Chapter 1: The Scent of Burned Plum
The plum trees had burned without fire.
No lightning. No drought. No warning. The southern grove had simply curled in on itself one dawn, blossoms blackened, trunks splintered from the inside out. No smoke lingered. Only the smell—sweet, metallic, and wrong.
Kairis still tasted it on his tongue.
He sat at the edge of the feast hall, where firelight met shadow. All around him, the village of Elholm celebrated its harvest. Laughter bounced between timbered walls. Roast meats steamed on platters. Children chased each other between tables while drunken men cheered over dice games.
But Kairis didn't laugh. Didn't eat. Didn't move.
His bowl of stew cooled untouched before him. His spoon lay across it like a rusted relic.
The pendant at his chest—a black stone tied with coarse thread—beat faintly. Like a second heart.
You were not meant to live twice.
The whisper did not come through ears.
It came through his blood.
He blinked, and for a moment the fire bent sideways, casting shadows in the wrong direction. He looked up through the open skylight above the hearth.
The stars were blinking.
Not flickering.
Blinking.
"Eat," came a low voice beside him.
Hayako, his foster father, dropped onto the bench with a tankard in one hand and a grin in his voice. "Gods, boy, if I fed you a gold coin every time you stared into nothing, I'd be emperor."
Kairis said nothing.
"You feel it again?" Hayako whispered. "The pull?"
Kairis nodded faintly.
Hayako's voice lowered. "You told no one else?"
"No."
"Good." He clapped the boy's shoulder and stood again, raising his cup. "To full bellies, old gods, and a sky that minds its own damn business!"
The room roared.
Kairis slipped from his bench.
Across the table, Elda, the baker's daughter, tilted her head. "Where are you going?"
He didn't answer.
The moment his boots hit the doorway, the pendant burned against his chest.
And the sky split open.
There was no thunder.
Only absence.
The stars peeled back, revealing a hole—not black, but empty. A wound. A mouth.
And something descended from it.
Not a beast. Not a god.
A mass of eyes and tendrils, pulsing in time with Kairis's own breath. The Maw. Ancient. Watching.
His chest seized. The pendant cracked. His veins ignited.
Runes bloomed across his arms and neck, glowing gold like wounds made of language. He gasped, but no sound came.
A force ripped through the village. Houses collapsed inward. Lanterns reversed their flames. Time staggered.
The feast hall exploded behind him in a rush of soundless light.
Hayako's voice reached him one last time—
"Kairis—"
And then his body was gone.
Kairis stood in the storm.
Alone.
The Maw blinked.
And laughed.
Chapter 2: Ash Without Ashes
Ash covered the world, but there was no fire.
Kairis stood barefoot in the crater that had once been Elholm. Not a building remained. Not a single body. Just powder and silence.
His skin still glowed faintly.
He did not feel the cold.
He did not cry.
He had done this.
You opened the seal, the voice whispered.You are not the boy. You are the wound that speaks.
He looked down at his hands. The runes had cooled into faint scars.
Footsteps broke the silence.
He turned.
A figure in a brown cloak approached across the ash. Tall. Hooded. A long weapon was strapped to her back.
She stopped a few paces away.
"You broke it early," she said.
He blinked. "Who are you?"
She pulled down her hood. Pale skin. Copper hair. A scar shaped like a cross. Grey eyes that had seen too much.
"My name is Arith," she said. "And you've killed me before."
His mouth opened, but no words came.
She stepped closer. "You don't remember being Nahran. That's good. It means you might still choose a different ending."
"I don't understand."
"You will." She turned, walking toward the broken forest.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"To find the First Scripture. If you want to live long enough to be feared again, you'll follow."
He hesitated.
Then followed.
Chapter 3: The Wound That Speaks
The forest whispered.
Not in sound—but in thought. In memory. In roots that curved like symbols and trees that bent toward a center that waited.
At its heart was a pedestal of black stone.
Kairis stood before it, heart pounding. Something pulsed beneath the surface.
"Touch it," Arith said. "But know it will ask something back."
"What?"
"Your name. And maybe more."
Kairis reached out.
The stone split open.
A scroll, wrapped in bone-thread, slithered from the pedestal. Its surface swam with letters—alive, changing.
Who are you, Seeker?
He breathed. "Kairis."
The Scripture hissed.
That is not true. But it is accepted.
Light shot from the scroll into his chest. The first rune burned into his ribs, etching itself under his skin like a second soul.
He fell to his knees, trembling.
The forest screamed.
Something deep beneath them had felt the seal bind.
And it was waking.
Chapter 4: The Hollow Prophet
They traveled to Mirrowhollow, where the last prophet waited in the bones of a ruined monastery.
She had no eyes. No tongue. No voice.
And yet when Kairis stepped into her presence, he remembered.
You have died many times, and still the wound reopens.
He knelt before her.
"What am I?" he asked.
The prophet touched his brow.
And the vision tore through him—
A battlefield of ash.
Cities burned to silence.
Arith dying in his arms, whispering: "You chose this."
The Eye wide open, and Kairis—no, Nahran—seated on a throne made of Scripture, smiling through tears.
He awoke gasping.
The prophet said nothing.
She didn't need to.
Kairis stood. His hands were steady.
"I won't become him," he said.
Arith didn't answer. She looked up at the sky, where a single seam had begun to unravel again.