The figure moved soundlessly through the forest, his ashen robes trailing like mist over the fallen leaves. The storm wind hissed through the trees, carrying the scent of smoke, scorched flesh, and something deeper — a primal wrongness clinging to the boy's trail.
He didn't need to track it.
The air itself bent around the child.
Eryndor the Pale, Seer of the Ninth Choir, paused atop a ridge overlooking the dying village below. From here, the glow of smoldering embers bled into the mist like a bleeding wound. Even the crows had not come to pick at the bodies.
They knew better.
A hollow ache gnawed at the base of Eryndor's skull — the old wards around his mind reacting to the ancient bloodline awakening. The sigils etched beneath his skin, hidden by the robes, shimmered coldly.
"So it begins," he murmured.
No one was meant to survive that night. The Ashen Blades had sworn a pact sealed in bone and fire. The Morghast bloodline should have been purged. Yet somehow, against all the teeth of fate, the boy lived.
And worse — the old thing inside him stirred.
Eryndor's voice was a whisper now, lost beneath the storm.
"Vael'Zhaur's heir walks."
He knelt by a gnarled root, fingers tracing ancient sigils into the mud with practiced ease. A circle of protection. Not against the boy, no. Against what might be watching through him.
The earth trembled.
A low, tremulous note hummed in the bones of the world — like a vast, sleeping thing shifting beneath the land.
It was far too soon.
Eryndor felt sweat bead his brow despite the cold. The Choir of Pale Ash would want to know. Every order in Averenth would scramble. The Velthorn Covenant, the Obsidian Cabal, the Cairnbound Scholars — all of them. Not one faction could afford to let a true bloodline heir claim the old relics.
He reached into his satchel and withdrew a thin, glimmering shard of bone. A messenger's tether. The sigils along its length glowed faintly as he whispered a name into it.
"Mother of Cinders, your son lives."
The bone cracked, dissolving into ash.
In the distance, lightning split the sky.
Eryndor rose, eyes lingering on the path Vaelen had taken. He would not follow. Not tonight. The boy was not yet aware of his true nature. Not yet strong enough to challenge the Choir. But it would come.
The old blood never slumbered for long.
And when it woke, it demanded to be seen.
Eryndor vanished into the mist.
And somewhere, in a sunken library lost to all sane men, a pale priestess opened her lidless eyes.
The trees were wrong here.
Vaelen Morghast felt it before he saw it.
The wind no longer howled but whispered — low, coiling words in a tongue his mind didn't know but his blood understood. The branches hung lower, their limbs gnarled like skeletal fingers. The leaves weren't green but a dull, pallid grey that drank the moonlight instead of reflecting it.
His bare feet moved over the cold earth, every step sending a shiver through the soil. Each patch of ground seemed softer, as if something beneath it had once stirred and was not quite done.
He clutched the strange book tighter to his chest.
The Threnody of Broken Stars.
It had called to him. Even now, it hummed faintly in his hands, the cover slick with cold dew. Symbols moved on the surface — shifting, writhing, reordering themselves in ways that made his stomach churn to watch for too long.
He didn't question why it didn't frighten him.
Fear was a thing for lesser creatures.
Vaelen's pale eyes lifted as the path ahead widened into a clearing. At its center stood a single, colossal stone — ancient, cracked, and half-swallowed by roots and moss. Symbols like the ones on the book carved deep into its surface. The air shimmered around it, as if refusing to touch the monolith.
And in the dirt before it…
A figure.
A man — or what remained of one. His robes were tattered, his flesh bloated and cracked like old wax. Empty sockets stared blindly skyward, his lips drawn into a permanent snarl. Around his neck hung a broken medallion shaped like an eye with too many pupils.
Crows did not feast on this corpse.
Even the flies avoided it.
Vaelen approached, unblinking.
The book grew heavier in his grip, its pages fluttering as if alive. A voice, deep and ancient, slithered into his thoughts.
"The First Gate lies here, forgotten… open it, child of Vael'Zhaur."
He felt his heart pound once.
Once.
Then calm.
He knelt before the stone, ignoring the stench of rotted flesh. His fingers traced the carvings, and as his skin met ancient sigil, a searing heat drove into his bones.
Pain.
Agony.
A thousand shrieking stars collapsing inside his skull.
And yet…
Vaelen smiled.
A single word slipped from his lips, though he had never heard it spoken.
"Draem'valkaar."
The ground cracked.
A low, mournful sound like a great horn beneath the earth.
Far away, in the heart of Averenth's capital, priests awoke in their beds, blood streaming from their eyes. The skies over the western seas turned crimson for an instant. And the Choir of Pale Ash felt a hand tighten around their throats.
A gate was opening.
And the heir had taken his first step.
Vaelen stood, eyes cold and radiant, as the stone split down the center with a scream of shattering reality.
What lay beyond… waited.
And he would claim it.