Rain lashed down in relentless sheets, pounding out a wild rhythm on the roofs of Velmora, a city sprawled between bitter mountains and endless mist.
Lightning cut jagged obliterations through the clouds, tracing fiery highlights on tortured alleys and leaning spires only to leave them to the dark. Wind screamed between tightly packed buildings, carrying scents of wet stone, burning oil, and the bitter tang of forge smoke.
Midnight arrived with a subdued clang from the old bell tower near the square—low and single.
In a tiny attic room above Master Darnel's smithy, Kairo Vane sat bolt upright, his chest heaving.
The whisper that had torn him from slumber resonated in his mind—not loud, not urgent, but ancient. Ethereal. It didn't sound like any voice he knew, yet it had spoken his name with unnerving certainty, as though it had known him for centuries.
"Kairo."
The voice was more of a presence than a voice—a presence that whispered across his mind. He sat up slowly, running a trembling hand through damp black hair. His heart was racing in his chest, each beat almost painful.
His room was dark, save for the soft glow of a lantern on the angled wooden shelf beside his bed.
Shadows loomed in the corners like living things. Rain drummed against the single, twisted window with implacable persistence, and the old beams above groaned in rhythm with the storm.
He had dreamt again in vivid detail.
But this one was not the same.
Kairo was seventeen and had long grown used to strange dreams. His sleep was beset by visions since he was a child—glimpses of places he'd never seen, people he'd never met, and symbols that held powers he couldn't understand.
He would wake up gasping sometimes, thinking that what he had witnessed was real. Other times, he would wake to find scratches on his arms or bruises that had manifested themselves apparently without reason.
Sister Elira always attributed them as signs of a restless mind.
"You were born under strange stars, child. Sometimes the soul remembers what the body doesn't," she would say.
But she never spoke more than that. And she never spoke at all of the mark branded into the flesh over his heart—an angular symbol no one could read, like a brand in a forgotten language.
His fingers reached for it now, automatically, through the thin fabric of his nightshirt. It was always warm. Tonight, it was hot—almost burning.
The whisper had changed something. He could feel it. A hum beneath his skin, as though his blood had become a river of sparks.
His breath came in slow, measured gasps as he swung his legs over the side of the cot, the thin blanket tangled about his feet. He pulled on his boots and cloak with swift efficiency, not noticing the squeaking floorboards that complained beneath his weight.
Below, the forge would be quiet. Darnel, the large blacksmith who had reluctantly taken Kairo in after Elira had disappeared three years ago, would be asleep in a drunken haze.
Kairo paused at the top of the stairs, listening. Just the rain and the occasional groan of the shutters.
Without a second thought, he vanished into the night.
The alley behind the smithy was a narrow, winding thing, lined with ramping ivy and dripping eaves.
There was water splashing beneath his feet as he moved quickly, his cloak heavy with rain.
Lanterns bobbed along the high street, their oil all but consumed. Velmora, old and proud, huddled quiet beneath the storm—its towers askew with age, its streets damp with secrets.
He had nowhere to go.
But he knew exactly where he was going.
His feet moved of their own accord, guided by something older than memory. The summons came from beyond the city, from the cliffs that loomed over the eastern ridge. The ruins. Forbidden. Feared. Whispered about by firelight.
No one went there.
And yet, Kairo walked.
Past shut taverns and water-logged market stalls, through empty courtyards and under rusted arches inscribed with names no one recalled. He moved like a specter, invisible even to the city's sparse patrolling watchmen.
The deeper into the old quarter he walked, the more the storm stilled, as though the world itself was holding its breath.
At the city's edge, the old wall still stood—moss-covered and fissured in places. An earthquake a few years prior had torn a section near the east gate.
Kairo stepped through the narrow breach, brushing aside decaying stone and barbed creepers. Beyond the wall, the trail went feral, unpaved but walked by time and erosion.
The ruins sat at the cliff's top.
They called it the Crown of Ash.
No one knew for sure who had built it. Some claimed it was an old temple, others a castle.
Everyone agreed, though, that it was cursed. People spoke of others vanishing at its edge, of strange lights being observed from the valley floor, and of screams being heard on nights when there was no wind and no moon.
None of which discouraged Kairo.
The path narrowed as it ascended, winding between massive boulders and gnarled trees with bark as rough as ancient skin.
The rain dispersed into mist, and the air grew preternaturally still. No birdsong. No insect hum. Only the thud of his own heartbeat and the squelch of mud underfoot.
And then he saw it.
The ruins protruded like broken teeth from the edge of the cliff—pillars broken and leaning, archways half buried in earth, statues long worn to featureless husks.
Despite the ruin, the place felt. alive. Not in the sense of motion, but in the sense of presence. A weight that pressed against his chest and stirred something deep in the back of his soul.
He stepped into the middle ring, where a great stone circle was cut into the ground, half-overgrown with moss. The instant his foot crossed the line, everything was changed.
The wind died.
The mist paused in the air.
Even the soft tap of water dripping ceased.
And then he saw them.
Twelve robed figures stood at equal intervals about the circle, robes black as night, features obscured. They did not move. Did not speak. Still, Kairo felt their gaze upon him—weighty, ancient, aware.
His breath caught.
He tried to speak and made no sound.
Then the voice again—not a whisper now, but something that seemed to fill the air, as though the ruins themselves were speaking.
"You are not who you think you are, Kairo Vane."
The ring around him burst into soft blue flame. The symbols one after another flared to life, inscribing intricate patterns that pulsed like a heartbeat. The energy flowed through the stones, up his legs, into his chest, his head. He screamed, collapsing to his knees.
Visions exploded behind his eyes—of cities floating among stars, of golden towers crumbling to dust, of a figure enveloped in fire reaching out to him with a hand that bore the same mark as his own.
"The blood of the Awakened burns within you."
His body convulsed.
Memories not his own surged through him—fighting beneath double moons, crying out in a tongue long dead, kneeling before a throne of light. He screamed, and there was no sound.
And the twelve shapes raised their hands together.
"Awaken."
A blasting surge of light erupted from the center of the ring.
And the world dissolved into darkness.