something close.
---
He stayed.
He trained. He healed. He began to understand the world. Magic. History. Pain.
For the first time since Earth, he laughed.
For the first time since Earth, he believed he might survive.
---
He was wrong.
Because while peace bloomed in the gardens of Klaniska…
…a shadow stirred beyond the horizon.
A thing that remembered the old flames.
A thing that came not for war…
…but for her.
And when it arrived, there would be no mercy.
Not even for the Ash King.