Chapter 1: When the Heavens Bled

  The sky did not thunder.

  It split.

  Arin Vale was alone in the wheatfields when the heavens opened like a wound. The wind had been gentle moments before, brushing gold across the crops in soft waves. Then the air turned cold—wrongly cold. The kind of cold that did not belong to seasons.

  The insects stopped first.

  Their endless chorus cut off mid-note.

  The wind followed.

  Silence swallowed the land.

  Arin felt it in his bones before he saw it. A pressure above him. A weight pressing down on the world.

  He looked up.

  A thin red line tore across the sky from horizon to horizon. It did not flash like lightning. It widened slowly, deliberately, as if something enormous were carving through the heavens with invisible claws.

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  Crimson light spilled through the fracture.

  The earth trembled.

  Arin dropped to his knees.

  Then came the screaming.

  Thousands of voices. Layered. Overlapping. Howling in agony, rage, despair. The sound didn’t echo from the sky.

  It came from everywhere.

  From the soil.

  From the air.

  From inside his skull.

  He clutched his ears, but the noise only grew louder—

  And then it stopped.

  Instantly.

  The red tear shimmered.

  Something stepped out of the wheat.

  It looked like a man made of mist and fractured moonlight. Its body flickered, incomplete, as if it struggled to remain whole. Hollow darkness filled its eyes.

  It was not alive.

  But it was not dead.

  It drifted toward him without touching the ground.

  Arin could not move.

  The spirit stopped before him.

  Its mouth opened.

  No sound came.

  Instead, images slammed into his mind—

  Mountains burning.

  Chains snapping.

  A crown forged from ash and bone.

  A creature vast and horned rising from beneath stone.

  The spirit raised one trembling hand and pointed north.

  Toward the Black Spine Peaks.

  Then its form shattered into silver threads and dissolved.

  The red wound in the sky sealed.

  The wind returned.

  The insects resumed their song.

  Everything looked normal.

  Nothing was.

  Arin slowly stood.

  And on his wrist—

  A mark burned into his skin.

  A jagged crack.

  As if the sky had left its scar on him.

  Far beneath the northern mountains, something ancient stirred.

  Kael’Zareth felt the seal weaken.

  And it smiled.