The rain fell in sheets, cold and relentless, as Kael stumbled through the darkened alley. His hands trembled, not from the chill, but from the weight of the dying elder's words still echoing in his mind. Bloodline. Guardian. Destiny. Words that felt like chains wrapping around his throat, suffocating the life he'd known.
He pressed his back against the damp stone wall, sliding down until he sat in a puddle that seeped through his worn trousers. The city around him hummed with life, oblivious to the storm raging inside him. Merchants haggled, children laughed, lovers whispered secrets. All of them blissfully unaware that their world teetered on the edge of oblivion.
Kael's fingers found the amulet tucked beneath his shirt. The metal was warm, almost alive, pulsing with a rhythm that matched his heartbeat. The elder had pressed it into his palm with blood stained fingers, eyes wide with terror and hope intertwined.
"Find her," the old man had rasped, his breath rattling like dead leaves. "The mage... she knows... she remembers..."
Then silence. The kind that swallowed everything.
Kael had run. Of course he had. That's what survivors did. But now, sitting in the rain with nowhere left to go, he realized running wouldn't save him. It never had. His mother's face flashed through his memory, beautiful and kind, before the fever took her. His father, whoever he was, had vanished before Kael could form his first word. The streets had raised him, taught him to steal, to fight, to endure.
But this? This was different.
A scream pierced the night, sharp and terrible. Kael's head snapped up. The sound came from the market square, close enough that he could hear the panic spreading like wildfire. People were running now, their footsteps a chaotic thunder.
He should run too. Every instinct screamed at him to disappear into the shadows, to become invisible as he'd done a thousand times before. But something else stirred within him, something ancient and fierce. The amulet grew hotter, almost burning against his skin.
Kael pulled himself to his feet, his legs unsteady. Through the rain, he could see the square lit by the orange glow of flames. Buildings were burning. People were dying. And at the center of it all stood a creature that shouldn't exist, a thing of nightmare given flesh and fury.
It towered above the fleeing crowd, its skin like cracked obsidian, eyes glowing with malevolent hunger. Each step it took cracked the cobblestones beneath its massive clawed feet. When it roared, the sound shook the very foundations of the buildings around them.
Kael's breath caught in his throat. This was what the elder had warned about. The seals were breaking. The horrors were returning.
A child's cry cut through the chaos. A little girl, no more than five, stood frozen in the street, separated from her mother by a wall of flame. The creature's head turned toward her, drawn by her terror like a shark to blood.
Something inside Kael shattered. Maybe it was the last remnant of the boy who'd believed the world could be kind. Maybe it was the first awakening of whatever power lay dormant in his blood. He didn't know. Didn't care.
He ran toward the fire, toward the monster, toward certain death. The amulet blazed with light, and for the first time in his life, Kael Thornwood stopped running away and ran toward something worth fighting for.
Even if it killed him.