Dawn came slowly to the Ashen Wastes.
Not with light—there was never real light here, just varying shades of gray. But Callum could feel it anyway. The temperature shift. The way the darkness became slightly less absolute. The distant lava flows dimming as the sun's weak presence pushed against the volcanic haze.
He woke to gray light filtering through the ruined roof, his shoulder stiff where the ash hound had bitten him. The wound had closed overnight—Flesh Covenant doing its quiet work—but it still ached with the dull persistence of a bad bruise.
The fire had died sometime in the night. His breath misted in the cold morning air.
Cold, he thought. After being so hot yesterday. The Wastes don't pick a temperature and stick with it. They just pick whatever will make you most miserable.
"Up," Morrigan said. She was already standing, looking northeast like she could see through three days' worth of wasteland to The Scar itself. "Three days means three days. You waste time, you waste food. Move."
Callum groaned and stood, every muscle protesting. Sleeping on stone wasn't kind to the body. Even a cultivator's body had limits, and his was still healing from nearly dying two days ago.
Two days, he thought. Has it really only been two days since the collapse? Since I was dying in the dark? It feels like longer.
He ate the last of his dried meat—tough as boot leather and about as appetizing—and drank from the canteen until it was nearly empty. Then he checked the Ash Cloak. It had slipped during the night, his death qi leaking out while he slept. But no beasts had come for him.
Lucky. Or maybe the ash hounds from last night had spread the word.
Dangerous prey. Stay away.
"Ready?" Morrigan asked.
"Not even a little."
"Good. Let's go."
The walk was brutal.
The temperature climbed as the sun rose—assuming it actually rose behind all that smoke and ash. Freezing became merely cold became uncomfortably hot became sweltering. By midday, Callum was sweating through his stolen cloak, the ash-laden air scraping his throat raw with every breath.
The landscape didn't change. Black volcanic stone stretching to the horizon. Gray ash drifts that shifted in the hot wind like slow-moving water. The occasional lava flow glowing red in the distance—wounds in the earth that never healed.
No trees. No grass. Nothing alive except the thorny brush that somehow survived here, twisted and mean and half-dead but still clinging to existence out of pure spite.
And the beasts.
Callum saw them from a distance. Shapes moving through the ash drifts. Most were small—mortal creatures that scattered when they sensed his death qi. Smart animals. They knew what a predator smelled like.
But twice, he spotted larger forms. Much larger. Cultivator-level beasts moving with purpose and intelligence.
Stage One, probably. Maybe Stage Two.
He gave them a wide berth, circling around their territories, adding hours to his journey just to avoid confrontation.
"Coward," Morrigan said, but there was no heat in it. Just observation.
"Smart," Callum corrected. "I can't fight Stage Two beasts. Not yet."
"You'll never get stronger if you avoid every fight."
"I'll never get stronger if I'm dead, either."
She laughed at that—a sound like wind through broken stone. "Fair point."
By late afternoon, Callum's canteen was empty. His feet were blistering inside his worn boots, every step a small agony. He hadn't seen water since leaving the ruins. Nothing but ash and stone and heat and the slow certainty that the Wastes wanted him dead.
Everyone who comes here dies eventually, he thought. The Wastes are patient. They can wait.
"There," Morrigan said, pointing.
Ahead, barely visible through the heat shimmer, was a dark smudge against the gray landscape. As they got closer, it resolved into a cluster of black stone pillars—ancient, weathered, half-buried in ash. Some kind of formation. Maybe natural. Maybe not.
And near the base of one pillar, a body.
The corpse was fresh.
A day old at most. Human. Male. Early twenties—though age was hard to judge in corpses. He wore leather armor, well-made but battered. A mercenary's gear. A sword lay a few feet away, its blade cracked down the middle like something had hit it hard enough to shatter steel.
His throat had been torn out. Probably by a beast.
Callum knelt beside the corpse. The man's eyes were still open, staring at nothing with that particular emptiness unique to the dead. His face was locked in an expression of surprise.
Didn't see it coming, Callum thought. One moment you're hunting. The next you're prey. That's how it goes out here.
"Stage One cultivator," Morrigan said, circling the body like a carrion bird. "Fire path, from the look of his meridians. Died badly."
Is there a good way to die? Callum wondered. With your throat torn out in the Wastes, alone and forgotten?
"Consume him," Morrigan said.
Callum placed his hands on the dead man's chest. The guilt was quieter now. Not gone—he didn't think it would ever be completely gone, didn't think he wanted it to be. But quieter. Manageable.
