ASHES OF THE SUNDERED STAR

The forge was Kael's confessional.

He swung the hammer—clang—and the sound rang through the smithy like a bell tolling for the dead. Sweat dripped down his scarred arms, sizzling as it hit the molten ore glowing red-hot on the anvil. Solaris's sun had long since set, but the desert winds still carried the day's heat, thick and suffocating, like breathing through wool.

"Faster, boy," his father's ghost muttered.

Kael gritted his teeth. The voice was only in his head, but it was right. The blade he pounded was for Old Harken, the village watchman, and Harken's patience had worn thinner than a rusted nail. The man needed it by dawn to patrol the Emberfall Canyon, where the Voidspawn had been sniffing closer these past weeks.

Clang.

The hammer—Soulbrand, its hilt wrapped in leather blackened by centuries of fire—shuddered in his grip. Kael paused, the forge's orange light flickering across its pitted surface. Sometimes, he swore the damn thing pulsed, like a heartbeat trapped in steel.

"You're imagining things," he growled, wiping ash from his brow.

A child's scream split the night.

Kael froze. The sound came from beyond the smithy's open shutters, where the village of Ashreach clung to the edge of the canyon like lichen to stone. He dropped the hammer and lunged for the door, his boots kicking up puffs of ashen soil.

The desert air smelled wrong.

Not the usual reek of sulfur from the mines, but something sweet and rotting, like spoiled fruit. Above, the moon hung low, its silver light stained crimson by the Dusk Eclipse—a bleeding halo that had grown wider every night for a month.

Another scream. Closer.

Kael sprinted toward the village square, where torches bobbed like fireflies. He didn't bother grabbing a weapon. He never did.

The first Voidspawn stood in the center of the square, its body a shifting mass of shadows and sinew. It had the shape of a man, but its face… Gods. Its face was a hollow void, save for a single eye burning like a coal. Villagers scattered, their shouts dissolving into choked silence as the creature's gaze swept over them.

Old Harken charged it, waving a rusted sickle. "Get back, you filth—!"

The Voidspawn moved faster than thought. A tendril of darkness lashed out, piercing Harken's chest. The watchman gasped, his skin graying as the creature drained him, flesh withering to dust in seconds.

Kael's stomach lurched. He'd seen Voidspawn before—scavengers at the canyon's edge, skulking jackal-like things—but nothing like this.

The creature turned its eye toward him.

"Herald…" it hissed, the word slithering into Kael's skull. "She waits."

Then it changed.

The shadows rippled, bones cracking as it reshaped itself—broader, taller, a hulthing thing with serrated claws and a crown of jagged horns. But it was the face that stopped Kael cold.

Father.

The Voidspawn wore his father's face, the same scar cutting through its left eyebrow, the same stoic frown. Kael's breath hitched. Seven years since the mines collapsed. Seven years since he'd watched those horns tear his father's throat out.

"No," Kael whispered. "You're not him."

The Voidspawn smiled with his father's mouth. "Aren't I?"

Kael stumbled back, his boot catching on a loose stone. The creature lunged, claws raking the air where his chest had been. He rolled, ash stinging his eyes, and scrambled toward the smithy.

Soulbrand. He needed the hammer.

The Voidspawn howled, its voice a chorus of the dead. Kael burst into the smithy, the forge's heat slapping him like a physical blow. Soulbrand lay where he'd dropped it, its head glowing faintly. He seized it—

And the world shifted.

A vision slammed into him: a woman with hair like liquid starlight, chained to a blackened throne. Her eyes were voids, her voice a tempest. "You will kneel, little knight. You will all kneel."

"Kael!"

The vision shattered. A hand yanked him sideways as the Voidspawn's claws splintered the anvil behind him.

His savior was a stranger—a woman with wild auburn hair and eyes the color of storm clouds. She smelled of bitter herbs and burnt sugar. In her free hand, she clutched a vial of glowing green liquid.

"Stop gawking and move!" she snapped, hurling the vial at the Voidspann.

It exploded in a burst of emerald flame, searing the creature's shadow-flesh. The Voidspawn screeched, recoiling as the fire spread, eating through its limbs like acid.

"Lira! Where in the seven hells—?" A man's voice, slick with sarcasm, cut through the chaos.

Another stranger vaulted over the smithy's half-wall, landing in a crouch. He was lean, dressed in a patchwork cloak, twin daggers glinting at his hips. His grin was all teeth. "Took a detour, did we? Lovely."

"Shut up, Tyrus," the woman—Lira—snarled. "The general's here. We need to—"

The Voidspawn's roar drowned her out. The green fire died, its body already regenerating, the shadows knitting back into a new form: a colossal serpent with a hundred human hands for scales.

"Ah," Tyrus said, tilting his head. "That's new."

Kael gripped Soulbrand, its weight steadying him. "Who the hell are you people?"

"The ones saving your hide," Lira said, backing toward the door. "Now run."

The Voidspann struck. Kael swung Soulbrand on instinct, the hammer connecting with the creature's jaw. A shockwave of golden light erupted, blasting the serpent into the smithy's wall. Stones rained down as the roof groaned.

Tyrus whistled. "Where'd you get that pretty toy?"

"None of your business," Kael panted. The hammer throbbed in his grip, warmth spreading up his arm.

Lira grabbed his wrist. Her touch was ice-cold. "It's not done. Look."

The Voidspann stirred, its body melting into a puddle of tar-like ooze. From the darkness rose a dozen smaller forms—jackals, their eyes glowing crimson, their fangs dripping venom.

"Persistent, isn't it?" Tyrus drew his daggers, the blades humming faintly. "I'll distract the pups. You two handle the big boy."

"We are leaving," Lira said, but the thief was already gone, a shadow darting into the night.

The jackals surged. Kael swung Soulbrand in wide arcs, each blow scattering the creatures into smoke, but for every one he shattered, two more emerged from the ooze. Lira flung more vials, her hands a blur, but her stock was dwindling.

"We can't kill it," she hissed. "It's a general—it'll keep adapting. We need fire. Real fire."

Kael glanced at the forge. The molten ore in the crucible still glowed, white-hot and bubbling.

"Get back!" he shouted.

Lira didn't argue. Kael heaved the crucible off its hooks, muscles screaming, and hurled it at the Voidspawn.

The creature's shriek shook the smithy. Molten ore splashed across its tar-like body, igniting it in a pillar of flame. The jackals dissolved into ash, and for a moment, Kael dared to hope.

Then the fire moved.

It coiled upward, twisting into a winged monstrosity with a beak of jagged bone. The Voidspawn general wasn't dead—it had evolved.

"Oh, you've got to be joking," Tyrus said, reappearing with a gash across his cheek. "Lira—the Wastes. Now."

She nodded, yanking a smoke pellet from her belt. "Hold your breath!"

The pellet exploded, filling the smithy with acrid smoke. Kael's eyes burned as Lira dragged him outside, where the villagers' screams had faded into eerie silence. Ashreach was a graveyard—bodies littered the ground, their faces frozen in terror.

The Voidspawn burst through the smithy's roof, its fiery wings lighting the sky.

"Run!" Tyrus shouted.

They fled into the Ashen Wastes, the desert's cursed heart, where the sands were black and the air tasted of death. Behind them, the Voidspawn's cry echoed, a promise of violence.

Kael ran, Soulbrand heavy in his hand, the vision of the star-haired woman seared into his mind.

Herald, the creature had called him.

Whatever that meant, it was hunting him.

And he'd just led it away from Ashreach.