The Ashen Wastes lived up to their name.
Callum had been walking for three hours, and the landscape hadn't changed. Not once. Black volcanic stone stretched in every direction, broken only by drifts of gray ash that shifted in the hot wind like living things. The occasional lava flow glowed red in the distance—open wounds in the earth's skin, bleeding light and heat into the perpetual gloom.
The sky was gray. Not the gray of clouds or storms, but the gray of smoke and ash and things burning far away. The sun was somewhere up there—Callum could see its dim red disc struggling through the haze—but it felt distant. Irrelevant. Like even the sun had given up on this place.
It was beautiful in the way a graveyard was beautiful. Dead, but honest about it. No pretense of life. No false promises.
Callum found that strangely comforting.
"You need to find shelter before nightfall," Morrigan said. She walked beside him—or gave the impression of walking, her feet not quite touching the ground. Her tattered robes didn't move with the wind. To Callum's eyes, she looked completely solid. Real. As real as the stone beneath his feet.
To the rest of the world, she was invisible. A ghost only he could see.
"The temperature drops fast after dark," she continued. "You're Stage One—you'll survive, but you won't enjoy it."
"What about beasts?" Callum asked. The question had been nagging at him since they'd left the mines. The Wastes were dangerous. Everyone knew that. Beasts and bandits and worse things.
"Stage One and Two beasts are common in the wilderness. Stage Three if you're unlucky." Morrigan glanced at him, those ember eyes assessing. "Can you fight a Stage One beast?"
Callum thought about it. Honestly thought about it.
He'd never fought anything before. Not really. Bar brawls in the slave quarters didn't count—those were just desperate men swinging fists in the dark, no skill involved. He'd never faced something that wanted to kill him with intent. With purpose.
"Maybe?" he said.
"That's a no." Morrigan pointed toward a cluster of rocks ahead—ruins of something, barely visible through the heat shimmer. "There. Get inside, make a fire, practice your Ash Cloak. You need to be able to maintain it while sleeping."
"While sleeping?"
"Death qi leaks out when you're unconscious. Unless you learn to control it even in sleep, you'll wake up with every predator in ten miles standing over you, wondering why you smell like dinner."
Fantastic.
The ruins were barely standing.
Three walls of black stone, weathered and cracked. Half a roof that looked ready to collapse at any moment. A fire pit in the center—old, filled with ash, but someone had used it once. Years ago, probably. Some other traveler seeking shelter in this wasteland.
It would do. The walls blocked the wind, and the remaining roof would hide any firelight from prying eyes.
Callum gathered what little dry brush he could find. Thorny plants that somehow grew in the ash, twisted and half-dead but still clinging to existence. The fire caught quickly, fed by the sulfur in the air. Tiny—barely more than kindling—but warm.
He sat with his back against the wall and pulled out the dried meat he'd stolen from the equipment storage. It tasted like leather soaked in ash and regret, but his stomach didn't care. Food was food. He ate half, forcing himself to save the rest for later.
Discipline, he thought. Survival isn't about being strong. It's about being smart.
Morrigan settled across from him, sitting cross-legged in the air like gravity was optional and the ground beneath her dignity.
"Tell me about cultivation," Callum said.
"What about it?"
"Everything." He gestured vaguely at himself. "I don't know anything except what I stole from that manual when I was fourteen, and that didn't exactly work out."
Morrigan was quiet for a moment. Those ancient eyes studied him—really studied him, like she was trying to decide if he was worth the effort of teaching.
Finally, she spoke.
"Most cultivators spend years learning the basics. Decades, sometimes, before they even attempt the First Covenant. You got thrown into the deep end." She gestured at the fire between them. "But you're smart enough to know you need to learn, so I'll teach you what I know. First, the stages."
She held up one pale finger. "Stage One. The Flesh Covenant. Your body transcends mortal limits. Stronger, faster, tougher. You live maybe a hundred and fifty years instead of sixty. This is where most people stop—either they can't advance further, or they don't want to risk the next step."
A second finger. "Stage Two. The Spirit Covenant. Your soul becomes a weapon. You develop spiritual sense—the ability to feel qi around you, to detect other cultivators, to sense danger before it strikes. You can start learning real techniques instead of just hitting things harder and hoping they break."
Third finger. "Stage Three. The Element Covenant. You bind yourself to a fundamental force of nature. Fire, water, earth, metal, lightning—whatever resonates with your path. This is where cultivators truly become dangerous."
She continued, listing the stages with casual ease. Like reciting a recipe she'd memorized fifteen thousand years ago. Stage Four—Beast Covenant. Stage Five—Ancestor Covenant. Stage Six—Concept Covenant.
