There was no sky in Caelen's world. Only stone.
He had never seen the sun.
That was the first truth Caelen could remember—one that clung to his thoughts like mildew on the walls around him. There were no windows in the dungeon, no slivers of light from above. Only the flickering torches the guards replaced once a week, casting long, wavering shadows over cracked stone and rusted iron bars.
He didn't know what color the sky was. Didn't know what warmth felt like, not truly. They spoke of the sun in whispers, like it was a legend, a god that lived far beyond reach. But to Caelen, it was just a word.
His world was a cell.
Ten paces long. Four wide. The walls sweated with moisture. The air was always cold—damp like a wet cloth left too long in the dark. The stones beneath his feet were uneven, their edges sharp enough to cut if he stepped wrong. A corner of the ceiling had caved in long ago, leaving a jagged hole of roots and broken rock. When it rained, water trickled through in slow, steady drips that echoed endlessly in the silence.
Sometimes rats came through that hole. Sometimes worms. They were not pests to Caelen. They were sustenance. Delicacies. Gifts.
They called this place the Vein Tomb, a dungeon carved into the bones of the earth—built not just to imprison, but to erase. A place meant to bury power and silence bloodlines. Not the kind of power that roared with fire or shattered stone, but the kind that made others tremble without a sound.
His family's power.
His family's legacy.
Caelen didn't know how old he was there was no way to tell when a day or a year passed. Small. Thin. Bones sharp beneath his skin, like a marionette strung together with string and shadow. His fingers were always stained with dirt. His legs trembled with hunger. His hair hung in long, matted cords—never cut, never cleaned. He had no mirror, but sometimes he saw his reflection in the oily puddles left after rain, warped and shivering.
He hated the way he looked.
Like a ghost, he thought. Like something that should've died already.
He slept on old rags. He shared what little food they were given—dry bread, a rotted root, the occasional brittle bone—with his father. Meals came once a day. Sometimes the guards skipped it just to see how long they'd last.
When that happened, Caelen didn't cry or beg. He didn't know what complaining was.
He just watched his father.
Kaelion sat cross-legged in the center of the cell, unmoving, meditating like a statue carved from dusk. The damp didn't seem to touch him. The hunger didn't shake him. He was still, even as the world around them rotted.
His father's name was Kaelion. He was bone and voice and silence. A ghost of the man he might have been.
He had been born down here, just like Caelen. His chains had weight, but they were familiar. Woven into his very being.
They were the last of their kind.
The Elarathi—a race born of ash and soulflame, who once shaped the flow of the Veyrith, the world's hidden pulse. There had once been many Elarathi in these cells, according to Kaelion. Entire families buried alive. Entire lineages lost to damp stone and forgotten screams. Passed down from his father's father, it was said that the Elarathi once ruled sanctuaries of starlight, places untouched by time.
But now, only Caelen and Kaelion remained. Two cinders in the ashes.
And yet, even in ruin, Kaelion carried a presence that bent the air. He was withered by darkness, his frame little more than sinew and memory, but his gaze burned—slow and steady, like coals that never forgot fire.
Caelen once had that same fire in his eyes.
When his mother was still alive.
Her name was Serya.
He remembered her in fragments, the way dreams cling just after waking. A voice like soft thunder. Hands that cradled him with strength. She used to hum when she held him—never words, just sound that rose and fell like waves in a sea he'd never seen. Her hair was long and black, always braided down to her waist. Her eyes were dark and wide, filled with a sorrow too heavy for words. They always watched. Always waited.
She, too, had been born in the dark.
Now she was a name carved into Caelen's memory. And a pile of stones in the corner of the cell.
She had some time back. Fever. Cold. Hunger. Maybe all three. Death didn't come with ceremony in the Vein Tomb. It came quietly.
One night, she kissed Caelen's forehead, curled up beside him, and didn't wake.
Kaelion had held her body for hours. He scraped the floor raw with bleeding hands, clearing a space, stacking stones into a grave that would never be seen by the world above. He placed her there like an offering, then sealed it with silence.
He never smiled again.
He didn't cry—not in front of Caelen. But his voice vanished for days. When it returned, it was quieter. Rougher. As if something inside had broken and never fully mended.
Caelen missed her most at night.
When the torchlight burned low. When his stomach clenched. When the damp pressed into his lungs and made it hard to breathe. In those moments, he would close his eyes and hum—not well, not with grace—but just to remember her.
Sometimes, in the stillness, he swore he could hear her hum back.
Most nights, Kaelion didn't speak. He sat in the center of the cell, fingers drawing invisible patterns in the air, his breath slow and even. Caelen would lie curled in his corner, eyes half-closed, listening to the silence as if it were trying to tell him something.
But some nights, when the cold was too sharp or the hunger too deep, Kaelion would speak.
He would tell stories.
Of the world beyond the stone. Of the sky—a vast, endless blue that turned to gold at dusk and bled into stars by night. Of three moons that hung in the heavens, and how sometimes they shared the same sky during daybreak, like sisters reunited.
He spoke of Aurelen, the City of Stars, where towers reached the clouds and lakes reflected the constellations. Of the Elarathi who once lived there, who sang to stone and danced on burning air. Of warriors who could breathe Veyrith and shape the world with their will. Of palaces that remembered every soul who passed through them. Of songs that only the blood could awaken.
Caelen clung to these stories. They were his warmth. His light. His hope.
But over time, the stories grew fewer. The silences between them stretched longer. Kaelion grew quieter.
Now Caelen often just watched him from across the cell. Watched the rise and fall of his breath. Watched the stillness settle into him like dust.
Then, one day, Kaelion spoke.
Not a story. Not a memory.
Just a sentence.
"You're not a child anymore," he said. His voice cracked like dry stone. "You must learn, my boy."
Caelen blinked. "Learn what?"
Kaelion's gaze locked with his—sharp and unwavering.
"How to die."
"What?" Caelen whispered.
"Not truly. But enough to make the world believe it. Enough to slip past their notice. It's the only way out. The only way our blood escapes this place."
Caelen stared at him, unsure if he was joking—or mad.
But Kaelion showed him.
How to slow his breath. How to quiet his pulse. How to press points along his body to numb pain. How to fold his will so completely inward that even the Veyrith recoiled.
"You must make death a cloak," Kaelion told him. "Wear it until they stop looking. Then rise."
It sounded impossible. Ridiculous. Like another story.
But Caelen had nothing else to believe in.
So he began to train.
Not with swords. Not with fire. Not with cries of war.
But in silence.
With pain.
With patience.
With stillness.
He learned to starve without trembling. To feel hunger like an old companion. He learned to lie still for hours, to let rats crawl over him without flinching. He learned the rhythm of his own breath and how to bury it.
He learned how to disappear.
And in the dark, the child born in chains began to become something else.
Something quieter.
Something colder.
Something that waited.