The air in the Underworld didn't just sit in your lungs; it bit. It tasted of ancient dust and a metallic tang that sat heavy on Alex's tongue, like he was sucking on a copper coin.
He stood alone in the wreckage of what he could only assume was once a plaza. The scale of the ruins was dizzying. Colossal pillars of azure stone—thick as ancient oaks—lay shattered across the obsidian sand, looking like the ribs of a fallen god. Above, the sky was a bruised, swirling mess of violet and ink, lit not by a sun, but by the jagged, electric pulses of the rift that was slowly knitting itself shut.
"Lira?" he whispered.
The name felt small here. It belonged to a world of sunlight and green grass. Here, the silence was a physical weight, pressing against his eardrums until they throbbed.
*Crunch.*
The sound of a boot on grit made Alex spin around. His heart, already racing, slammed against his ribs. He shoved his hands forward, his fingers twitching with the memory of that black fire.
"Easy, little spark," a voice rasped from the shadows of a leaning archway. "You release that pressure now, and you'll likely take your own arm off along with this entire street."
A figure stepped into the pale, spectral light. He was thin—uncomfortably so—with skin the color of a drowned man and eyes that glowed a predatory, feline yellow. He was draped in layers of tattered, soot-stained silks that seemed to move even when there was no wind.
"Who are you?" Alex's voice was steadier than he felt. The fear was there, but it was being smothered by a cold, rising heat in his gut.
"A nobody. A ghost. A collector of things left behind," the man said, circling Alex with a strange, limping grace. "They call me Kaelen. And you... you're the first thing to fall through that rift in three hundred years that didn't arrive as a corpse."
Kaelen stopped, his yellow eyes fixing on the mark on the back of Alex's hand—the crown of thorns. He let out a low, jagged whistle.
"The Abyss has a sense of humor," Kaelen muttered. "It pulls a stray pup from the Surface and hands him the keys to the graveyard."
"I don't want keys," Alex snapped, his frustration finally boiling over. "I want to go back. This place... it's dead."
"Dead?" Kaelen laughed, a sound like dry leaves skittering over stone. "No, boy. It's just hungry. And right now, you smell like a feast. Every scavenger, wraith, and disgraced warlord within a hundred leagues felt that rift open. They're coming for that mark on your hand. Because in Rebirh, that mark isn't just a tattoo—it's a deed of absolute ownership."
Alex looked down at his hand. The skin around the mark was darkening, the veins turning a bruised indigo. "Ownership of what?"
"Everything the light doesn't touch," Kaelen said, his expression turning grim. He pointed toward a jagged spire of blue stone that pierced the horizon. "That is the Spire of Ocher. Inside is the Codex—the heart of this realm. If you reach it, you might just learn how to breathe without it hurting. If you don't..."
Kaelen didn't finish. He didn't have to.
A high-pitched, vibrating shriek tore through the air, coming from the direction of the obsidian dunes. It wasn't human. It sounded like metal grinding on metal, amplified by a thousand screams.
"Seekers," Kaelen hissed, his playful tone vanishing. "The carrion birds of the usurpers. They've caught your scent."
"What do I do?" Alex asked, his hands beginning to glow with that volatile, dark light again.
"Running would be a good start," Kaelen said, already backing away into the darkness of the ruins. "But if they catch you? Don't try to be a mage, boy. Don't think about spells and circles. This world doesn't care about your books."
Alex saw them then—three shapes silhouette against the violet sky. They looked like giant, skeletal crows, their wings made of tattered shadow and bone. They dived, their talons whistling through the air.
Alex didn't run. He couldn't. His legs felt like lead, anchored by a sudden, violent surge of power from the mark on his hand. As the first Seeker lunged, its beak open to reveal rows of needle-teeth, Alex felt a pulse of absolute, crushing authority.
He didn't chant. He didn't weave a spell. He simply glared at the creature and felt a single, burning thought: *Kneel.*
The air around the Seeker suddenly tripled in weight. The creature didn't just stop; it was slammed into the obsidian ground with such force that its skeletal wings shattered. It let out a choked hiss as it was crushed into the sand by an invisible hand.
Alex stared, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He hadn't thrown fire. He had commanded the very gravity of the world to obey him.
"Well," Kaelen's voice drifted from the shadows, sounding genuinely impressed for the first time. "Maybe you aren't a pup after all. But don't celebrate yet, Majesty. You just rang the dinner bell for every nightmare in the district."
Kaelen stepped out and gestured toward the blue spire. "The walk just got a lot longer. Shall we?"
Alex looked at the shattered remains of the Seeker, then at the glowing mark on his hand. The fear was still there, but beneath it, a new, dangerous realization was taking root. He wasn't just a student anymore. He was the King of a world that wanted him dead—and for the first time in his life, he was ready to fight back.