Just another corpse. Just another ghost to carry.
He channeled death qi into the body and pulled.
The spiritual remnant came loose easier this time. Either Callum was getting better at the technique—more practiced, more efficient—or the remnant was weaker. Or the man had been so surprised by death that his soul hadn't clung hard enough to what remained.
Probably all three.
The power flowed into Callum like cold water poured into a cup. More than a mortal would give. Less than a Stage Two would. His cultivation base deepened slightly—another cup added to the bucket, bringing him closer to fullness.
The memories came with the power, as they always did.
Fragmented. Broken. Like looking through shattered glass.
The mercenary's name had been Toren. He'd been hunting ash hounds for their cores—Stage One beast cores sold well in Ember's Rest, enough to make the danger worth it if you were skilled or desperate. He'd tracked a pack to these ruins, thought he could take them alone.
He'd been wrong.
The hounds had surrounded him. Three, maybe four. He'd killed one—got lucky with a clean strike to its core—before the others brought him down. The fear in his final moments was sharp and cold and utterly futile.
Just like mine would have been, Callum thought. If Morrigan hadn't saved me.
He stood up, wiping his hands on his cloak. The gesture was becoming automatic. Ritual.
Seven people now. Seven ghosts whispering in the back of his mind.
"Better," Morrigan said, and there was approval in her voice. "Your control is improving. The extraction was cleaner."
"I'm getting good at eating people." Callum's voice was flat. "That's not something to be proud of."
"It's something to survive on. Pride is negotiable."
Callum looked at Toren's body. The man had been a cultivator. Had worked hard to reach Stage One—years of training, maybe. Had dreams. Plans. Maybe people who cared about him waiting in Ember's Rest.
And now he was just fuel for someone else's cultivation. Just another corpse in the Wastes.
That'll be me if I'm not careful, Callum thought. Just another body left for the next death cultivator to find.
He picked up Toren's sword. The blade was cracked down the middle—whatever had killed him must have shattered it—but the handle was good. Well-worn. Better than the rusty belt knife he'd been carrying.
He took the dead man's waterskin too. Half full. Precious.
And a small pouch of dried fruit that hung from his belt.
"Practical," Morrigan approved. "The dead don't need their things."
"Neither do I if I die of thirst," Callum said.
They left Toren's body where it lay. The Wastes would claim it soon enough. Beasts would scatter the bones. Ash would bury what remained. In a week, there would be nothing left but stone and memory.
And Callum would carry that memory forever.
By evening, Callum found another ruined waystation.
Smaller than the first. Barely more than a stone lean-to with three walls and no roof. But it blocked the worst of the wind, and that was enough.
He made a small fire with the last scraps of dry brush he'd collected during the day's walk. Ate some of Toren's dried fruit—sweet, surprisingly, a luxury in the Wastes. Sat with his back against the cold stone wall and tried not to think about how far he still had to go.
"How much stronger am I?" he asked Morrigan.
She studied him for a long moment. Those ancient eyes seeing things he couldn't—the shape of his cultivation base, the flow of death qi through his shattered meridians, the ghosts clinging to his soul.
"Seven consumptions," she said finally. "Five mortals, two Stage One cultivators. You need more."
"How many more?"
"Over forty Stage One cultivators. Or five Stage Twos. Or two Stage Three, if you could somehow kill one without dying." She shrugged, the gesture carrying fifteen thousand years of casualness. "Death cultivation is about volume. The more you consume, the faster you grow."
Over forty more.
Callum looked at his hands in the firelight. The gray tinge was more pronounced now—not just at the fingernails but spreading across his palms, his knuckles. His skin was becoming ash-colored. Literally.
His eyes, when he'd glimpsed his reflection in Toren's cracked sword, had faint red rings around the irises. Like dying embers.
He was changing. Slowly but inevitably. Becoming something that wasn't quite human anymore.
"Does it ever stop?" he asked quietly. "The changes. The mutation."
"No." Morrigan's voice was gentle. As gentle as someone who'd lived fifteen thousand years could manage. "The more you consume, the less human you become. By Stage Three, people will know what you are just by looking at you. By Stage Five, you'll be more death than flesh. That's the price of this path."
"And if I reach Stage Nine?"
"Then you'll be something beyond death entirely. Something new." She smiled faintly. "But that's a long way off. Focus on surviving tomorrow first."
