The world returned to him in fragments—shards of sound, scent, and pain.
Draven's body ached as though crushed beneath stone. Every breath burned in his chest, every muscle screamed when he tried to move. The clash with the Baron's soldiers had left him half-dead, and if not for sheer stubbornness he might already have joined the boy whose body he had inherited in the silence of death.
He lay upon the rotting straw of the shack, shadows draped over him like a funeral cloth. His right arm trembled violently as he lifted it toward the dim light seeping through broken planks in the roof. His palm bore faint lines of black fire, threads that pulsed and faded like veins of coal struggling to reignite.
The Ignivar bloodline. The whispers of that ancient fire would not leave him.
Memories continued to bleed into him from the soul of the boy. Not clear pictures—only broken impressions. The boy's endless coughing. The humiliation of being kicked down in muddy alleys. The hopeless wish to awaken something, anything, before death took him. And finally… that single thought etched into his final breath: Ignivar must not die forgotten.
Draven clenched his fist. "Your wish lives in me now. And I will not let it fade."
---
The City of Ashes
By the third day, he forced himself back to his feet. His wounds were bound with strips of rag, though infection gnawed at them. He had no luxuries of herbs or medicine. Only grit.
Grey Town stretched beyond the shack like a graveyard for the living. The alleys stank of rotting waste and blood, the air heavy with smoke from furnaces that never ceased burning. The gangs slithered in the shadows, whispering of the fire that had devoured the Rust Blades. Children ran barefoot through filth, their stomachs caved from hunger. And over all of it hung the fog—grey, suffocating, never clearing.
Rumors spread like wildfire through this smog-choked hell.
"A boy with flames of darkness killed the Rust Blades."
"Someone defied the Baron's soldiers."
"The Ignivar name has returned."
Most spat the last in disbelief. The Ignivars were myths, a house of fire long erased from history. But others whispered with trembling hope. In a town where the weak were little more than cattle, hope was as dangerous as rebellion.
Draven pulled his hood lower as he walked among them. His presence drew no attention yet, but he could feel the weight of rumors pressing in. He had become a shadow lurking in every whisper.
---
The Baron's Wrath
In the fortified manor that overlooked Grey Town, Baron Helbrecht smashed a goblet against the wall. Wine sprayed like blood across the stone.
"Two squads. Dead." His voice was low and heavy, yet it carried like thunder through the chamber. "By a boy?"
The soldiers standing before him dared not lift their eyes.
One stammered, "My lord, the men swore it was… fire. Black fire that consumed them—"
"Lies!" Helbrecht roared. The veins across his bull-like neck swelled as he slammed a fist onto the table, splitting oak like it were clay. "No flame can resist my steel! No gutter rat destroys my soldiers and lives."
From the shadows of the chamber stepped a man clad in battered armor. His left cheek bore a scar like a claw mark, his eyes glinting the cold grey of tempered steel. He bowed his head once, neither humble nor insolent.
"Give the order," he said. His voice was gravel, low and steady.
Baron Helbrecht's fury cooled into a grin. "Yes… Captain Elric. Hunt him. Bring me his head. If anyone dares hide him, burn them with him."
Elric's hand rested on the hilt of his greatsword, the steel longer than most men were tall. "It will be done."
---
Echoes of the Past
Back in the shack, Draven sat cross-legged, forcing his broken breath into rhythm. He pressed his palms together, trying to guide the faint trickle of fire through his veins. It resisted him—flaring violently one moment, dying the next.
The memory of his battle with the soldiers replayed. He had been clumsy, reckless, barely surviving. His strength was no match for trained warriors, let alone the Baron himself.
He needed more.
Within the hollow of his chest, something stirred. It was not a voice, nor a vision, but the echo of blood awakened. He felt a pattern unfold—a lattice of heat within his body, the memory of an ancient technique burned into the bloodline itself.
Ebonfire Veins.
The Ignivars had carved this cultivation into their very essence. A method to ignite fire in the bloodstream, weaving shadow into the marrow of bone. It was agony. Draven felt as if molten iron was being poured into his veins as he forced the technique to awaken.
Sweat poured down his body. His vision blackened. But then—
The fire steadied. No longer chaotic embers, but a thin current of shadowed flame coursing through him. Weak, but real.
Draven collapsed forward, gasping. A single flicker of black fire danced across his hand before fading into ash.
He smiled through his exhaustion. "So the blood remembers after all…"
---
A Town on Edge
By nightfall, Grey Town was no longer merely whispering. It trembled.
The Baron's soldiers patrolled with torches, dragging men from their hovels, demanding names. Anyone suspected of aiding the "Ignivar boy" was beaten, some hanged as warnings. Children cried in the alleys as smoke from burning homes blackened the sky.
Draven watched from the shadows, fury simmering in his gut. The Baron would tear the town apart simply to find him. But in that brutality, Draven also saw the crack forming: fear turning to resentment, resentment to defiance.
The poor had always bowed their heads. But now, some began to look up. And in their eyes flickered the same fragile spark he felt in his veins.
"I can't save them all yet," Draven muttered. His body was still too weak, his power half-born. But he would not let the spark die.
---
The Captain Arrives
It was in the dead of night that the first true hunter came.
Captain Elric strode into Grey Town with twenty soldiers at his back. His greatsword rested across his shoulder, its steel nicked and scarred from countless battles. He was no noble, no pampered warrior—he was forged from war itself, and the weight of death followed him.
The soldiers spread through the streets, smashing doors, searching every hovel. Those who resisted were cut down without hesitation.
From the mouth of a narrow alley, Draven watched. His fists clenched. He could already feel the shadowfire inside him coiling, restless, demanding release.
But he forced himself to stay still. Not yet.
Elric's voice rang through the street, deep and unyielding. "Ignivar!" He spat the name like venom. "Come out, or I will paint these streets with the blood of every rat who hides you."
Draven's jaw tightened. The old boy who had once lived in this body might have cowered. Might have hidden until the end.
But Draven was not that boy.
The fire within whispered: Rise.
---
The Omen of Fire
A scream split the night. Soldiers dragged a woman and two children from their shack. The mother clutched them, pleading as one of the soldiers raised his blade.
"Your silence costs their lives," Elric declared.
The blade descended—
And shadows erupted.
Flame burst forth, not red nor gold, but black edged with crimson, roaring from the darkness. It seized the soldier's arm, devouring steel and flesh alike in an instant. The man's scream turned to ash as his body crumpled.
The alley lit with hellish glow. And from that glow stepped Draven, hood falling back to reveal eyes burning like twin coals.
He spoke, his voice low but carrying to every ear.
"No more."
Elric's gaze locked onto him. For the first time that night, the captain's mouth curved into something like a smile.
"At last."