Kael didn't answer right away.
His eyes stayed fixed on the horizon—the jagged teeth of distant peaks tearing into the cloud-choked sky. The figure behind him waited, patient as stone. The mark on his palm pulsed again, this time slower, like it was listening.
"The Accord is breaking," Kael repeated, voice low. "And I'm its… heir?" He turned his head, just enough to meet the golden eyes watching him from beneath the feathered hood. "What does that even mean?"
The figure stepped forward, snow crunching beneath boots wrapped in what looked like bark and bone. They looked human. Almost. But Kael saw it now—beneath the hood, the face shimmered between man and something older, stranger. Skin like carved obsidian. Lips that didn't quite move when they spoke.
"It means the gods left a failsafe," the figure said. "In case the Accord failed. In case the wall fell."
"And they picked me?" Kael scoffed. "I'm a blacksmith's kid from a dust-town with one forge and too many rats. I'm no failsafe."
The figure didn't laugh. Didn't blink. "The mark says otherwise."
Kael looked down at his palm. The silver fire had dimmed now, like it was hiding from the truth.
"You are Bound, Kael Riven. Not by chance. By blood."
A chill ran through him, colder than the mountain wind. "My parents—"
"Your mother was Seerborn. Your father… not what he seemed."
Kael turned fully now, facing the figure. "You knew them?"
"I knew what they gave up," the figure said. "And what they protected. The sword you carry—"
Kael reached for the hilt across his back, fingers brushing the worn leather grip. His father's forge-marks were still etched along the blade's fuller, hidden among blackened steel and strange veins of glimmering ore that never rusted. It was the only thing he had left of him.
"Your father forged it from godbone," the figure continued. "The last piece not buried beneath the Accord."
Kael's breath caught. He didn't know what that meant—but the words carried weight. Godbone. Failsafe. Heir.
"And now?" Kael asked.
"Now," the figure said, "you climb higher."
Kael glanced up the mountain. The summit vanished into swirling snow and storm. No path. No promise.
But he stepped forward anyway.
Because somewhere in the storm, answers waited.
And Kael Riven—blacksmith's son, godmarked heir—was done running.
The climb was harder now.
Not because the path steepened—though it did—or because the wind howled like a living thing—though it did that, too.
It was the presence.
The moment Kael passed the threshold where the feather-cloaked figure had stood, the air changed. Thicker. Humming. Like the mountain itself was watching. Testing.
His boots crunched through brittle frost, edged in veins of something darker than ice. Shadows moved oddly here—too slow, too long—and the sky above twisted in shades of violet and gray, as if day and night were arguing.
He didn't know how long he walked. Hours? Minutes? Time unraveled in places like this.
Eventually, he reached the ridge.
And there it was.
The summit.
Not a peak, but a platform—a natural ring of stone, rimmed with jagged spires that reached skyward like broken ribs. Snow fell, but it never touched the center. In the middle stood an altar. Black. Silent. Carved with symbols that danced just out of focus.
And embedded in it… a shard of something glowing faintly. Like a piece of starfire caught in stone.
Kael stepped forward, heart hammering.
He didn't know why, but the mark on his palm flared bright, hot. Painful.
Then came the whisper.
"Speak the name."
Kael froze. "What name?"
"The one your blood remembers."
He grit his teeth. "I don't know it."
"You do."
Images surged behind his eyes—his mother's lullaby, sung in a tongue he thought she'd made up. His father's stories of gods with no faces, battles no one remembered. The way his sword sometimes hummed when it was near old stone.
The name rose in him like a breath he'd been holding his whole life.
He stepped forward, placed his marked hand on the altar.
And whispered:
"Ashten."
The world exploded.
Not with fire, but light. Blinding. Cold. The altar cracked down the middle, and a pulse of silver burst outward, flattening the snow, shaking the mountain. Kael was thrown to his knees, sword clattering behind him.
When the light faded, the shard was gone.
In its place—
A figure stood.
No more than a silhouette at first. But as the swirling mist parted, Kael saw eyes like molten silver. A body made of ash and embers, held together by threads of shadow.
It opened its mouth.
And smiled.
"You called, little heir," it said. "Shall we begin?"
Continue to chapter II...