The city of Valdyr stank worse than a corpse left under the summer heat. Her streets reeked of poverty, desperation and decay. It clung to your clothes, your soul, your lungs. Here, you didn't live, you clawed and dug your way through the stench just to survive.
Caelum kept his head low and hidden as he slipped between two brick walls slick with rain, the sound of boots pounding the alley behind him.
"Thief!" The guards clamored after him, thrusting their spears at his heel and narrowly missing his rear.
"Stop him! He's stole from a noble."
He didn't stop. Not when stopping meant a beating. Or a whip. Or worse, the gallows.
He rounded a corner, ducked under a drooping clothesline, then vaulted over a stack of barrels like he'd been doing it since birth. Which he had. Sort of.
His lungs burned. His heart thudded. His fingers clenched the velvet purse stuffed under his tunic. Heavy. Good. Maybe tonight his family would eat more than crusts.
The shadows thickened as he plunged into the tunnel behind the butcher's shop, his usual route. It was tight, narrow, and always reeked of pig's blood but none of his pursuers followed him through. Too dirty. Too dark.
Perfect.
The disgusting stink of old meat washing over him. Safe, finally. He leaned against the wall, breathing hard, then grinned.
"Hh-held up nice, d-didn't I?" he whispered to himself, his stammer curling around the words. It always came back when he wasn't prepared to speak.
Caelum palmed the purse, peered into it and whistled low. Gold. Real, solid coins. A few jeweled trinkets. Even a royal signet ring.
The operation had just been too easy or maybe he truly was the king of thieves.
He pocketed the ring and muttered, "Too d-d-dumb to—"
The ground beneath him trembled and he froze.
A fierce light bloomed from his fingertips. The coins in his hand steamed. His breath clouded like billows of smoke.
Not again. Not here.
"Shhh..." he whispered to himself, dropping the purse. He clenched his fists and closed his eyes. "Y-you're n-n-not real... N-not now..."
A crack split the tunnel wall.
"No, no, no—"
Blue fire flickered along his wrists like veins turning inside out. It wasn't flame, not really. It was something older. Wilder. The kind of magic you didn't get to have when you lived in the gutters.
And it wanted out.
He bit down hard on his tongue, drawing blood. Pain always helped. Sometimes.
The fire hissed back into his skin.
His heart didn't slow.
"I s-s-said not n-n-now," he growled, half to himself, half to the thing inside him.
The silence that followed wasn't peaceful. It was terse like the calm before the storm.
He didn't wait. He fled through the tunnel, burst into the open courtyard of the gutters, and sprinted past the regular drunks, whores who called out to him for a night of unforgettable pleasure and children who were more bone than flesh.
Home wasn't far. Just a shack built of three walls and a zinc covered roof that leaked more than it held the rain, tucked behind a collapsed brewery.
Inside, the air reeked of poverty, candle smoke and destitution.
"Cael?" came a weak voice. His mother, Yssa.
He dropped beside her cot and placed the stolen purse gently on her chest. "G-got m-m-more than we c-c-can eat, Ma."
She looked worse. Too pale. Cheeks sunken. Eyes glazed.
"Again?" she whispered, eyes flickering toward his wrists. "Did it happen?"
He didn't answer.
"You promised—"
"I d-didn't c-c-choose it."
"If anyone sees... if they suspect..."
"I c-c-controlled it. I s-s-stopped it."
His younger siblings, twins, stirred from a pile of old sheets beside the hearth. Their stomachs growling in harmony.
"Cael, I'm so hungry." His little sister, Tonia said groggily as she climbed onto his lap.
"Dd-don't w-w-worry, we'll e-e-eat tt-tonight." Caelum reassured her with a grin.
"REALLY!," Sienna, the youngest cried and jumped into his arms, knocking him backward and to the ground. He sat back up with a laugh as his sisters cackled trying to mount him like a horse.
Yssa touched his face with a trembling hand and he turned to the girls, dropping five gold coins into their little hands, "G-go g-g-get w-whatever y-you w-w-want."
"Thank you Cael!" The girls squealed excitedly and raced each other out of the shack.
"You're not meant to have it. That magic... it's cursed." Yssa began when the shack was quiet.
"So am I," he muttered.
She flinched.
He hated that look. Like she saw someone else when she looked at him.
He stood up, turned away. "We c-c-can eat t-t-tonight."
Behind him, Yssa clutched the pendant around her neck it was a black stone shaped like a flame. It pulsed faintly, like it had a heartbeat.
Outside, rain began to fall.
Later that night, Caelum lay on his hammock, staring up at the incomplete moon. The same piece was missing every night, like something had bitten into it long ago.
His fingers toyed with the signet ring he'd stolen. A royal crest. His gut said to toss it. But his curiosity said otherwise.
He slipped it onto his finger.
The world didn't explode.
But the sky did whisper.
A voice which was not quite a voice, more like a distant memory he couldn't place curled into his mind.
"The Flameborn walks. The liar wakes."
He bolted upright, heart pounding. "Wh-who said th-th-that?"
Only silence answered. And the echo of something stirring deep within him.
The next morning, Caelum was on his way to the market to find a healer for his mother and he passed the alley where he'd fled yesterday. The stone he'd cracked was scorched black. As if fire had bled from the inside out.
And in the soot, scratched in ragged lines, were words no one had written:
"HEIR."
,,,
That night, Yssa waited until the girls were asleep before pulling Caelum aside.
"I need to tell you something. Something you must swear never to reveal to another soul."
His blood ran cold.
"Your father..." she began.
Caelum blinked.
But just then their little door exploded inward and five men in black leather stormed inside. They looked like royal guards, but they didn't carry any sigils.
Yssa screamed. Caelum stood up and tried to say something when someone struck him hard across the face.
As his vision blurred, he saw them grab his mother.
"Wait!" he tried to shout, but the words tangled on his tongue. "D-d-don't—"
A blade sank into her chest. Once. Twice. Thrice in rapid succession.
Yssa's eyes locked onto his.
And then dimmed.
Caelum didn't remember screaming, he didn't remembered what came next.
He didn't remember that the entire shack instantly lit up in fiery angry flames that licked everything in its path without remorse.
And when the flames died, he was alone.
Naked. Unconscious. Alive.
His home was ash.
His mother's body, lost.
And in the ashes, glowing red, was the pendant she wore...
...and the signet ring now fused to his flesh.