Chapter 1 – Ash and Hunger
The fire had long since gone out.
Only a few wisps of smoke curled from the half-buried coals, barely enough to warm Kael's fingers as he crouched beside the remains of last night's cooking pit. His breath fogged in the morning air, sharp and thin in the gutted ruins of what used to be Hollowmere District—now just a skeleton of stone and ash.
He reached into his coat—patched and three sizes too big—and pulled out a cloth pouch. Inside were two bitterroot stems, a pinch of ground leafmoss, and three dried pebble-fruits, shriveled to the point of being more seed than flesh.
It was all he had.
Grinding the roots together, he added a splash of rainwater and swallowed the paste raw. The taste was like dirt soaked in bile, but it would keep him upright for the day.
He didn't have the luxury of collapse.
Kael stood and glanced toward the horizon. The sun had yet to breach the broken skyline of Hollowmere, but light was bleeding into the clouds—gray on gray. Somewhere past the charred apartments and crumbling towers lay the border walls. Past those walls… the orders, the sects, the cultivators.
The world that didn't want boys like him.
His fingers absently brushed the frayed strap of the satchel at his side. Inside were a few dried herbs he'd managed to scavenge—some useful, others worthless. He'd trade them later in the black market enclave, maybe for something warm. Or maybe not.
There was no certainty. Only the game of survival.
He passed the ruins of what had once been his home: a collapsed three-story structure with a rusted balcony still dangling like a noose. His brother, Joren, had disappeared in that building two winters ago—swallowed by fire, smoke, or the gangs that came after.
Kael never found the body.
Just the iron necklace that now hung under his collar.
"Still watching, Joren?" he murmured.
By the time he reached the trade corner, the air was thick with competing voices.
"Dried pine pulp! Good for wounds!"
"Three scales for a clean ration, no mold!"
"Don't touch that! It's cursed, I swear!"
Kael moved through the crowd like a shadow, careful not to bump into anyone. One hand hovered near his belt where a rusted bone knife was sheathed, dull from years of use but still sharp enough to bleed someone slow.
He spotted Margo—a hunched woman with more rings on her fingers than teeth in her mouth. Her makeshift stall smelled like mold and crushed roots.
Kael knelt, opened his pouch, and laid out his finds.
She squinted. "Deadmoss? Hah. You'll be lucky if that draws rats."
Kael said nothing.
She picked up a sliver of pale bark, sniffed it, then set it down.
"Five brass slivers," she finally muttered.
Kael raised an eyebrow. "That's worth twelve."
"Then go find someone else with a license."
He didn't argue. He took the five and moved on.
Later that day, just as Kael was preparing to leave the marketplace, a hand grabbed his shoulder.
His body tensed instantly—knife halfway drawn—before he recognized the uniform: gray robes, dark sash, the symbol of the outer branch of the Emberpath Collective stitched into the collar.
A cultivator? No.
A recruiter.
The man looked Kael up and down, eyes pausing on the satchel and the faint herbal scent rising from his sleeves.
"You know your herbs?"
Kael didn't answer.
The man smirked. "Good. Don't need talkers. Need survivors."
He reached into his cloak and handed Kael a slate disk with a sigil burned into its surface—a jagged crescent encircling a droplet.
"Come to the Broken Stair before dusk tomorrow. If you don't show, I'll assume you died."
Kael watched the man vanish into the smoke of the square.
He turned the disk in his fingers.
The sigil was warm.