Chapter 1 — The Burning Inheritance
The fire had been burning for three days, and still it refused to die.
Eiren Vale watched it from the blackened ridge above her ancestral home — or what was left of it. The manor's marble bones jutted from the ash like the ribs of a corpse. The smoke carried the scent of copper and incense, of blood turned holy. Somewhere beneath that ruin, the last of her kin were still smoldering.
She did not weep.
The Ash Vein didn't weep.
Her veins shimmered faintly beneath her skin — thin lines of ember light tracing from her wrists to her collarbone, pulsing with the rhythm of her heart. Every throb hurt. Every flicker whispered the same thing: You are the last one.
She closed her hand and felt the warmth rise. The fire obeyed her pulse, coiling around her fingers like a serpent. For a heartbeat, the world brightened — and then she crushed the flame to nothing.
Behind her, footsteps broke the quiet. A man in a tattered coat and a grin sharp as a knife stepped into view.
"You light up like a beacon," he said. "Someone's going to see that."
Eiren turned slowly. The stranger's hair was silvered at the edges, eyes the color of dead leaves — not old, but burned out. He carried a long blade across his back and a charm made of dried blood around his neck.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"Kael," he said, offering a shallow bow. "Just a scavenger. Looking for survivors — or corpses. Either will do."
She said nothing.
He studied her for a moment, head tilted. "You've got the Ash Vein. I thought they were all—"
"Dead," she finished for him. "They are."
Kael whistled low. "Then you're a walking fortune. The Sanctum's paying more for living blood than for gold these days."
Eiren met his gaze, unblinking. "You'd sell me?"
"Sell? No," he said with mock innocence. "Rent, maybe."
The wind shifted, carrying embers through the night. Somewhere distant, bells tolled — the sound of Sanctum hunters closing in.
Kael's grin faltered. "They're close."
Eiren turned back toward the flames. "Then you should run."
"I should," he said. "But something tells me you're worse than them."
She looked down at her hands. The light beneath her skin had grown brighter — too bright. "You don't know what I am."
"Guess I'll find out."
The first Sanctum torch appeared at the ridge below, followed by armored figures bearing the sigil of the Hierophant — a ringed eye burning through a field of white.
Eiren inhaled, the air tasting like iron. Her heartbeat thundered through her glowing veins. She felt the heat clawing to escape. The power begged to be used — and she knew what it would cost.
Kael's hand found his sword. "Tell me you can fight."
She exhaled. "No. But I can burn."
And with that, the world ignited.
The hillside erupted in a wave of scarlet fire that screamed like a living thing. The Sanctum soldiers didn't even have time to cry out — their armor melted, their bodies dissolving into dust. The earth split, black veins glowing beneath the soil like molten arteries.
When it was done, only silence remained. The fire circled Eiren but didn't touch her. Kael stood behind her, eyes wide with terror and awe.
"What in the hells are you?" he whispered.
Eiren's voice was calm, hollow. "A mistake."
Then she fell to her knees as the light dimmed, the warmth fading into pain. Her vision blurred. In the smoke, she saw them — her ancestors, their faces flickering like ghosts, reaching out from the fire.
The blood remembers, they whispered. But it forgets you.
And Eiren Vale screamed — not from agony, but from the terror of being erased.