The hammer rang against steel with a rhythm Kael had known his entire life. Strike. Breathe. Strike. Breathe. The forge fire painted the walls of Master Torven's workshop in dancing orange light, casting shadows that twisted and writhed like living things.
If only he'd known how prophetic that would be.
"You're distracted, boy." Torven's gravelly voice cut through the metallic percussion. The old blacksmith stood by the quenching barrel, arms crossed, his weathered face creased with concern. "Third blade this week you've nearly ruined. What's eating at you?"
Kael set down the hammer, wiping sweat from his brow with a soot-stained forearm. What could he say? That he'd been having dreams? Dreams of places that couldn't exist—cities that floated in void-black skies, forests where the trees bled silver, battlefields where the dead refused to lie still.
Dreams where shadows spoke his name.
"Just tired, Master," Kael lied, turning back to the half-formed sword on the anvil. "I'll focus better."
Torven grunted, unconvinced, but said nothing more. He'd taken Kael in as a foundling fifteen years ago, raised him as the son he'd never had. The old man knew when to push and when to let silence do the work.
Kael lifted the hammer again, but before he could strike, pain lanced through his left arm—sharp, burning, impossible to ignore. He dropped the hammer with a clatter, clutching his forearm as it blazed with agony that had no source, no wound, no reason.
"Kael!" Torven rushed forward, but Kael stumbled backward, gasping.
The pain vanished as suddenly as it had come.
In its wake, something new had appeared on his skin.
With trembling fingers, Kael rolled up his sleeve. There, etched into his flesh as if branded by invisible fire, was a mark he'd never seen before. Black lines formed an intricate pattern—geometric shapes that seemed to shift when he wasn't looking directly at them, symbols that hurt his eyes to follow.
It pulsed with a faint, otherworldly glow.
"Seven hells," Torven breathed, his face going pale. "Where did you get that?"
"I don't—it just appeared, I—"
The mark flared brighter, and Kael's words died in his throat.
Because the shadows on the walls had stopped moving with the firelight.
They were moving toward him.
Kael's heart hammered in his chest as tendrils of darkness peeled away from the walls like living ink, reaching across the workshop floor. Torven backed away, his hand fumbling for the iron poker by the forge, but Kael couldn't move. The mark on his arm burned cold now, and the shadows weren't just approaching.
They were kneeling.
A dozen shapes of pure darkness, humanoid but wrong—too tall, too thin, with too many joints in their limbs—prostrated themselves before Kael in a circle. The temperature in the forge plummeted. His breath came out in white puffs.
"Shadowborn," one of them whispered, its voice like wind through a crypt. "The last... has awakened."
"I don't understand," Kael managed, his voice barely above a whisper. "What are you? What do you want?"
The shadow-thing tilted its head at an unnatural angle. "We are yours. We have always been yours. Your blood calls us. Your mark commands us. But he comes. He knows. You must flee."
"Who comes? Who knows?"
But the shadows were already retreating, melting back into the darkness as if they'd never been. The warmth of the forge returned, and with it, a sound that made Kael's blood run cold.
Bells.
Church bells, ringing across the city of Thornhaven in a pattern he'd heard only once before, during the Purge of Ashwick five years ago.
The bells of the Holy Inquisition.
"They're hunting someone," Torven said, his voice hollow. He looked at Kael, and in his eyes was something Kael had never seen before: fear. Fear of him. "They're hunting you."
Kael wanted to argue, to deny it, but the mark on his arm pulsed in time with the tolling bells, and he knew—with a certainty that transcended logic—that Torven was right.
The old blacksmith moved to the back of the workshop, sliding aside a loose floorboard. From the hidden compartment, he pulled out a leather pack, a hooded cloak, and a sword—not one of the plain practice blades they sold to merchants, but a weapon of quality, etched with runes that gleamed silver in the forge-light.
"How long have you known?" Kael asked.
"I've suspected for years. Hoped I was wrong." Torven thrust the pack into Kael's hands. "There's food, coin, and a map. Head north to the Veilwood. Find the woman who calls herself the Gray Witch. She can help you understand what you are."
"What I am? Master, I don't—"
"There's no time!" Torven grabbed Kael by the shoulders, his grip iron-strong despite his age. "Listen to me, boy. The Shadowborn were the first wielders of power in this world, before the gods, before the Rift. The Church hunted them to extinction three centuries ago—or so they claimed. But you..."
He looked at the mark on Kael's arm, and his expression was a mixture of wonder and dread.
"You're something that shouldn't exist. And that makes you the most dangerous thing in Thornhaven."
The bells were growing louder, closer. Kael could hear shouting now, the sound of armored boots on cobblestones.
"I can't just leave you," Kael protested, but Torven was already pushing him toward the back door.
"You can, and you will. I'll buy you time. Now go!"
Kael hesitated for one heartbeat, two. Then he pulled the hood over his head, slung the pack over his shoulder, and ran.
Behind him, he heard the workshop door splinter. Heard Torven's defiant shout, the crash of steel, the sounds of violence. Every instinct screamed at him to turn back, to fight, to help the only father he'd ever known.
