It had been more than four centuries since the first cards appeared. In the beginning, every man, woman, and child was marked, one hundred percent, without exception. It was said the gods themselves placed the words into human palms, each card a spark of divine order. But centuries pass, blood thins, and certainty corrodes.
Now, in the Dominion of Azerath, the Judges of Words kept precise tallies. No longer did every child draw with a card. The percentage had slipped, first slowly, then in terrifying swells, until nearly thirteen in every hundred stood empty-handed at the age of six.
The Cardless.
In Azerath, they were not tolerated. It was said a Cardless child cursed the bloodline that bore them. Families of the Cardless were dragged through the streets, stripped of possessions, branded, and marched to the gates. Their crime was simple: imperfection. Their punishment was exile to Veyrden.
Daren's memory of exile never left him.
He had been only three days after the drawing ceremony when the soldiers came for his family. He remembered his father shouting, a mason of good repute, who had built bridges in the eastern province, his voice breaking when the Judge declared him ruined. Daren had been declared Cardless in the drawing ceremony by the Judge. His palm had remained bare, a pale and empty canvas. For this, his family line was ended.
The neighbors had watched, some in silence, some in relief. None defended them. To harbor sympathy for a Cardless was to invite suspicion.
His father was taken in chains to a labor camp. His mother had hanged herself the night before their march. Daren and his siblings were herded into wagons, branded on the wrist, and sent to the smog-choked gorges of Veyrden. He remembered the clanging of the gates behind them, the sound that declared them dead to Azerath.
By the time he reached manhood, Daren had no siblings left. Disease, hunger, and accidents in the mines had stolen them all. He learned to keep his head down, to work for scraps, to expect nothing.
Elira's story was different, though no less cruel.
She was born the daughter of a scribe in Azerath's capital, the city of Vehrin. Her family was poor but proud; their card-lineage was unbroken for generations. Until her.
At six, her drawing came. She held out her trembling palm before the Judge, and nothing appeared. Elira remembered her father's hand tightening on her shoulder before she went to the Judge, her mother's stifled sob. That silence condemned them all.
They were given three days to abandon their home. Three days, and then soldiers dragged them out, their neighbors averting their eyes. Her father died of fever within the first year in Veyrden. Her mother wasted away soon after. By sixteen, Elira was alone.
It was then she met Daren, not through romance, but through survival. Both were alone, both had known loss. They huddled together for warmth in the Ashwards, that slum of broken families and discarded souls. Over time, pity became companionship, and companionship deepened into something resembling love. They were married in a hushed ritual, without priest or blessing, just two vows whispered in the dark.
Years later, Kael was born.
Kael was the child of outcasts. He grew up in the Ashwards, the quarter where outcasts lived, always smelled of iron dust, coal, and damp straw, where the air was thick with soot and the ground was never free of coal dust. Children with cards looked down on him; grown men spat at him; women pulled their children away from his reach.
"Outcast spawn," they whispered.
"A bloodline of emptiness."
And yet, Kael was not empty. From his earliest days, he laughed easily, cried loudly, and asked questions that startled his weary parents. Elira would stroke his hair and tell him stories of a world beyond the gates. Daren would teach him to stand tall, even when others struck him down.
But both feared the day that would come, the day Kael turned six.
They prayed, not for greatness, but for survival. Any card, even the meanest, would do. Better Stone or Torch than nothing at all. Better the mines than the shame of the Cardless.
Still, the fear lingered: what if their curse was unbreakable? What if Kael's palm was bare?
For in Azerath, lineage mattered. And in Veyrden, outcasts beget only outcasts.
Days passed.
The morning of Kael's sixth birthday broke under a choking sky.
In Veyrden, there were no dawns of golden light, no hymns to the rising sun. The air was a permanent haze, thick with smoke from the forges and furnaces that burned day and night.
Kael woke to the sound of coughing. His father's cough, dry and rattling. His mother's softer, but no less weary. They were both awake before him, as they always were.
Elira sat by the hearth, turning stale bread over in her hands as though by rubbing it she might coax it back to life. Daren was strapping his worn boots, preparing for another day in the mines.
