They were still kids when the sky cracked open.
Not innocent — not in a place like Miretown — but still young enough to believe there'd be time. Time to grow up, to get out, to figure out who they were going to be.
Kaelen was twelve. The oldest in their little pack was thirteen. They didn't call themselves a gang, because that sounded too serious. They were just four strays trying to keep warm, fed, and far enough from the wrong kind of attention.
That night, they were hiding in an old chapel on the edge of town. The roof was half-collapsed, the stained glass long shattered, but it was dry and mostly quiet. They shared a stolen loaf of rootbread and took turns telling stories — the kind that weren't real, but felt real enough when the world was dark.
Tavrin, the loud one, was mid-story about some ancient mage who burned his own shadow off. Yreya rolled her eyes, but didn't interrupt — she always said even lies had pieces of truth buried in them. Bren leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, the same way he always did when he was listening hard but didn't want anyone to know it.
Kaelen just watched the sky through the broken window.
It didn't start with thunder, or wind, or any of the things you'd expect. Just a flicker. A weird shimmer, like heat off stone — except it was night and getting cold. Then came the sound: not loud, not sharp. More like pressure. Like the world itself was holding its breath.
Then the Veilstorm hit.
No fire. No lightning. Just light — the wrong kind of light. It poured through a crack that hadn't been in the sky a minute before. A jagged split, like someone had taken a knife to the heavens and peeled them open.
By morning, Miretown was gone. Burned out. Twisted. Gone.
And somehow, the four of them survived.
Scattered. Changed. Marked, even if none of them admitted it yet.
Kaelen woke up miles from where they'd been, hands burned and bleeding, clutching a smooth, humming shard of something that pulsed with a soft, impossible glow.
He didn't remember grabbing it.
But he kept it anyway.