Kaelen's breaths came shallow and quick, his back pressed against the jagged walls of the ravine. Dust coated his skin, clinging to the sweat that trickled down his temples. His side throbbed, warm blood seeping between his fingers, but the wound wasn't deep enough to kill him—he hoped.
The Shatterbeast's growls still echoed faintly above him, distant now but persistent. It was pacing at the edge of the ravine, its frustration evident in the way the earth trembled with each of its heavy steps. Kaelen forced himself to ignore it. For now, he was safe.
The jagged walls around him were a patchwork of slate-gray stone and cracks that glowed faintly with an unnatural blue light—another reminder of how far he was from any semblance of normalcy. The ravine felt alive, pulsing faintly with the chaotic energy that seeped into every corner of the Ashlands.
Kaelen exhaled slowly, leaning his head back against the cold rock.
The blood on his side had already begun to clot, dark stains soaking into the coarse fabric of his shirt. He glanced down at himself with a grimace, taking in the sorry state of his appearance.
He looked as ragged as he felt. His black hair hung in damp, uneven strands, slicked back against his scalp by sweat and dirt. It was cut short but messy, as though hacked at with a knife—because it had been. The strands that framed his face were matted with ash, making his sharp features stand out starkly.
His skin was pale, almost unnaturally so, not from lack of sunlight but from exhaustion and weeks of meager meals. Beneath the grime, it was littered with scars, each one a silent testament to his time in the Ashlands. A jagged line stretched along his right cheekbone, narrowly missing his eye—a gift from an earlier run-in with another scavenger.
Kaelen's eyes were what unsettled people most. A piercing, steely gray that seemed almost too bright in the dim light of the Ashlands, like the edge of a blade catching moonlight. They were the kind of eyes that didn't soften, even in moments of calm. They were hard, searching, and sharp, betraying a mind constantly calculating and mistrusting.
His clothes weren't much better. A faded, tattered jacket hung loosely over his wiry frame, its sleeves rolled up to reveal lean but scarred forearms. The jacket might have once been black, but it had long since faded to a dull charcoal gray. His pants, patched and fraying at the edges, were cinched at the waist with a scavenged length of cord. Heavy boots, scuffed and caked with mud, completed his appearance—each one held together with makeshift repairs.
He didn't look like a hero. He looked like a survivor.
Kaelen pulled the shard from his pouch and held it up, its faint blue glow illuminating the hollow planes of his face. For all his effort, the shard felt… underwhelming. It was small, no larger than a pebble, and yet its faint hum carried a promise of immense power.
"What are you hiding?" he muttered, turning it over in his fingers.
The shard didn't answer, but it seemed to pulse faintly in response, its glow growing warmer for the briefest of moments. Kaelen narrowed his eyes. The shards were never silent, not truly. He'd heard enough rumors to know that each one carried the remnants of the Primordial Will it came from—a voice that whispered to its wielder, tempting them, guiding them, or breaking them.
Kaelen shoved the shard back into his pouch and pushed himself to his feet. His legs wobbled beneath him, and the wound at his side pulled painfully, but he grit his teeth and forced himself to move. The ravine wasn't safe, not really. If the Shatterbeast didn't decide to climb down after him, something else would.
The Ashlands didn't reward idleness.
He adjusted the dagger at his side, the blade little more than a salvaged chunk of metal wrapped in scraps of leather. It wouldn't do much against a Shatterbeast, but it was better than nothing.
Kaelen glanced up at the sky—or what little he could see of it from the ravine. The ashen clouds hung low and heavy, casting everything in a dull, gray light that made it impossible to tell the time of day. He guessed it was early afternoon, though he couldn't be certain. Time in the Ashlands was unreliable at best, warped by the chaotic energy that pulsed through the air.
As he made his way deeper into the ravine, Kaelen's mind wandered back to the stories he'd heard as a child. Stories of a time before the Shattering, when the sky had been clear and blue, and the land had been lush with forests and rivers. Back when people hadn't lived in constant fear of chaos and shards and Fractured Zones.
It sounded like a fairy tale now.
A faint rumble pulled him from his thoughts, and Kaelen froze, his hand instinctively moving to his dagger. The sound was distant but growing louder—a deep, resonant hum that seemed to reverberate through the ground.
"Great," he muttered under his breath.
Ravines were dangerous for a reason. The chaotic energy that warped the Ashlands often pooled in places like this, creating unstable pockets of reality where anything could happen. Kaelen knew he needed to move quickly before the situation worsened, but his body protested with every step.
As he rounded a corner, the ravine opened into a small clearing, its walls widening into a circular chamber. The hum was louder here, the air charged with an almost electric tension. In the center of the clearing, a faint blue light shimmered, casting eerie shadows against the walls.
Kaelen's breath caught in his throat.
It wasn't another shard—not this time. It was something else, something much larger.
At the center of the clearing stood a Dominion Spire, a jagged, crystalline formation that pulsed with chaotic energy. The spire was tall and irregular, its surface shifting and refracting light in impossible ways. It was beautiful and terrifying all at once, a monument to the fractured nature of the world.
Kaelen approached cautiously, his eyes fixed on the spire. He'd heard of Dominion Spires before—places where shards were formed, born from the remnants of the Primordial Wills. They were rare, dangerous, and heavily guarded by the creatures that thrived in the Ashlands.
But there didn't seem to be anything guarding this one.
Kaelen's hand tightened around his dagger as he stepped closer, his every sense on high alert. The hum grew louder, vibrating through his skull and making his vision blur. The shard in his pouch seemed to resonate with it, its glow pulsing in time with the spire's rhythm.
Whatever this place was, it wasn't natural.
Kaelen reached the base of the spire and hesitated. The air was thick here, heavy with a pressure that made it hard to breathe. He could feel the energy radiating from the spire, a chaotic force that seemed to seep into his skin and bones.
And then he saw it.
At the base of the spire, half-buried in the stone, was another shard—larger than the one he'd found before, its glow fierce and unrelenting.
Kaelen's heart pounded.
Power.
Real power.
For a moment, he hesitated, his thoughts racing. He knew the risks. Shards like this weren't just dangerous—they were cursed. But as his gaze lingered on the shard, he felt the hunger return, sharper and more insistent than before.
He couldn't leave it behind.
Not when it could mean the difference between survival and death.
Kaelen reached out, his fingers brushing against the shard's surface.
The world exploded into light.....