The night was supposed to be quiet.
The city of Mezalith slept under a shroud of cold mist, its spired towers leaning like tired giants. Lanterns flickered weakly in the streets, guarding against shadows that prowled through alleys where rats and thieves shared the same kingdom. For the people of Mezalith, the silence of night was safety—an illusion that monsters belonged only to bedtime tales.
Kaelen knew better.
He crouched on the edge of a half-collapsed rooftop, knees tucked to his chest, his cloak ragged from years of wandering. Below him stretched a market square, long abandoned after sundown. Stalls stood like skeletons, their canvases torn by wind. He tightened his grip on the iron dagger strapped to his thigh, though the weapon was dull and rusted. His breath fogged in the cold, and his ribs ached with hunger.
Nineteen years old, son of no one, heir to nothing. That was Kaelen of Mezalith.
He had lived by stealing bread crusts from distracted vendors, sleeping in the ruins of forgotten chapels, and running faster than any soldier could chase. If the world had been kind, perhaps he would have become a craftsman, or a farmer, or simply a nameless boy who grew into a nameless man. But the world had not been kind, not since the heavens cracked.
It began with a sound.
Not thunder. Not wind. Something deeper, as though the bones of the world groaned in agony. The air thickened, charged with a force Kaelen felt in his teeth. He lifted his gaze. Above Mezalith's towers, the stars blinked out one by one, snuffed as if unseen fingers pinched their light.
The sky split.
A jagged wound tore across the heavens, searing white against endless black. Light poured through, too bright to be moon or sun, blinding the city below. The mist burned away, leaving the air raw and metallic. Kaelen stumbled back, one arm shielding his eyes.
Then came the fire.
Flames rained from the wound in the sky, but not like falling stars. These were columns, spears of fire that struck the earth with the roar of armies. Buildings shattered as though made of sand. Streets cracked open. Screams erupted from every corner of Mezalith as its people woke to a nightmare.
And from the flames stepped figures.
They were tall, radiant, and terrible. Their skin shimmered with the sheen of molten gold, their eyes burning like suns. Each wore armor sculpted from elements—one draped in living fire, another in stone, another in storm. The air itself bent around them, as if reality bowed to their presence.
Kaelen's chest froze with dread.
He had heard the whispers, of course. The priests had once claimed the gods lived far above, watching, judging, unreachable. The scholars of Mezalith scoffed, calling them myths. But here they were, descending through a broken sky, and every instinct in Kaelen screamed the same truth: the gods had come, and they had not come for salvation.
A woman shrieked below. Kaelen looked down to see a mother clutching her child, fleeing across the square. One of the golden figures raised his hand, and a lance of light speared downward. Where the mother had stood was now a crater, rimmed with ash. No scream remained, only silence.
Kaelen's stomach lurched. He nearly fell from the roof. His dagger felt like a toy, useless against beings who could burn the world with a glance.
"Witness," boomed a voice. It rolled across the city like thunder given shape. One of the gods stepped forward, taller than the others, crowned with a mane of fire. His eyes swept across Mezalith, and everywhere his gaze landed, stone cracked. "The thousand thrones awaken. The age of mortals ends tonight."
The other gods raised their hands, and the city of Mezalith dissolved into chaos. Towers crumbled as children screamed. Soldiers raised spears that turned to molten metal in their hands. Fire chased people through the streets like hunting hounds.
Kaelen could not move. His legs shook, but he was trapped by awe and terror. His world, broken though it was, had been small and survivable. Now it burned under the boots of giants.
And then, amid the ruin, Kaelen heard another voice.
A whisper, not a roar. It curled in his ear like smoke, low and ancient.
Child of ash, bearer of blood unseen. When the thousand gods fall, one must rise. Seek the blade that drinks the heavens.
Kaelen's heart pounded. He spun, but no one stood beside him. Only shadow, only ruin. Yet the words lingered, heavy as chains.
The prophecy.