Kael rubbed his eyes and blinked at them. His father looked at him once, then quickly away. His mother smiled, or tried to.
"Happy birthday, my love," she whispered. Her voice trembled.
Kael grinned, but the smile faded when he saw the worry in her eyes. He knew, in the way children know without words, that something heavy was waiting for him that day.
The knocking came before they could eat.
Hard fists pounding against wood, making the walls shudder. Daren froze, fists clenching. Elira stood so quickly the bread tumbled from her lap.
Kael's heart raced. He didn't need to be told who it was. Every child in Veyrden grew up hearing the stories. On the morning of their sixth birthday, soldiers came. They always came.
The door swung open before his father could reach it. Two armored wardens stepped inside, faces hidden behind iron helms, cloaks reeking of forge smoke. Behind them, more soldiers waited, their boots stirring up dust from the street.
"Kael, son of Daren and Elira," one barked. "By order of the Dominion of Azerath, you will present yourself for drawing."
Daren moved instinctively, placing himself between the soldiers and his son. "He is only a boy."
The soldier's gauntlet struck him across the face. Daren crumpled to his knees, blood spattering the dirt floor.
"Six years. That is the law. You know this." The soldier's voice was flat, practiced. He seized Kael by the arm.
Elira cried out, clutching at her child. Another warden shoved her back, hard enough that she stumbled into the hearth, the bread scattering into ash.
Kael struggled, kicking against the grip. "Mother! Father!"
The soldier dragged him through the door, ignoring his cries.
Outside, neighbors had gathered. Some spat, some whispered. An old woman muttered, "Outcast blood breeds only curses. Best he be taken." A younger man murmured back, "Only if we were noble-born, they'd hush it up and let us rot in a silk bed."
"Quiet," another hissed. "Do you want the wardens to hear?"
The words stuck in Kael's ears even as he was hauled away. He didn't understand them, not fully, but he felt the sting of them, as though they carried a truth no one dared to speak.
They marched the children through the streets of Veyrden in a single file, soldiers on every side. Dozens of six-year-olds, all dragged from their homes at dawn, their faces pale with fear. Some wept, some trembled silently. None smiled.
Kael glanced at them, heart hammering. Were they as afraid as he was?
He tightened his fingers into a fist.
His hand ached. Not like a wound, but like something pressing outward from beneath the skin. His father had told him once, in a whisper, on a night when Kael should have been asleep, that on the morning of a child's sixth birthday, the card was already inside them, waiting to be drawn out. Not with ink or blade, but with breath and will.
That was why they called it the Drawing.
The Judges claimed a child could not know their card alone. Only in the Smeltspire, under law and record, could the word be revealed. Some said if no Judge saw it, the card would wither and vanish. Kael didn't know if that was true, but he knew one thing: when the Judge commanded him to open his palm, the truth of him would bleed out for all to see.
Above them loomed the Smeltspire, the black tower of stone and iron where the Judges held dominion. Smoke poured from its chimneys, smearing the sky into deeper grey.
It looked less like a hall of law and more like the chimney of a furnace waiting to swallow them whole.
Kael closed his fist tighter, as if he could hold the mystery in.
The Smeltspire swallowed them whole.
Inside, the air was colder than the streets outside, though braziers burned along the walls. The chamber was vast, lined with stone pillars blackened by soot, banners of the Dominion hanging between them. A dais rose at the far end, and on it stood a single figure robed in iron-grey, a staff in one hand and a great leather ledger resting open before him.
The Judge of Words.
Every child knew the stories: that the Judge's eyes could pierce lies, that his quill could write fates unchangeable. Kael thought he looked less like a man and more like a crow wrapped in cloth, waiting to peck at carrion.
The children were herded into rows. Soldiers flanked the walls. Parents were nowhere in sight; they had been barred outside the gates. The hall belonged to the Judge alone.
"Attend," the Judge intoned. His voice was deep, echoing against the pillars. "This is the Drawing. Each of you, at the hour of your sixth year, bears within you a word, a destiny. You will draw it forth. You will be named. And you will serve."
He raised his staff, pointing it to the first child in line.
"Step forward."
A boy shuffled ahead, eyes wide, fists clenched.
