The world smelled of ash.
Cassian Vale opened his eyes to darkness. Smoke coiled in his lungs, thick as tar, clinging to the ruin of his body. He tried to breathe, but the air was fire. His ribs ached, his skin cracked, and the ground beneath him was a bed of scorched bones.
He should not be here. He should not be alive.
A memory surfaced, blurred at the edges—the pyre, the roar of the crowd, the taste of cinders on his tongue. The moment his flesh had melted, his name stripped from history in a spectacle of betrayal. He had been sentenced to burn, his crime carved into the annals of the empire's justice. And yet, here he lay.
Not a man. Not a corpse. Something in between.
Cassian forced his fingers to move, curling them into the soot-covered earth. Every nerve screamed in protest. He pushed himself up, fragments of blackened bone shifting beneath him. The world swayed. His vision blurred. But he endured.
The execution had taken place at the heart of the capital, in the Grand Plaza of Varethis. A place meant to erase men like him. He should have been reduced to nothing but whispers on the tongues of the fearful.
Instead, he remained.
The embers around him pulsed, as if still feeding off his presence. He glanced down at himself, at the charred remnants of his clothing, at the ruined flesh that should have withered away. His veins no longer bled, but glowed—faint, ember-red, like coals waiting to reignite.
Something moved in the distance. A whisper.
Cassian turned sharply, but the plaza was empty. The torches that had once lit his execution now smoldered, casting shadows that flickered like living things. The city slept, unaware that the man they had consigned to the flames still walked.
Another whisper. This time, closer.
He turned his gaze toward the blackened stones of the execution platform. The wind carried voices—soft, insidious, familiar. Names he could not quite grasp. Shadows loomed in the corners of his vision, shifting, watching. The forgotten emperors.
You are not the first.
The voice was not his own, but it lived in his bones.
Cassian staggered forward, dragging himself from the pit of his own grave. Every step left a trail of blackened footprints against the marble. He clenched his fists, ignoring the searing pain as flakes of burned skin fell away, revealing something new beneath.
Something untouched by death.
He had returned, but the empire was not his to reclaim—not yet. The truth lay buried in the ruins of forgotten history, in the silent prayers of a dying kingdom. If he wanted answers, he would have to take them.
He would have to burn his way through the lies.
And this time, he would not burn alone.
The night stretched endlessly as Cassian made his way through the vacant streets of Varethis. Every building loomed like a tombstone, dark windows hollow with the absence of life. He had walked these streets before—once as a celebrated hero, now as a revenant.
A stray gust of wind carried with it the scent of burnt parchment and melted wax. The memories struck him in flashes: the throne room bathed in firelight, the councilors' panicked voices, the brand pressed into his skin. Treason, they had called it. A betrayal that warranted an end in the pyre.
But he had not betrayed the empire. The empire had betrayed him.
His steps took him past the remnants of what had once been his home. The estate had been stripped bare, its banners torn down, its gardens overgrown with neglect. He paused at the threshold, running his fingers over the scorched wood of the door. It opened beneath his touch, revealing an interior cloaked in shadow.
Dust swirled in the faint moonlight filtering through shattered windows. The echoes of laughter, of a life stolen from him, lingered like ghosts in the dark. He stepped inside, his boots stirring up the past.
In the study, he found the remnants of his father's old maps—parchments outlining the structure of the capital, the catacombs beneath the city, the buried histories that the empire had sought to erase. He traced his fingers over them, searching, remembering.
A flicker of movement in the doorway snapped him to attention. A figure stood there, cloaked and still.
"Cassian Vale," the voice rasped, low and familiar. "You should be dead."
Cassian turned, his ember-lit gaze meeting the intruder's. His grip tightened on the dagger at his belt.
"I was," he murmured. "But death has never been kind to me."
A silence stretched between them, thick with unspoken words. Then, the figure stepped forward, the firelight catching the insignia on their cloak—the mark of the Scorched Cult.
Cassian exhaled, steadying himself. If the cult had found him, then others would follow. The Inquisition. The Regent Council. The old enemies who had sentenced him to the flames.
They all thought they had buried him.
They were wrong.
The Dead Do Not Burn.