He had heard fragments of it in taverns, muttered by drunkards who claimed to know the old myths: that one day the gods would descend, and one mortal would wield a weapon forged not of earth or sky, but of something older. Most called it madness. Yet now, with the heavens ripped apart, Kaelen could no longer doubt.
But why him?
He was no prince. No warrior. Only a starving thief.
And yet the whisper echoed again Seek the blade.
The square below had become a slaughterhouse.
Flames painted the night in shades of crimson and gold. The gods strode through streets like conquerors, their voices commanding, their hands destroying. They did not fight battles; they enacted judgments. Every gesture ended lives.
Kaelen's mind screamed at him to run, but his body felt frozen to the rooftop. He watched the fire crawl toward him, swallowing stalls and wagons, until the heat pressed against his skin.
A shadow darted beneath the burning haze. Someone—alive—was racing toward the northern gate. A boy, no older than twelve, his tunic aflame. He stumbled, fell, and clawed at the cobblestones. Kaelen's stomach clenched. Without thinking, he leapt from the roof.
The fall jarred his knees, but he rolled and kept moving. His dagger clattered against his thigh as he sprinted through fire and smoke, toward the boy.
"Get up!" Kaelen shouted, dragging him to his feet. He tore the burning cloth away, slapping at embers with his bare hands. The child's skin was blistered, his eyes wide with terror.
A shadow loomed.
Kaelen turned. One of the gods had noticed them—a warrior draped in storm, lightning flickering around his shoulders. His gaze fixed on Kaelen like a hawk sighting prey.
Kaelen froze. His dagger felt like a joke in his hand. The boy whimpered, clutching Kaelen's arm.
The god raised a spear of lightning.
And then a stone crashed against the god's helmet.
"Run, you fool!" a voice bellowed.
From the side street charged a man in dented armor, wielding nothing but a broken shield. His face was soot-stained, his left eye covered by a scar. He looked nothing like a savior—yet his strike made the god pause, if only for a heartbeat.
Kaelen didn't waste the chance. He hauled the boy into his arms and sprinted. Behind him, the clash of thunder split the air as the armored man faced the storm-god alone.
Through alleys choked with ash, Kaelen ran. His lungs burned, his legs buckled, but he kept moving. Around him, Mezalith collapsed into ruin: families trampled in panic, homes caving in, the shriek of steel and fire. Every corner turned was another horror.
When they reached the northern wall, Kaelen's heart plummeted. The gate had already fallen. Its timbers lay shattered, crushed beneath the heel of another god—this one cloaked in living flame. Beyond the wreckage stretched a wasteland of smoke and broken roads. Escape was impossible.
Kaelen stumbled back, clutching the boy tighter. The god of fire turned his head, embers spilling from his eyes, and Kaelen knew they were seen.
This was the end.
The whisper returned.
The blade waits in shadow. The blade that drinks the heavens.
Kaelen's gaze snapped upward. Not far from the ruined gate, half-buried beneath collapsed stone, he glimpsed it: a glimmer. Not flame. Not lightning. Something else—cold, silver, alive.
For a heartbeat, he thought it was his imagination. But the whisper coiled again, urgent now. Seek it.
Kaelen hesitated only a breath before sprinting toward the rubble. The boy whimpered against his chest. Behind them, the god of fire raised his hand, and the air swelled with heat.
Kaelen dove into the wreckage.
The stone scraped his arms raw, but his hands found the glimmer. It wasn't a sword—at least not yet. It was a shard, black as obsidian, humming with energy that throbbed against his skin. As his fingers closed around it, the shard pulsed once, and the fire around them recoiled.
The god paused.
Kaelen gasped. The shard burned his palm, but he could not let go. The whisper rose in a chorus, no longer one voice but many, overlapping, echoing:
Bearer of ash. Breaker of thrones. You are bound.
The boy whimpered again, burying his face in Kaelen's shoulder. The god of fire stepped forward, but slower now, cautious. His gaze locked on the shard, and for the first time, Kaelen thought he saw hesitation in divine eyes.
The ground shook violently.
A deafening roar split the city, greater than thunder, greater than flame. Kaelen staggered, clutching the boy and the shard. Across the skyline, the wound in the sky widened, spilling more light, more gods, more ruin.