"Open your hand," the Judge commanded.
The boy hesitated. A soldier growled, and he flinched, thrusting out his palm. Light flickered, words etching themselves across his skin. The card revealed itself.
Pickaxe.
The Judge glanced once, quill scratching into the ledger. "Laborer. Mines."
The boy was shoved aside.
Next came a girl, small and trembling. She opened her hand, and the card shimmered faintly: Torch.
"Forges," the Judge declared. Another mark of the quill.
One by one, the line moved. Some revealed words of strength or skill. Hammer.Stitch.Stone. The Judge recorded them all without pause, assigning their paths with a flick of his hand.
Then came a boy whose palm remained bare. He strained, breathing hard, clutching at his chest, but nothing appeared.
The Judge's lips curled. "Cardless."
The word struck like a curse. Soldiers seized the boy, dragging him screaming toward a side door. The other children shrank back, eyes wide with terror.
Kael's stomach twisted. He thought of his parents, of their branded wrists, their exile, their shame. He felt bile rise in his throat.
Another girl approached, and when she revealed her palm, the hall stirred. The card gleamed with a strange shimmer: Whisper.
The Judge's eyes narrowed. He wrote carefully, then signaled the wardens. "Confiscate."
The girl cried out as soldiers took her arms, pulling her toward another door — not the one of the Cardless, but a darker passage. Her sobs echoed as the shadows swallowed her.
"What happens to her?" a child whispered near Kael.
"Taken," another muttered. "To the Dominion's cloisters. Some say they never return."
Kael shivered.
The line dwindled. Each Drawing etched another fate into the ledger. The Judge never smiled, never frowned, only wrote. Children wept or trembled, but it did not matter. A word was a word.
At last, Kael heard his name.
"Kael, son of Daren and Elira. Step forward."
His knees felt weak. He walked as if through water, every step heavy. The Judge's gaze was on him, sharp as a knife.
"Open your hand," the Judge commanded.
Kael clenched his fist. His palm throbbed, burning now. He remembered his father's whisper: Breathe. The word is inside you. Draw it out.
The Judge's staff struck the floor. "Now."
Kael inhaled, forced his hand open.
Light erupted. Not white, not faint, but blazing gold against a surface of black. The word carved itself into being, letters sharp and undeniable.
HERO.
The hall fell silent.
The Judge froze, quill trembling in his hand. Soldiers stared, muttering in disbelief.
A child screamed in shock. Another fell to their knees.
The word shone brighter the longer it was looked upon, as if feeding on the shock, refusing to be ignored.
The Judge's eyes narrowed. He leaned forward, voice low and furious.
"Impossible."
His hand moved to scratch the ledger, then halted. His quill shook.
At last he hissed, "Seize him."
Soldiers advanced. Kael stumbled back, heart pounding. The word sank into his chest, searing like fire, as if the card had entered his very blood.
"Mother! Father!" he cried.
The Judge slammed his staff. "Confiscate the boy. He does not leave this hall."
And the soldiers' gauntlets closed around Kael's arms.
The hall erupted.
"Hold him!" shouted the Judge, slamming his staff against the stone. Sparks leapt at the impact, echoing like thunder. "Do not let the boy escape!"
Kael thrashed against the gauntlets that gripped his arms. The soldiers were twice his size, their armor clanking as they hauled him up, but still he fought. His palm still glowed, the card burning into the air like a brand that would not fade.
The children shrieked. Some hid their eyes. Others pressed themselves against the walls, as if distance alone could protect them.
"This is blasphemy," hissed the Judge. His eyes gleamed with both fury and unease. "The word is forbidden. It was struck from the ledgers centuries ago. How--" He broke off, lips pressed tight, as though the very thought risked treason.
The soldiers dragged Kael toward the darker door, the same passage where the girl with Whisper had been taken. His heels scraped stone; he kicked, shouted, but their grip was iron.
Then a sound rose above the clamor, a voice raw with desperation.
"Kael!"
His mother's cry.
Elira forced her way into the chamber while the guards were distracted, hair disheveled, eyes wild. Two guards stumbled after her, shouting, but she slipped past them, throwing herself toward her son. "Release him! He's only a child!"
