Ashveil was a city forever caught between day and night. Its streets glowed faintly under the fractured heavens, where half a sun burned dimly behind clouds and the other half lay shattered into streaks of eternal twilight. Lanterns never went out here; neither did the smoke from its forges.
Kaien wiped sweat from his brow as he hammered a dented kitchen knife into shape. Sparks flared in rhythm, painting his face gold and crimson in the low light. He was eighteen, lean but strong from the forge, hands calloused from years of shaping iron. Most days were like this — repairing farming tools, re-shoeing horses, or, rarely, sealing the cracks of Dead relic husks that no longer held power.
Business was steady, but never exciting. Kaien often thought Ashveil itself felt like the tools he worked on — functional, dulled, and waiting for someone to strike it alive again.
The shop door banged open, and a man stumbled inside. His cloak was torn, soaked in blood, and his breath came ragged.
"Blacksmith—" he rasped, eyes wide with fever. "Hide this—before they find me."
He collapsed onto the floor, a trail of crimson spreading beneath him. In his hand, he clutched a dagger so rusted it looked ready to crumble. Its blade was pitted, its hilt wrapped in fraying cloth.
Kaien froze. He knew that look — the way the dagger seemed heavier than steel should be. He had seen relic hunters drag in broken trinkets before, but this one… this one felt different.
"Hey—!" Kaien knelt beside the man. "You need a healer."
The hunter's eyes glazed. With the last of his strength, he shoved the dagger into Kaien's hands. His lips moved, whispering words Kaien couldn't catch. Then his body went still.
Kaien swallowed hard, staring at the weapon. The dagger was cold, unnaturally so. Even through the cloth, it seemed to bite into his palm.
Outside, voices shouted. Boots thundered past the forge. Whoever had chased this man… they weren't far.
Kaien wrapped the dagger in burlap and shoved it under the forge table, heart racing.
That night, Kaien lay restless in his bed above the forge. The dagger's weight seemed to press on his thoughts even though it was hidden below.
Sleep eventually dragged him under, and with it, a dream.
He stood on a battlefield of ash. The sky above was broken — shards of burning light hung where the sun should be, bleeding fire across a wasteland of corpses. Weapons jutted from the ground like gravestones. The air was thick with whispers.
Kaien looked down. In his hand was the rusted dagger, but it was no longer rusted. Its blade gleamed black-red, flames rippling along the edge. The whispers grew clearer, weaving together into a voice that curled around his mind like smoke.
Kaien.
The voice was neither male nor female, neither kind nor cruel. It was hunger.
You will burn…
Kaien gasped awake, heart pounding. The forge below had long gone cold, but the dagger — lying where he had hidden it — was no longer rusted. Its edge gleamed sharp, its steel warm to the touch, as if it had just been pulled from fire.
And faintly, impossibly, Kaien heard it again — a whisper at the edge of his thoughts.
Kaien
He sat in the darkness of his small room, staring at the blade that should not have changed. Every instinct told him to throw it away, to bury it, to rid himself of it.
But he couldn't.
The dagger's warmth pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat, as though it had already chosen him.
And from somewhere deep inside the blade, a voice too soft for words lingered in the silence.
Awakening.