And amid it all, Kaelen knew one thing with bone-deep certainty.
His life as a starving thief had ended. Whatever the shard was, it had chosen him.
And the gods would not forgive him for it.
The shard pulsed in Kaelen's hand like a living heart. Each beat sent a ripple through the air, bending flame and smoke around him. The boy clung to him, trembling, too frightened even to cry.
The god of fire advanced, each step shaking the ruined street. His mouth opened, but the sound that emerged was not a voice—it was an inferno, a language of flame that seared Kaelen's ears. Sparks rained from the god's outstretched hand.
Kaelen staggered backward, clutching the shard. He felt nothing but panic. This was madness. He was no hero, no chosen one. He was a thief, and now he was about to be burned alive beside a child he didn't even know.
The whisper returned, sharper than ever.
Raise it.
Kaelen obeyed without thought. He thrust the shard forward. It was small, jagged, barely the length of his forearm—yet when it faced the god, the fire bent away. The god of flame recoiled, his roar faltering into something like surprise.
The shard pulsed again, harder now. Kaelen's knees buckled, but he held it aloft. For a moment, the world itself seemed to pause. The fire dimmed. The thunder stilled. Even the wound in the sky flickered.
And then, like lightning, the god vanished.
One instant he loomed, and the next he was gone, leaving only scorched stone where he had stood. The silence that followed was unbearable.
Kaelen gasped for breath. His arms trembled. His skin blistered where the shard had burned him, but still he could not let go. It was as if the thing had fused to him.
The boy looked up at him, eyes wide with something between terror and awe.
"What… what are you?" the child whispered.
Kaelen opened his mouth, but no answer came. He had no idea.
The ground quaked again. Across Mezalith, the war of gods raged on. Entire districts had collapsed into fire. The city's walls crumbled like sand. The heavens thundered as more divine figures poured from the sky's wound, each claiming dominion, each tearing the world apart to seat their thrones.
Kaelen clutched the boy tighter, forcing his legs to move. He could not fight gods. He could not save Mezalith. But perhaps, with this shard, he could escape.
He stumbled into an alley half-swallowed by ruin. Smoke clogged his lungs, but he pushed through, guided only by instinct and the shard's unnatural hum. Every corner threatened death: a building collapsing, soldiers trampled beneath their own fleeing citizens, shadows of winged gods gliding overhead. Yet somehow, Kaelen and the boy slipped between them, ghosts among the dying.
At last they reached the outer ruins of the city, where broken farmland stretched into darkness. Beyond lay forests and rivers, perhaps even hope.
Kaelen collapsed against a shattered wall, dragging in air that scorched his throat. The boy curled beside him, silent, his small body shaking.
For the first time since the sky split, Kaelen dared to breathe. He looked down at the shard. Its surface was black glass, fractured by veins of silver that pulsed like lightning trapped in stone. It was heavier than iron, yet it seemed to pull at him, whispering still.
Eclipsera… the voices murmured. The blade that drinks the heavens.
Kaelen shivered. The word etched itself into his mind like a brand.
From somewhere far behind, the city screamed as gods battled for dominion. Mezalith, his home—if it had ever been one—was dying. He should have felt sorrow, grief, despair. Instead, he felt only the weight of the shard and the certainty that his life was no longer his own.
The boy tugged at his sleeve. "What do we do now?"
Kaelen looked past the ruins, toward the endless black horizon. The wound in the sky still glared overhead, spilling fire and light, but somewhere beyond that chaos lay the answers the whispers promised.
He closed his fist around the shard.
"We run," Kaelen said, his voice raw but steady. "And we survive."
The boy nodded, though his eyes betrayed doubt.
Above them, the heavens groaned once more. Another crack split the sky, wider than before, and from it descended a shadow greater than flame or storm. Its wings blotted out the stars, its voice a rumble that shook mountains.
The thousand gods are come.
Kaelen's heart stilled. He tightened his grip on the shard and pulled the boy close. The war had only begun.