Thojin woke to the sound of dripping stone.
He didn't move. Not yet. In Drellhok, stillness was survival.
From his corner of the collapsed dormitory — a hollowed-out reliquary buried two floors beneath what used to be a sanctuary — he listened. Water. A rat. Maybe both. No boots. No scraping metal. No voices.
Safe enough.
He opened his eyes.
The world was grey. Always grey. Even underground, the ash found ways in — seeping through cracks, clinging to hair, coating skin like disease. He brushed it off his lashes and sat up, joints cracking from the cold. His sleep had been shallow, but that was normal. No one truly rested in Drellhok.
He stood, careful not to disturb the loose stones near his makeshift bed. Silence, always silence. The sentinels above were drawn not just to movement, but to pattern — rhythm, intent, breath. Noise meant death.
Seventeen cycles he had survived this place. Seventeen without a nameplate, without a crest, without a future. He was nothing. And still, he remained.
His stomach growled. He ignored it.
Food would come later — if he found any. A sliver of mold-stone, maybe. If he got lucky, meat. If he got unlucky, meat that still looked back.
He wrapped his cloak tighter and moved into the corridor. The stone was wet with condensation, the air heavy with fungal rot. Far above, the city shifted — distant clangs, coughing metal, screams carried too faint to follow. Drellhok's sounds never ceased. They formed a kind of rhythmless hymn. A reminder that nothing here was truly dead — only broken.
At the breach in the wall, he paused.
The alley beyond was narrow and steep, sloping down toward the trade gutters. If he moved quickly, avoided the tower lights and stepped only where shadow pooled thickest, he could make it to the lower tier before the ration rounds began.
He scanned the grey.
Nothing moved.
He slipped out into the ash.
Thojin was halfway across the alley when he heard it — the unmistakable snap of bone and steel clashing in the distance. Then another. Louder. Closer.
He spun toward the noise, instincts sharp.
A figure tore around the corner of the drainage tunnel, breath ragged, eyes locked on him. Seren.
She didn't shout. She didn't need to.
"Home's gone," she said between breaths. "They found us."
Thojin's heart kicked in his chest. "How?"
"No time." She grabbed his wrist. "We have to move."
He didn't question her. He never did. Seren was a ghost in the rebellion — one of the few that still fought, still believed. If she was running, it meant death followed.
They sprinted through the ash-coated streets, ducking under fallen arches and vaulting over debris. Seren led with precision. Even injured — a deep gash just above her knee — she moved like the wind remembered her shape.
But the ash was thicker here. And the shadows weren't empty.
Screeches echoed above them, distant but hungry. Thojin glanced back. Shapes moved between the rooftops.
"We're being funneled," Seren growled. "They know the paths."
"We need a side route."
"We're out of them."
They reached a dead end — a crumbled courtyard walled in by three buildings and the collapsed remains of an old purification tower. No exits. No cover.
Seren cursed and pulled a blade from her belt. "Then we make a stand."
Thojin found a jagged rod half-buried in ash and took position beside her.
The first of them arrived.
Ravelhunters — three of them. Larger than the patrol types. Bone armor reinforced. Spines coated in black sigils that shimmered in the gloom. Elite cullers.
They moved in silence. Coordinated. Not machines, not beasts — something in between.
Thojin lunged first, trying to break formation. His rod struck one across the temple. It flinched but did not fall.
Seren danced between two blades, ducked, spun, and drove her dagger into the joint of one creature's spine. It screeched — a high, awful sound — then retaliated with a backhand that threw her against the wall.
She didn't rise.
"Seren!"
Another lunged at her fallen body.
Thojin screamed and ran to intercept, but too late.
A spear-like limb punched through her side.
Her eyes found his — calm, even then.
And then, they closed.
He dropped to his knees beside her. The world fell away.
And something woke.
A tremor — not of earth, but air. A collapse inward. A pull.
The Malak shuddered.
Thojin's scream became a roar, and in the blinding instant that followed, three heads hit the ground. He hadn't seen it. Hadn't moved. But they were gone.
The Ravelhunters were dead.
His hands shook. The rod glowed faintly. His sister lay still.
He pulled her into his arms.
"No... no no no—"
The scream that followed tore through the alley and rose into the smoke-choked sky.
Somewhere above, something ancient heard it.
And the Malak cracked.
And so it begins....
Far above, behind the unseen veil, something stirred — not with mercy, but recognition.
In the city below, ash still fell. Blood still cooled. But a silence had broken.
A thread had unraveled.
A story, long sealed, had just taken its first breath.