The iron smelled like burning flesh. Kaelis knew that stench well - had smelled it when the Duskborn burned his village, when they branded his mother before hanging her from the old ash tree. Now, at thirteen years old, he clenched his jaw as the glowing metal pressed against his ribs, refusing to give them the satisfaction of his screams.
"Hold still, Ashforged scum," sneered the black-armored Hush Guard gripping his shoulders. The man's breath reeked of fermented voidspark, the cheap intoxicant nobles fed their slaves. "This brand will teach you your place."
Across the torchlit courtyard, a boy in silver-trimmed robes watched with cold grey eyes. Drachten. The High Inquisitor's son. The one who had stood silent on the hill while Kaelis's world burned.
The branding iron lifted, leaving Kaelis's skin seared with the Crown's twisted sigil - a broken circle within a crown. The guard opened his mouth to speak when—
Kaelis moved.
A sound like shattering glass split the air. The guard's helmet cracked down the middle, though Kaelis's fists never touched it. Blood gushed from the man's nose as he collapsed.
Then came the pain. White-hot fire erupted through Kaelis's veins, his scars glowing amber beneath his skin. Ghostfire - the Ashforged Legacy he didn't know he possessed.
"Chain his soul!" someone shouted.
"Wait."
Drachten stepped forward, his voice cutting through the chaos. At thirteen, he already carried himself like an unsheathed blade. "He's mine." The lie came smooth as silk. "For the Arena."
Kaelis spat at his boots. "I'd rather die."
Drachten leaned close, his whisper barely audible over the murmuring crowd. "You will. Seven thousand times." His palm pressed against Kaelis's branded ribs—and the pain vanished.
For a heartbeat, Kaelis saw something in Drachten's eyes—a flicker of memory that shouldn't exist. A reflection of fire and shattered steel.
Then the guards dragged him away, but not before he glimpsed the fresh scar now splitting Drachten's palm, mirroring his brand in perfect reverse.
---
In a dim healer's hut at the city's edge, Nessa's needle slipped from her fingers as her blood twisted midair, streaking toward the dungeon against gravity.
"Already?" she whispered. The wound she'd been stitching closed without thread, the flesh forming a perfect replica of Kaelis's brand. Her own scars pulsed beneath her sleeves. "They remember too soon this loop."
The door burst open.
"By order of the Iron Judge," boomed the Hush Guard captain, his voidspark rifle humming to life, "all healers are to be branded."
Nessa's fingers closed around her needle. The shadows deepened as candle flames guttered low. "You shouldn't have come tonight."
The guards laughed until their own shadows moved. Dark shapes twisted from the walls, spectral hands forcing rifles against their owners' temples.
Nessa crouched beside the last survivor, her needle glinting. "Tell your judge the First Blade has awakened." She slid steel through his pupil. "And the Temple hungers."
---
Kaelis woke in the dungeon to his brand itching like ants beneath his skin. The shackles had frosted over despite the summer heat.
"Liar's child."
The voice slithered from the shadows. The wall cracked, mortar crumbling as something clattered to the stones—a dagger with a blade blacker than void, its hilt wrapped in breathing skin.
Echo of the First Betrayal. The first dormant weapon.
When Kaelis grasped it, visions tore through him:
Drachten, older, plunging this dagger into Nessa's heart.
Aric laughing as the world burned.
Six other weapons buried like corpses beneath the Temple.
The cell door burst open. Drachten stood framed in torchlight, his scar pulsing amber. "Give that to me," he breathed, "before it remembers you."
Behind him, the dungeon walls bled, crimson forming a map to the second weapon—a greatsword buried beneath the Arena's sands.