"And that's where it gets interesting," Morrigan said, and something flickered across her ancient face. Memory, perhaps. Or longing. "Stage Six is where you stop being just powerful and start being something else. Something beyond human. You bind yourself to a concept—an idea given form. Death. Life. Time. Space. Whatever your soul resonates with."
"What about you?" Callum asked quietly. "What stage were you?"
"Nine. Sovereign Covenant." She said it flatly, matter-of-factly, like it was just another fact and not the highest achievement any cultivator could reach. "The ultimate stage. The one where you bind yourself to a fundamental law of reality itself and become truly immortal."
"And someone trapped you anyway."
Morrigan's smile was sharp enough to cut stone. "Yes. Someone I trusted. Someone who was very, very clever." She leaned forward slightly, ember eyes glowing brighter in the firelight. "But we're not talking about me. We're talking about you. You're Stage One. Barely. You need to consolidate your cultivation base before even thinking about advancement."
"How?"
"Consume more. Build up your death qi until it's solid—not just scattered fragments leaking through your broken meridians. Right now, you're like a bucket with cracks in it. The power flows in, but it leaks out just as fast. You need to seal those cracks. Make yourself whole."
Callum looked at his hands. The gray tinge was more pronounced now, especially in the firelight. His fingernails had darkened to the color of old bruises. The skin felt different—tougher, colder, like it was slowly becoming something else.
I'm changing, he thought. Every consumption, every death I take, I become less human and more... something else.
"How many people do I need to consume?" he asked.
"Depends. Mortals barely count—they have so little spiritual energy that you'd need dozens to make real progress. That Stage One guard you took gave you more power than all five miners combined." Morrigan shrugged. "Consume ten more Stage One cultivators, and you'll be ready for Stage Two. Or fifty mortals. Your choice."
Ten cultivators. Ten people.
The ghosts in his head shifted restlessly. Torrin, with his hopeful dreams of freedom. The unnamed guard who'd wanted to be a mercenary. The five miners who'd died in the collapse. Their memories played at the edges of his consciousness like echoes in a cave—faint but persistent. Always there.
"Does it ever stop?" Callum asked quietly. "The memories?"
"No." Morrigan's expression softened—just slightly, just for a moment. "They fade, but they're always there. Every person you consume stays with you forever. That's the price of power on this path. You carry their deaths until you reach your own."
"And if I can't handle it?"
"Then you go mad." She said it matter-of-factly, like she was discussing the weather. "You lose yourself in the voices, the memories, the weight of all those deaths. You become a rabid beast that needs to be put down. It happens to most death cultivators eventually."
The fire crackled between them. Callum stared into the flames, thinking about madness. About losing himself piece by piece to the ghosts in his head.
Is that my future? Consumption and madness and death?
"But you won't," Morrigan continued. "You're stronger than that."
"How do you know?"
"Because you're still sane after consuming six people in one day. Most death cultivators crack after three. Some after two." Her eyes glowed faintly in the firelight. "You've got the stomach for this. The question is whether you've got the will."
Callum stared into the fire. Thought about Overseer Kaelen, still alive somewhere in the mines. Still laughing. Still unpunished. Thought about twenty years of slavery. Twenty years of being nothing.
Twenty years of surviving.
"I've got the will," he said quietly.
Morrigan smiled. "Good. Because you're going to need it."
Night fell fast in the Ashen Wastes.
One moment, the sky was its usual oppressive gray. The next, it was black—absolute and hungry, broken only by the distant glow of lava flows and the cold light of stars that seemed impossibly far away.
The temperature dropped like a stone thrown from a cliff.
Callum's breath misted in the suddenly freezing air. The Flesh Covenant kept him from dying—kept his blood from freezing in his veins—but it was a near thing. He fed the fire with the last of the dry brush, wrapped himself in the stolen cloak, and tried to sleep.
Every time he started to drift off, Morrigan's voice cut through the darkness.
"Ash Cloak. You're letting it slip."
Callum groaned and pulled the death qi back into place, wrapping it carefully in the memory of fire and ash. It was exhausting. Like trying to hold your breath forever while running uphill.
"I need to sleep."
"You need to learn control. Practice until it's second nature. Until you can maintain it in your sleep—literally, unconsciously, without thinking about it."
"I hate you."
"You'll thank me when you wake up alive instead of being eaten."
He practiced for another hour. Pulling the Ash Cloak tight, feeling it slip, pulling it tight again. Over and over until his head pounded like someone was driving nails through his skull and his focus wavered like a candle in the wind.
Eventually—finally—exhaustion won.
He fell asleep sitting up, his back against the cold stone wall, the Ash Cloak half-formed and fragile around him.
He woke to growling.
Callum's eyes snapped open, his hand instinctively reaching for the belt knife. The fire had burned down to embers—barely any light, barely any warmth. But he could see shapes moving in the darkness beyond the ruins.
Low to the ground. Circling. Predatory.
