Smoke drifted through the gaps in the broken ceiling, curling like long, bony fingers toward a night sky heavy with storm clouds. The stench of blood and burnt wood thickened the air.
The villagers stood in a loose circle around the smoldering hut, faces pale and slack-jawed, clutching rusted spears, fire-hardened stakes, and kitchen cleavers. No one spoke. Not even the wind dared to now.
The boy — no, the thing wearing a boy's skin — stepped into the doorway.
Vaelen Morghast's small frame was streaked with blood, both his own and the Ashen Blades'. His eyes, twin abyssal voids, regarded the crowd as one might a collection of glass insects: fragile, meaningless, briefly curious.
He said nothing.
A single drop of blood slid from his chin to the packed dirt. The sound it made when it struck was deafening in the hush.
Among the gathered crowd, an elder woman clutched a talisman to her chest, murmuring a warding prayer. A blacksmith's apprentice tightened his grip on a hammer slick with sweat. Even the mayor, thick-bellied and red-faced, found no words.
The earth beneath Vaelen's bare feet felt warm — no, alive. The thrum of power beneath the soil, a pulse of something ancient and waiting. It welcomed him now.
And he knew it.
Not a single villager moved to avenge the fallen soldiers. Not out of mercy, but fear. Some instinct, buried deep in the marrow of all living things, told them what the boy was.
Something ancient.
Something that would not bleed like a man.
Something best left unprovoked.
A flicker of movement on the hill above the village caught Vaelen's eye. A lone figure cloaked in ash-grey robes watched from the treeline, face shadowed beneath a cowl. Not hiding — no, observing. Measuring.
Vaelen's lips twitched in what might have been a smile.
He raised his hand, fingers slender and pale, the bloodstains on his palm already drying. The simple gesture felt heavier than a king's decree.
The crowd recoiled as one.
Without a word, Vaelen turned from them. He stepped into the night, the wind parting around him like a living thing. The song still hummed at the edge of hearing — a promise, a hunger.
He left the bodies. Left the house. Left the sobbing villagers.
Not because of mercy.
Because none of them mattered.
In his mind, he felt it again: the cold presence of the thing in his blood. Vael'Zhaur. The Womb Beneath All Stars. Its hunger was his hunger now. Its will, a shadow behind his thoughts.
Perfection.
Transcendence.
Not through gods or salvation.
Through knowledge. Power. Mastery of the old laws, of the things that crawled in the spaces between reality's skin.
Behind him, the village was already dying. They just didn't know it yet.
The figure on the hill turned and vanished into the treeline. A future enemy? A useful tool? Time would decide.
Vaelen's path stretched before him like a great black river, winding through wastelands, ruined cities, and forgotten temples. Somewhere out there, the old grimoires waited. The ancient relics. The words no sane man spoke.
And he would claim them all.
The boy walked on, the night swallowing him whole.
Somewhere, far away, a storm began to break.