The first bell tolled the moment the sky cracked.
It wasn't the kind of crack people could see—no lightning, no tear in the clouds—but every soul in the city of Thorne felt it. Deep inside. Like something ancient had blinked awake beneath their bones.
Joe Kael was seventeen and starving. Not from food—though that was sometimes true—but from clarity. From a world that made sense. He crouched at the edge of the district wall, watching the copper-colored mist roll in over the rooftops, eyes sharp, fingers twitching near the blade strapped to his thigh. His black jacket was torn, the collar ragged and frayed. Most things he owned had been scavenged. The rest, earned in bruises.
Behind him, the city groaned like an animal in pain.
He didn't turn.
"I thought it was a myth," he muttered. "The Shatterwake. Just a story the Drifters told to scare rookies."
The air answered with another toll. This one deeper. Final.
Joe's right hand burned.
He pulled off the makeshift glove and stared at the mark seared into his palm—an angular sigil shaped like a spiral sun, split down the middle like broken glass. It had appeared three years ago, during the fire that stole everything from him. He'd never been able to explain it. Not to doctors. Not to priests. Not even to himself.
The mark pulsed.
Shatterwake, it whispered.
Not a voice. A feeling. Like a pressure on the inside of his skull.
Joe stood slowly. He wasn't tall, but he was wiry, like a blade that had been hammered too many times and still refused to break. His gray eyes narrowed as a new ripple tore across the skyline—this one visible. A ring of black light burst silently through the sky, warping the clouds into fractal spirals. The wind didn't move. Time didn't either.
Something had entered the world.
And it was calling him.
Below the wall, the city stirred. Lights flickered. Alarms wailed. Doors slammed shut. The rich retreated behind reinforced vaults. The poor clutched charms and prayed.
Joe walked toward it.
He didn't know why. He just did.
The deeper he went, the quieter the city became. Like it knew it was being watched. Like the buildings themselves were holding their breath. Ash drifted from the air like it had once been snow. And then he saw it—
—a breach in the center of the main square.
Not a hole. Not a portal. A wound.
The edges shimmered like glass underwater, and the center twisted like a slow scream. Standing before it was a figure—tall, featureless, wrapped in crimson cloth and bound in chains. It didn't breathe. It didn't move. It just waited.
Joe stepped forward.
The mark on his palm ignited.
"Designation verified," the figure said. Its voice was wind through teeth. "You have been called, Joe Kael. You have been fractured."
The world bent. Joe dropped to one knee, vision swimming. Images tore through his mind—of towers collapsing, of people crying out in languages he didn't know, of himself bleeding from a dozen wounds he hadn't taken yet.
"Your first descent begins."
Then the breach pulled him in.
There was no resistance. Only a sharp snap, like a string cut under tension.
And everything went dark.
End of Chapter 1.