But the mark on his arm pulsed with heat, and the shadows in the alley whispered urgently: Run. Run. Run.
So Kael ran.
He ducked through narrow alleys, vaulted over low walls, his years of navigating Thornhaven's streets serving him now as they never had before. The city was alive with movement—Inquisitors in their white-and-gold armor, priests wielding staves that glowed with holy light, even common soldiers pressed into the hunt.
All searching for him.
Kael pressed himself into a shadowed doorway as a patrol passed, five soldiers led by an Inquisitor whose breastplate bore the sigil of the Eternal Flame. They were questioning a merchant not ten feet away, their voices harsh.
"...anyone suspicious. Young male, early twenties, dark hair. He'll bear the Mark of Corruption."
"Mark of Corruption?" the merchant stammered. "I haven't seen—"
"Search his shop," the Inquisitor commanded. "The taint spreads if left unchecked."
Kael watched them ransack the merchant's stall, overturning crates of vegetables, tearing through bundles of cloth. The merchant protested weakly but was silenced with a casual backhand that sent him sprawling.
Rage flared in Kael's chest—hot, primal, unfamiliar. The mark on his arm began to glow, brighter now, visible even through his sleeve. The shadows in the doorway began to writhe, reaching toward the soldiers with hungry intent.
No. He couldn't. He didn't even know what he was doing, what he was becoming.
With tremendous effort, Kael forced the rage down, forced the shadows to stillness. The mark dimmed. He had to keep moving.
The north gate was too obvious—it would be watched. But there was another way out, one he'd used as a child sneaking out to watch the merchants' caravans. A drainage tunnel beneath the old district, one that led out past the walls.
Kael made his way through the twisting streets, staying to the shadows that now seemed to welcome him like old friends. He was almost to the old district when he heard the scream.
A child's scream.
Every rational thought told him to keep moving, that he couldn't afford to stop, that his own survival depended on escape. But Kael had never been particularly good at listening to rational thoughts.
He rounded the corner to find a girl—no more than ten—cornered by three Inquisitor guards. She was sobbing, reaching for a fallen doll, but the guards kept kicking it away, laughing.
"Please," she wept. "I just want my toy. I haven't done anything wrong."
"Your father's a suspected heretic," one guard sneered. "That makes you guilty by blood."
The lead guard raised his boot to stomp on the doll—a petty cruelty that would break the child's heart—and something inside Kael snapped.
The mark exploded with dark light.
Shadows erupted from every corner, from every crack in the cobblestones, from the very air itself. They wrapped around the guards like serpents, lifting them off their feet. The men's laughter turned to screams of terror as the darkness tightened, squeezing, pulling them down into shadows that had become pools of liquid night.
In seconds, they were gone. Vanished. Consumed.
The alley fell silent except for the child's hiccupping sobs.
Kael stood there, staring at his hands—his arms wreathed in fading tendrils of shadow—and felt sick. What had he done? He'd killed them. Killed three men with a power he didn't understand, couldn't control.
The girl looked up at him, her tear-stained face pale in the moonlight. Kael expected fear, horror, the same look Torven had given him.
Instead, she whispered, "Thank you."
She grabbed her doll and ran, disappearing into the night.
Kael didn't have time to process what had happened. Behind him, he heard more bells, more shouting. Someone had seen the dark light, seen what he'd done. The hunt was intensifying.
He ran again, this time not just from fear, but from himself.
The drainage tunnel entrance was hidden behind a collapsed wall in what had once been a tannery. Kael squeezed through the gap, his pack scraping against stone, and dropped into darkness. The tunnel was narrow, slick with moisture, and smelled of things he didn't want to identify.
But it led north. Toward the Veilwood. Toward answers.
Kael crawled through the darkness, the mark on his arm providing a faint, eerie light. Behind him, he could still hear the bells, could imagine the Inquisitors searching every shadow, every corner.
Let them search.
By the time they found the tunnel, he'd be gone.
Two hours later, Kael emerged from the tunnel outside Thornhaven's walls, gasping for fresh air. The city lights glittered behind him, deceptively beautiful from this distance. Somewhere in there, Torven was either dead or captured. Somewhere in there, his entire life had ended.
Kael pulled the cloak tighter against the chill wind and looked north.
The Veilwood waited, a dark smudge on the horizon where even starlight seemed afraid to venture. Legends said the wood was cursed, that those who entered rarely returned, and those who did were never the same.
Kael touched the mark on his arm, felt it pulse beneath his fingers.
Maybe he'd find answers there. Maybe he'd find death.
At this point, he wasn't sure which he deserved more.
With one last look at the only home he'd ever known, Kael turned his back on Thornhaven and walked into the darkness.
Behind him, the city bells continued their hunting toll.
Before him, the shadows whispered promises he was afraid to understand.
And on his arm, the Mark of the Shadowborn burned with cold fire, a brand that proclaimed him heir to power that had nearly destroyed the world once before.
Kael's journey had only just begun.