Tomorrow, Callum thought. And the day after. And the day after that. One day at a time until I'm strong enough. Until I'm free.
He fed the small fire and wrapped the Ash Cloak tighter around his death qi. The technique was getting easier—still exhausting, still requiring constant attention, but less like drowning and more like swimming against a current.
Progress. Slow and painful, but progress.
"Tell me about The Scar," he said.
Morrigan was quiet for a moment, staring into the fire like she could see the past in the flames.
"I don't know much," she admitted. "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—thousands of people dying in one place, their deaths soaking into the earth until it becomes something else entirely."
Her eyes glowed faintly in the firelight.
"Probably a battle. Maybe a Sovereign-level one, given the scale. The kind of fight that reshapes landscapes." She paused. "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. Weeks of normal progress condensed into days. And the beasts there would be death-aspected—consuming them strengthens your path more than normal beasts would." Another pause. "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 finished.
"They're not friendly," Morrigan agreed. "You're all competing for the same limited resources. Corpses. Power. Survival. Death cultivators don't trust each other because they can't afford to."
"Will they attack me?"
"Probably." Her smile was sharp. "You're weak. Easy prey. And in the Wastes, the weak feed the strong. That's just how it works."
Great, Callum thought. Looking forward to it.
"But you're also smart," Morrigan continued. "You don't fight fair. You adapt. And you've got me." She gestured at herself. "That's worth something."
Callum wasn't sure if that was comforting or terrifying.
Probably both.
He practiced the Ash Cloak for another hour. Wrapping and unwrapping his death qi in the memory of fire and ash. Feeling the technique settle into muscle memory—or whatever the spiritual equivalent was.
Then he tried something new.
He channeled death qi into Toren's cracked sword.
The blade responded immediately. The metal grew colder beneath his hands. The crack down the middle—the fatal flaw that had probably gotten Toren killed—didn't close. But it changed. Filled with something dark. Death qi seeping into the imperfection, reinforcing it, making it part of the weapon instead of a weakness.
Death-touched steel.
"You're experimenting," Morrigan observed. "Good. Death cultivation rewards creativity. The path isn't rigid—it adapts to the cultivator. The more techniques you develop, the more versatile you'll be."
Callum swung the sword experimentally. It felt heavier than before. But also sharper. More eager. Like it wanted to cut.
Like it had forgotten it was a tool and remembered it was a weapon.
"Could I do this with other things?" he asked. "Armor? Tools?"
"Anything you channel death qi into will change. Wood rots and becomes brittle. Metal grows cold and hungry. Flesh dies." Morrigan tilted her head. "But yes. You could make death-touched equipment. Weapons. Armor. Tools. It won't last forever—the death qi will eventually consume whatever you channel it into, eating it from the inside out. But it's useful while it lasts."
Another technique. Another tool in his growing arsenal.
Callum was starting to understand why death cultivation was so feared. It wasn't just about consuming corpses. It was about becoming death itself. Turning everything you touched into weapons. Corrupting the world around you just by existing.
Becoming a walking graveyard, he thought. A place where things go to die.
Was that what he wanted to be?
No, something inside him answered. But it's what I need to be. To survive. To get strong enough. To never be powerless again.
The scream woke him sometime after midnight.
Callum jerked awake, his hand going immediately to the sword beside him. The Ash Cloak had slipped again—he really needed to master unconscious control—and his death qi was leaking into the air like smoke.
The scream came again. Human. Terrified. Close.
Too close.
"Northwest," Morrigan said quietly. She was already standing, looking out into the darkness. "Maybe two hundred yards."
Callum grabbed the death-touched sword and moved to the edge of the lean-to. In the darkness—broken only by the distant glow of lava flows—he could see shapes moving.
Two figures running. Something chasing them.
Something big.
"Mortals," Morrigan said, her voice clinical. Professional. "Two of them. And that's a Stage Two ash lion."
Callum watched.
The mortals were going to die. That was obvious. The beast was faster, stronger, and they had nowhere to run in the open Wastes. No shelter. No escape. Just ash and stone and the slow certainty of death.
Not his problem.
Except...
Mortals had spiritual remnants too. Weak ones—barely worth the effort—but they added up. And if he let the beast kill them, he'd lose the chance to consume them. Waste of resources.
Is that what I'm thinking now? Callum wondered. Calculating people's worth based on their spiritual remnants?
"You're thinking about it," Morrigan said.
"I'm thinking about it."
"The beast is Stage Two. You can't fight it."
"I know."
But he could be smart about it.
