Chapter One: The Night of Ashes
The sky bled fire.
Ash rained from the heavens like snow, coating the village of Aerwin in ghostly gray. Once a peaceful hamlet nestled between emerald hills, it now lay in ruin. Homes were blackened skeletons. The air reeked of char and sorrow.
Lyra moved silently through the wreckage, her cloak trailing soot behind her. Her silver staff pulsed faintly with blue light—its runes glowing brighter the closer she came to death. She had seen too many places like this. Too many voices crying out with no one left to hear them.
But she heard.
She always heard.
"They came in the night…"
"We begged the gods…"
"Why wouldn't anyone help?"
The whispers brushed her ears like icy wind. The dead never rested here—not anymore. Each destroyed village added to the cacophony of souls tethered to a world that had betrayed them.
Lyra stepped into the remains of a home, the walls barely standing. A broken cradle sat near the hearth. Her breath caught. She knelt beside it, brushing a burned blanket aside.
A flicker of light hovered above the cradle—faint, childlike, flickering like a candle in the storm.
A soul.
Gently, she extended her hand. "Little one… you don't have to stay. I can guide you."
The wisp shimmered, floating closer.
Then it twisted.
Eyes formed—black, hollow. A mouth opened in a silent scream as the spirit's form grew claws and smoke poured from its chest. In a blink, the child's soul had become something else. Something tormented. Something monstrous.
Lyra's breath hitched. "No—wait!"
The demon lunged.
With a practiced sweep, she raised her staff. A barrier of light burst outward, encasing the demon in a glowing sphere. It shrieked, pressing against the runes with claws that no longer belonged to a child.
And then, with a final pulse, it vanished—reclaimed by the ashes.
Lyra fell to her knees, chest heaving. Tears slipped down her cheeks.
She had failed again.
Miles away, in the marble heart of Caeldrim, the kingdom's capital, panic ruled.
Nobles shouted across the Grand Council Chamber, their silk robes stained with sweat and soot. Maps were scattered across the war table—each one marked with red Xs where towns had fallen to the demon scourge.
"The spirits of the dead are rising!" bellowed General Dravik. "They burned through the western border in a single night!"
A scholar, pale and shaking, stepped forward. "There are… ancient texts—prophecies. I believe we are witnessing—"
"Enough of your dusty books!" snarled a merchant lord. "We need swords, not stories."
A voice cut through the noise.
"Let him speak."
The High Regent, a tall man with silver-streaked hair and dark eyes, stepped from his seat. His face was grim. "Go on, scholar."
The man swallowed. "A thousand years ago, there was a veil. A barrier between the world of the living and the dead. It was torn during the Age of Shadows and sealed again through sacrifice. But the seal is weakening. The prophecy says—"
The chamber dimmed. Shadows stretched unnaturally across the floor.
And the scholar whispered:
"When five from fire, ash, and blood rise… the veil shall tear… and truth shall burn."
Silence fell.
Then came the cries from outside. Horns. Screams. Smoke curling into the sky.
The demons had come to Caeldrim.
Back in Aerwin, Lyra lit a small pyre with shaking hands. She watched the flames take the last of the bodies—fathers, daughters, lovers—trying to grant them peace, even now.
But as she whispered a prayer, the wind changed.
It carried with it a voice—not one of the dead, but something older. Deeper.
"The time is near, Seer. The five must awaken. The veil has thinned. The reckoning begins."
Lyra's blood turned to ice. She turned slowly, eyes wide.
No one was there.
Only ashes.
Elsewhere in the kingdom, across roads yet to meet:
Asha, cloaked in shadow, watched flames rise over a village she had once ruled. Her sword trembled in her hand—not from fear, but from memory.
Kael, fingers dusty from an old vault, held up a strange crystal amulet. It pulsed—once, twice—then glowed, as if something inside had been disturbed.
Bryn, alone in a snowy mountain pass, heard the howl of wolves. But beneath the howl… a cry.
And Tariq, deep within the Forbidden Archives, read a line aloud he wished he hadn't.
"The dead do not rest. Because the living will not let them."
The kingdom believed the demons were the end.
They were wrong.
They were only the beginning.