The Judge's staff slammed again. "Outcast filth! Remove her!"
But Elira didn't falter. She reached Kael, clutching at his arm, tears streaking her soot-stained cheeks. "Kael, hold on. We will not let them take you. Do you hear me? We will not let them!"
Behind her came another figure, Kael's father, Daren. He too had broken past the guards amid the chaos, his branded wrist raised high, the mark of his exile visible for all to see.
"You'll not take my son!" he bellowed. His voice thundered through the hall like a hammer striking an anvil.
The chamber froze for a heartbeat. Outcasts did not speak so boldly in the presence of a Judge. Outcasts bowed. Outcasts obeyed.
The Judge's face twisted with rage. "Seize them all. The family is condemned."
Steel rang as soldiers surged forward.
Kael screamed as hands pulled him from his mother's grasp. He saw her thrown to the ground, a boot pressing against her ribs. He saw his father strike one soldier with a desperate fist, only to be clubbed across the skull by another.
Blood smeared the stones.
The Judge's voice cut through the chaos like a knife. "Erase the word. Erase it before it spreads!"
But the word would not vanish. The letters still blazed in Kael's palm, brighter even as the soldiers beat his father into silence. The golden glow spilled across the Judge's ledger, staining the pages as though defying the ink.
"Take him to the cloisters," the Judge snapped. "The Dominion will decide his fate. No record shall remain here."
Kael was dragged backward, kicking, crying out for his parents. He glimpsed his mother's outstretched hand, his father's bloodied face, before the door slammed between them.
Darkness swallowed him.
Kael stumbled as the soldiers dragged him deeper into the Smeltspire. The torches thinned, until the world was shadows broken only by the flicker of iron sconces. The stone walls grew damp, lined with moss and rivulets of water that dripped like tears.
In the silence of the passage, the soldiers' boots echoed like hammers. Kael's sobs filled the void, raw and desperate. His hand still burned. The word was no longer only on his skin, he could feel it inside him, pulsing with every beat of his heart.
The passage seemed endless.
At last, the passage opened into a chamber unlike any Kael had seen.
It was not vast like the Judge's hall. It was narrow, circular, with walls of black slate. Chains hung from the ceiling, clinking softly when the drafts stirred. The air smelled of ink and iron, and something sour, something like rot.
Children sat in the corners. Silent. Watching.
Their eyes followed Kael as he was dragged across the chamber. Some were gaunt, pale from lack of sunlight. Others clutched their knees, rocking as if to keep from unraveling. None spoke. None smiled.
The soldiers shoved him to the floor. His knees cracked against stone.
A figure stepped from the shadows. Robes darker than the Judge's, a hood drawn low. In one hand they carried a vial of black liquid. In the other, a needle of silver.
"Another," the figure murmured. Their voice was neither man nor woman, thin and sharp as broken glass. "What card?"
One of the soldiers barked, "Hero."
The hooded figure froze. The vial trembled in their hands. Slowly, they lifted their head, revealing a pale face crisscrossed with ink-stained veins. Their eyes widened, almost hungry.
"Impossible," they whispered. "Impossible… yet true."
They crouched before Kael, studying him as though he were a puzzle. "Show me."
Kael clenched his fist. "No."
The figure smiled faintly, though their teeth were blackened. "It burns inside you, doesn't it? The word never sleeps. Open your hand, child. Let me see."
Kael shook his head.
The figure's smile faded. They gestured to the soldiers. "Hold him."
Iron hands gripped Kael's wrists, forcing his palm open. The card blazed again, brighter than before, as though resisting the shadows of the cloister itself.
HERO.
The children in the corners gasped. The hooded figure hissed, pulling back as though scorched. "So it returns. After four centuries, it returns."
They turned sharply to the soldiers. "Chain him. The Dominion must be told at once. This is no child. This is a herald."
Kael thrashed, shouting for his parents, but the chains closed cold around his wrists. The children watched, eyes wide, silent as ever.
And in that silence, Kael realized something dreadful: none of them were meant to leave this place.
And though he did not yet understand it, though terror filled every breath, something deep within him whispered: This is only the beginning.