Callum channeled death qi into the sword—feeling it grow colder, heavier, eager—and moved into the darkness. Not toward the fight. That would be suicide. But toward where the mortals were running.
Intercept. Distract. Escape.
They burst out of the ash-choked air maybe thirty seconds later. A man and a woman, both young, wearing the simple clothes of travelers or low-level merchants. Not cultivators. Just people trying to survive in a world that didn't care whether they lived or died.
Behind them, the ash lion stalked forward like death given form.
It was massive. Twice the size of the hounds Callum had fought yesterday. Its body was made of volcanic rock, each muscle defined in stone. Its mane was liquid fire—actual flames dripping from its neck and shoulders, leaving trails of burning ash.
Stage Two beast. Deadly.
The mortals saw Callum and ran toward him. Desperate. Hoping for rescue from anyone, even a stranger in the dark.
Callum waited until they were close. Then he stepped aside—letting them pass—and channeled death qi into the ground beneath the lion's paws.
The ash turned cold. Wrong. Hungry.
The beast's front legs sank into it like quicksand, and it roared—a sound that echoed across the Wastes like thunder.
Not much. Just a few seconds of distraction.
But it was enough.
"Run!" Callum shouted at the mortals. "That way! Don't stop!"
They ran. Smart enough not to argue.
The lion tore itself free—its strength overwhelming Callum's crude trap—and lunged at him.
Callum dove sideways. Rolled. Came up running.
The beast was faster.
He made it maybe twenty yards before the lion caught him.
A paw the size of his chest slammed into his side like a hammer. Callum went flying, his ribs screaming. He hit the ground hard enough to drive the air from his lungs. The sword went skittering away into the darkness.
The lion stalked toward him. Fire dripped from its mane, setting the ash around it smoldering.
Fuck.
Callum channeled death qi into his hands. All of it. Everything he had. Every scrap of power from seven consumptions, from two days of survival, from his desperate bargain with an ancient ghost.
When the lion lunged, Callum slammed both palms into its face.
Raw death qi flooded into the beast.
Not controlled. Not refined. Not a technique. Just desperate and hungry and cold and wrong and everything death meant poured directly into living flesh.
The lion shrieked.
It wasn't enough to kill it. Stage Two was too strong for that. Too much vitality. Too much power. But it hurt. The death qi corrupted the fire qi that animated the beast, turning its mane from orange to gray, making its stone flesh crack and split.
The lion stumbled back, shaking its head violently. Trying to purge the corruption from its system.
Callum didn't wait.
He grabbed the sword and ran.
The lion didn't follow. It was too busy trying not to die.
Callum ran until his lungs burned. Until he couldn't hear the beast anymore. Until the Ashen Wastes swallowed him in darkness and ash and distance.
Then he collapsed, gasping, every muscle screaming in protest.
"That," Morrigan said, appearing beside him like she'd been there all along, "was the stupidest thing I've ever seen."
"Did... I... survive?" Callum managed between gasps.
"Barely."
"Then... it... worked."
She laughed—actually laughed, the sound bright and sharp. "I suppose it did. You didn't kill the beast, but you saved yourself. And you learned that raw death qi is a decent emergency weapon."
Callum lay there on the cold ash, staring up at the gray sky. His ribs ached where the lion had hit him. His hands trembled from channeling so much qi at once.
But he was alive.
"The mortals?" he asked.
"Got away. You won't be consuming them tonight."
"Good."
Morrigan raised an eyebrow. "Good?"
"They didn't deserve to die. Not like that." Callum sat up slowly, wincing with every movement. "I'll consume corpses. I'll kill people who try to kill me. But I'm not going to murder innocents just for power."
"Interesting." Morrigan studied him with those ancient eyes. "Most death cultivators lose that scruple by their second week."
"I'm not most death cultivators."
"No," Morrigan said quietly, and there was something almost fond in her voice. "You're not."
They sat in silence for a while. The Wastes dark and cold around them. Somewhere out there, the ash lion was recovering or dying—Callum didn't know which. Somewhere else, two mortals were alive because Callum had been stupid enough to intervene.
And Callum Voss—death cultivator, former slave, walking contradiction—sat in the ash and decided that maybe, just maybe, he could walk this path without losing himself completely.
Tomorrow, he'd continue toward The Scar.
Tomorrow, he'd get stronger.
But tonight, he'd hold on to the part of himself that still cared whether people lived or died.
Even if it was stupid.
Especially because it was stupid.