Beasts.
"Three of them," Morrigan said quietly. She was standing now, looking out into the dark with those ancient, knowing eyes. "Ash hounds. Stage One beasts. They hunt in packs."
Callum's heart hammered against his ribs. He grabbed the belt knife—pathetically small, more rust than blade, but it was all he had.
"Can I fight them?" he asked, hating how his voice shook slightly.
"You're about to find out."
The first hound lunged out of the darkness.
It was roughly the size of a large dog, but that's where any similarity to normal animals ended. Its body was made of volcanic rock and ash, held together by qi or malice or something in between. Red eyes glowed in its skull like burning coals. Its teeth were obsidian shards—black and sharp and eager.
Callum rolled sideways.
The hound hit the wall where he'd been sitting, stone teeth scraping against rock with a sound that set his teeth on edge.
He came up slashing with the knife. The blade scraped across the creature's flank, barely scratching its rocky hide.
Fuck. Stage One beast durability.
The second hound came from his left. Callum kicked it in the face—his Stage One strength actually worked this time—and the beast yelped, stumbling backward.
But the third one hit him from behind.
Callum went down hard, the hound's weight driving the air from his lungs. He felt teeth scrape against his shoulder—the Flesh Covenant made his skin tougher than normal, but not invincible. Pain flared, hot and sharp.
He channeled death qi into his hand—desperate, uncontrolled—and slammed his palm against the hound's face.
The beast shrieked.
Death qi poured into it, corrupting whatever passed for its life force. The hound jerked back, shaking its head violently, clearly hurt but not dead.
The first hound lunged again. Callum rolled, came up running, channeled more death qi into his legs. His speed increased—not much, but enough to create distance between him and the pack.
I can't win this, he thought desperately. Three Stage One beasts and I'm barely holding on.
"Use the environment!" Morrigan called out. "You're in ruins. Think!"
The half-collapsed wall. The fire pit.
Fire. Fire and death and—
Callum grabbed a burning branch from the fire and threw it at the nearest hound. The creature yelped—more from surprise than pain—but it backed off.
They didn't like fire.
He channeled death qi into another branch, and the wood... changed. Grew colder. The flames turned gray and wrong, flickering with something that wasn't quite heat. Something that felt like endings.
Death fire.
Callum swung the burning branch at the nearest hound. The gray flames touched its rocky hide, and the creature howled—a sound that was more pain than rage. Smoke rose from the contact point. Not burning. Dissolving. The death qi was unmaking it, reducing it back to ash and stone.
The other two hounds backed off, growling but cautious now.
Callum advanced, swinging the branch. The hounds circled but didn't attack. They were smart enough—or scared enough—to know when they were outmatched.
After a tense minute of standoff, they retreated into the darkness.
Callum stood there, breathing hard, the death-fire branch still burning in his hand. Gray flames cast strange shadows on the ruins, making everything look even more like a graveyard than it already did.
"Not bad," Morrigan said, and there was something like approval in her voice. "You adapted. Used what you had. Didn't panic."
"I panicked a little," Callum admitted.
"But you didn't freeze. That's what matters." She gestured at the branch in his hand. "And you just invented your first technique. Death fire. Not powerful—not yet—but creative."
Callum looked at the gray flames. They were already starting to consume the wood, eating it from the inside out.
"I need to get stronger," he said quietly.
"Yes. You do."
He tossed the branch into the fire pit and sat back down, his shoulder aching where the hound had bitten him. The wound was already closing—Flesh Covenant at work—but it still hurt.
"Where do I go?" he asked. "To get stronger. Where are there cultivators I can... consume?"
Morrigan was quiet for a moment. Then she pointed northeast, toward the darkness beyond the ruins.
"Three days' walk from here. There's a place called The Scar. I don't know much—it didn't exist when I was... active. From what I can sense, it's saturated with death qi. Old death qi. The kind that comes from massive loss of life." Her eyes glowed faintly. "Probably a battle. Maybe a Sovereign-level one, given the scale. But I've been imprisoned for ten thousand years—whatever created The Scar happened without me."
"But death cultivators go there?"
"They would. Death qi that concentrated would make cultivation faster. And the beasts there would be death-aspected—consuming them strengthens your path more than normal beasts." She paused. "But it'll be dangerous. If the death qi is that old and that strong, the beasts won't be Stage One. And other death cultivators... they're not friendly."
Callum looked in the direction she was pointing. Toward The Scar. Toward power.
Toward danger and death and the slow corruption of his soul.
But also toward freedom, he thought. Toward strength. Toward never being powerless again.
"Three days?" he asked.
"If you don't get killed along the way."
"Great."
He fed the fire with what little fuel remained, wrapped the Ash Cloak tighter around his death qi, and tried to sleep again.
This time, the hounds didn't come back.