Ash fell like snow.
Kaelen Ardyn dragged his body across the blackened field, every breath scraping like glass in his chest. Once, this had been his village. He remembered laughter, smoke rising from cookfires, his mother's hand on his shoulder as she scolded him for wandering too far into the woods.
Now only smoke remained. Not from hearths, but from fire-talismans that had burned his home to cinders. The disciples of two rival sects had clashed here, and his people had been nothing more than kindling beneath their fury.
He had run. He had fought. He had screamed until his throat bled. In the end, none of it mattered. His world had ended in a single night.
And still, he lived.
Kaelen collapsed beside a broken spear jutting from the soil, the world tilting and dimming around him. His hands shook violently as he pressed them against his wounds. The battlefield stank of blood and ozone, of charred flesh and cracked spirit-stones.
It was over.
If there are gods, they've already abandoned me, he thought bitterly.
But then—
A whisper drifted through the silence. Not from the sky, not from any throat. It came from within.
"To nurture a world, one must first lose their own."
His eyes flew open.
A pulse of emerald light bloomed in his palm. At first, he thought it was some lingering talisman-flame, a cruel remnant of the sect's battle. But no—this was softer. Warmer. A tiny glow, beating like a heart.
And in the center of that glow lay a seed.
It was no larger than his fingernail, yet Kaelen felt it root into him the instant he saw it. His chest tightened. He could not move, could not speak. He could only watch as the seed's light burrowed into his skin, sinking deep into his flesh.
Pain seared through him, sharper than any blade.
Kaelen gasped—and for a heartbeat, he was elsewhere.
He saw a world. Small, fragile, incomplete. A barren land beneath a cracked sky, no larger than a dream. Dust rolled across empty plains. Shadows lurked in corners where light had never touched. And at its center, waiting to take root, was a single patch of soil.
The vision snapped away. Kaelen staggered back, clutching his chest, staring at the faint sprout now etched into his palm like a brand.
"What… are you?" he whispered.
The battlefield gave him no answer.
But the silence did not last.
Low growls rippled across the broken ground. Kaelen turned sharply, heart hammering, to see three carrion hounds slinking out from the smoke. Their fur was matted with gore, their eyes glowing faint red. Scavengers of the battlefield—beasts that feasted on corpses, spirit, and bone.
Kaelen's limbs trembled. He had no sword, no strength, no hope.
The first hound lunged.
Instinct screamed at him to flee, but his body refused. He raised his arm desperately—
And the Seed answered.
Roots erupted from the ground. Black soil split as glowing tendrils lashed upward, impaling the beast mid-leap. Its howl was cut short as the roots dragged it down, siphoning its blood, its essence, its very life into the soil.
Kaelen's eyes widened. The Seed was feeding.
The other two hounds snarled and leapt together. Again, roots burst forth, sharper this time, coiling around them like serpents before crushing their bodies with sickening cracks.
The battlefield fell silent once more.
Kaelen stood frozen, his breath ragged. Then, slowly, his gaze drifted to his palm. The sprout burned faintly, and in his mind's eye he saw the barren world once more.
Only this time… it was different.
Where there had been only dust, a patch of soil now glowed green. A blade of grass swayed gently in an unseen wind. The world had changed.
Because the Seed had fed.
Kaelen fell to his knees, clutching his hand, torn between awe and terror.
"What have you bound to me?" he whispered. "What are you trying to make of me?"
The Seed gave no reply. Only a faint warmth pulsed through his veins, steady and inevitable, as though to say:
Grow… or die.