Darkness.Cold.Silence.
That was all that remained of the world.
Kael Ardent's first breath after death was not air—it was ash.The taste of burnt earth filled his mouth as he clawed at something wet and heavy above him. His fingers brushed against flesh—cold, stiff, and unyielding.
Bodies.Hundreds of them.
He was buried beneath the dead.
A sound broke the stillness—crack...—as Kael pushed upward, his hand bursting through the mound of corpses. The air above was thick with rot and smoke, the sky painted in endless gray.
He dragged himself out, gasping.Blood—black and half-dried—clung to his skin. His robes were shredded, his bones aching with memories of death.
But he remembered.Every blade. Every betrayal. Every voice that had damned him.
"By decree of the Holy Alliance... Kael Ardent, disciple of forbidden arts, is sentenced to death. May his soul never return."
They had thrown him here, into a pit with those they called heretics.Now their words would become his curse—and his promise.
Kael's hand trembled as he noticed something resting against his chest.A book, black as the void, its surface etched with shifting runes that shimmered faintly in violet light.He didn't remember owning it.But the moment his fingers touched it, his heartbeat stopped.
And then—he heard it.
A whisper. Soft, ancient, endless.
"Rise, Ashborn."
The voice was neither male nor female, neither alive nor dead. It spoke from within him, echoing through his bones.
Kael gasped as pain erupted in his chest. The world twisted—the corpses around him convulsed, their dead eyes flickering with a faint glow.Black smoke spilled from their mouths, swirling into his lungs.
He felt death enter him.Not as poison—but as power.
Flashes of memory struck him—ritual circles, shattered temples, screams of dying gods. A great shadow devouring the sky.And at the center of it all… that same whisper.
"You were chosen by the Scripture of Returning Ashes. Accept death, and command it."
Kael fell to his knees, clutching the tome as the last of the black mist poured into his veins. His heart—once cold—began to beat again, but wrong.Each thud echoed like a funeral bell.Each breath came with a faint echo of distant weeping.
He looked at his hands—veins of black light pulsed beneath the skin.Something within him had changed.
"Neither alive…" he muttered, voice hollow, "nor dead."
The corpses around him began to stir.One by one, they lifted their heads, eyes glowing faintly blue.Not screaming. Not mindless.Silent. Obedient. Waiting.
Kael stared, horror mixing with fascination.He hadn't spoken a spell. He hadn't called them.They had answered instinctively—to him.
"So this… is death."
Thunder rolled across the sky. Ash fell like snow.In that moment, Kael understood what had been taken from him—his life, his purpose, his faith.But in return, death had given him something far greater.
Power.
He stood amidst the rising dead, cloak whipping in the wind, eyes glowing with faint silver light.The once gentle scholar of the Light Sect was gone.In his place stood a man who had crossed the boundary of existence.
The first of the Ashborn.The beginning of a Requiem.
"They condemned me to the grave," Kael whispered, his voice steady. "Let them learn what crawls back out."
And as lightning split the sky, the Scripture in his hand pulsed once more—its runes shifting into a new phrase, written in a language older than time itself.
[Cycle of Ash: Commencement]
The ground trembled. The corpses knelt.And death itself obeyed.
End of Chapter 1