The storm clouds didn't just hang over the valley—they pressed down like a giant's fist, squeezing the last breath out of everything beneath. Wind screamed through the bones of dead trees, carrying smoke and the sharp, metallic stench of old blood.
Kael stood barefoot in what used to be his home.
Now it was a grave.
Charred wooden beams jutted from the mud like ribs ripped from a carcass. The fires were long gone, but their rage still lived in every blackened stone and every shattered memory. Kael was sixteen. Alone. And the last soul breathing in a village that didn't even have a name anymore.
His feet were torn open from the debris, skin raw and cracked. But the pain felt distant, dulled. Everything did now. He walked through the wreckage like a ghost with a heartbeat, passing ghosts without one.
A broken toy lay beside the old well—a wooden horse, its red paint scorched away. Little Emma had loved that thing. She'd carried it everywhere. Now it lay in the dirt, forgotten by all but him.
Farther ahead, Mira's red scarf twisted on a broken fence post, whipping in the wind like a flag raised for the dead. He almost reached for it. Almost. But he knew if he touched it, something inside him would snap.
His father's forge was nothing but rubble and silence. The anvil, once the heartbeat of the village, lay cracked and cold. All the noise was gone. The laughter. The shouting. The music at dusk. All swallowed by fire and ash.
Kael fell to his knees in the square. His hands clawed through the wreckage, not searching for anything specific, just needing to find something. Anything. Proof that this place hadn't just been a nightmare.
His fingers closed around metal.
A pendant. Cracked but whole. Its silver surface pulsed faintly with warmth. The carving on it was simple—a seed. His mother had worn it every day. And on the night the village burned, she had pressed it into his hand with blood on her lips.
"Run, Kael. Run, and don't look back."
Her last words.
He clenched the pendant so tightly it dug into his skin.
Why? Why did they want this? What is this thing?
Behind him, a branch snapped.
Kael froze.
From the edge of the ruins, a figure stepped out. Tall. Cloaked. Leather armor hugged their frame like shadows woven into cloth. But it was the mask that made Kael's breath catch. Bone white, carved into a grinning skull, eyes burning with their own cold fire.
The air turned thick.
"You shouldn't be here," the figure said. Their voice was calm. Not cruel. Not kind. Just... certain.
Kael stood, still gripping the pendant. "This was my home."
"It isn't anymore."
"Did you do this?" Kael's voice cracked. "Were you one of them?"
The skull tilted. "If I was, you'd be dead already."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because something still sleeps beneath these ashes. Something older than any kingdom. And you... are tied to it more than you know."
Kael's hand opened. The pendant glowed softly now, faint lines of green light weaving across its surface like roots stretching through darkness.
"What is this?"
"A gift. A curse. A beginning. Depends on what you do with it."
Kael felt it then—a hum beneath his skin, like something inside him had begun to breathe for the first time.
"Come," the stranger said. "There are others who would kill you just for holding that."
"Why should I trust you?"
"You shouldn't," they said. "But staying here is death."
Kael looked back once. At the homes burned black. The people he couldn't save. The life he couldn't return to.
Then he followed.
They walked for hours. Maybe longer. Time didn't feel real anymore. The forest thickened around them like it was alive, branches clawing at his skin, roots tripping his feet. The stranger never looked back. They didn't have to.
Eventually, they stopped at a cave mouth hidden behind thorns and moss. Above it, carved in the stone, was the same seed symbol as on the pendant.
"Inside," the stranger said.
The walls of the cave weren't just stone—they were stories. Carvings of a great tree, roots spreading across continents. Crowds gathered around it. Then fire. Shadows. Blood. A seed passed from hand to hand. King to child. Warrior to corpse.
Kael stared at one image—a throne made of twisted roots. Empty.
"What am I supposed to do with this?" he whispered.
"You don't awaken the Seed," the stranger said. "It awakens you. When the time comes, you'll feel it. Until then... survive."
Kael lay on the cave floor that night, staring at the pendant glowing beside him. The stranger sat in the shadows, silent as the stones.
Sleep came like a punch to the head.
In his dream, he stood beneath a tree so large it swallowed the sky. Its leaves shimmered gold. Its roots pulsed with life. At its base, that same throne waited.
A voice, not human, not cruel, just ancient:
"Grow, or burn."
He woke gasping. The pendant blazed. On his palm, a mark had formed—the seed symbol, faint but pulsing.
Outside, thunder rolled. And far away, across the world, others felt it too. Some had waited for this. Others had tried to forget. But none would ignore it now.
The Seed had awakened.
And Kael—scarred, hunted, unwilling—stood at the center of something vast and unforgiving.
As the storm growled over distant mountains and the cave exhaled ancient breath, Kael whispered into the dark:
"You buried my village in ash. But roots still grow. And this time... they remember the fire."
The world would remember his name.
If he survived long enough to carve it into the bark of fate.