A whisper of displaced grit. Barely a sound, yet it snagged Kaelen from the shallow sleep that often felt more like a prolonged surrender to the Cinderlands’ quiet. Night’s chill had settled deep into the ash-packed walls of the crude shelter. Eyes opened, unfocused, then sharpened. Kaelen lay utterly still, a shadow within shadows, breath held. The heavy, ash-dusted plank door at the end of the small space felt like a predatory gaze. Not much larger than a grave, the room offered no escape but that single, groaning portal. No windows pierced the packed ash walls. Every particle of the Cinderlands outside felt acutely present, pressing in. Click. Click. A slow, grating turn of the door’s rough iron handle. Though Kaelen had anticipated it, the sound still clawed at the quiet, amplified in the confined space. A dull, sickening grind of metal against metal. Clunk. The lock yielded. The door sagged inward, a sliver of deeper gloom peering into Kaelen’s meager sanctuary. A bulky silhouette filled the gap, a glint of scavenged metal in a gloved hand – a knife, long and cruel. Unaccustomed to the deeper darkness inside, the intruder edged forward, tentative steps scuffing the ash floor. Kaelen remained motionless, a statue carved from shadow, every muscle taut, every nerve screaming silence. The man took another step, closer now. His breath, a shallow rasp, filled the air. Crack! A sharp report, barely audible over the man’s ragged inhale. Something beneath his boot splintered – a dried shard of petrified root, positioned just so beneath a thin veneer of ash. It was a trigger. “Ugh!” A choked cry. A blur of movement as a compacted ash-shard, honed and weighted by Kaelen’s will, launched from its hidden cavity in the floor. It found purchase with a wet thud, sinking into the man’s side. He reeled, stumbling back, clutching the wound. “What in the…?” His voice was a guttural growl, pain lacing it. Kaelen moved then, a silent, ash-infused blur. A coiled spring unlatching. Before the man could fully recover, Kaelen surged across the small room, a whisper of disturbed ash marking their passage. With a powerful thrust, Kaelen slammed into the man’s chest, pinning him against the ash-crusted wall. The man grunted, winded. Kaelen’s hand snatched his dropped knife, its weight familiar, and pressed the cold steel to his throat. Terror flared in the man’s eyes, wide and disbelieving. “You… little ghost!” “Valer,” Kaelen’s voice was a low rasp, rough with disuse, “thought you’d be a bit smarter than to try to carve up your neighbors.” The name tasted like ash on the tongue. Valer lived in the adjacent, equally desolate hovel, a silent, grasping presence. Last night, Valer had lingered a little too long, his eyes too sharp when Kaelen had briefly held the Cinder-Heart Shard to the dying light – a foolish mistake, born of momentary wonder. A flick of Kaelen’s wrist, the knife point digging deeper into Valer’s windpipe. “Care to explain why you’re breaking into my, shall we say, private accommodation?” “Agh! Don’t you know who my brother is? He’s Roric! The Ash-Scourge!” Valer sputtered, fear battling with a desperate bravado. Kaelen’s grip tightened. “Funny. I’d think the brother of an Ash-Scourge wouldn’t be crawling on his belly for a stray Cinder-Heart Shard.” The words were flat, devoid of emotion, yet carried the weight of a silent threat. “It’s true! He’s in Veilhaven, on some mission. I’m just… waiting.” Valer’s eyes darted frantically. “Then wait quietly,” Kaelen countered, the knife a cold promise against his skin. “Don’t go preying on those who live in the dust alongside you.” “Prey? That shard! It was glowing, you fool! Enough to buy passage to the Fallow Peaks, or food for a cycle!” Valer’s voice rose, desperation making him careless. “You expect me to just leave it?” Kaelen’s jaw tightened. The Cinder-Heart Shard, a small, pulsing crimson fragment, had been a rare find, a sliver of the world’s lost magic. A prize too valuable to risk in the desolate, lawless Ash-Patches. The Ash-Patches, the sprawling, temporary settlements clinging to the edges of the Bleeding Wastes, were not a place for rules. They were a place where the weak were ground into dust, and the strong took what they pleased. Kaelen knew this intimately. Born and raised in the shifting sands, survival was the only creed. For a moment, Kaelen considered Valer, the desperate glint in his eye. Roric, the Ash-Scourge, was a name that commanded fear even among the most hardened Dust-Walkers. If Valer spoke truth, killing him here would invite a terrible vengeance. Then, a glint of malicious cunning stole into Valer’s eyes. From a hidden sheath on his forearm, a smaller, wicked blade emerged. “Die, you ash-cursed whelp!” Valer roared, twisting violently, the hidden dagger arcing towards Kaelen’s stomach. Kaelen anticipated the move, a primal instinct honed by years of scraping by. A swift pivot, a blur of ash-infused movement, and the blade grazed empty air. Valer pressed his attack, eyes burning with a sudden, frenzied hatred. He lunged, dagger flashing, intending to silence Kaelen permanently and claim the shard. “Urgh!” Kaelen met the assault, ash swirling around their feet, thickening the air, clouding Valer’s vision. A desperate dance in the confined space. Kaelen ducked under a wild swing, pushing Valer back against the wall, striking with the larger knife held reverse-grip. Plop! A sickening sound of flesh tearing, bone scraping. Valer’s cry choked off, replaced by a bubbling gasp. The scavenged blade, now Kaelen’s, was buried deep in his chest. Valer stared, eyes wide with disbelief, at Kaelen, then at the hilt protruding from his body. His limbs began to tremble, and then, with a wet shudder, he crumpled to the ash-strewn floor, breath departing in a ragged wheeze. “Damn it.” Kaelen fell back against the opposite wall, heart hammering, lungs burning. The acrid scent of fear and spilled blood hung heavy in the stale air. This was the first. The first time the cycle of survival had truly demanded a life. The eerie weight of the act settled, a cold, crushing presence. It was inevitable, Kaelen knew. To survive in the Ash-Patches meant facing this moment eventually. But not here. Not now. Not like this. Kaelen snapped back to the stark reality. If Valer’s boast about Roric, the Ash-Scourge, was true, lingering was an invitation to annihilation. A body could not be simply vanished in this pervasive dust; traces always remained. Better to leave it and disappear, utterly. Moving with a practiced urgency, Kaelen secured the plank door from the outside, the clunk of the makeshift lock echoing in the pre-dawn quiet. The Ash-Patch beyond was a tangle of leaning hovels, salvaged metal, and tattered canvas, a labyrinthine sprawl reminiscent of a scavenged insect hive. Kaelen melted into the maze of alleys, drawing the ash around them like a second skin, obscuring tracks, letting the wind carry away any lingering scent. --- “Ash-Scourge. A B-Rank, damn it all.” Kaelen’s muttered words were lost in the groan and rattle of the fortified dust-crawler. The vehicle, a hulking behemoth of riveted metal plates, lumbered across the endless expanse of the Ash-Sea, red dust boiling in its wake. The information, gleaned from hushed whispers and terrified glances at the departure point, had been a cold blow. Roric, the brother of the grasping fool Kaelen had killed, was indeed the infamous Ash-Scourge, a powerful Dust-Caller with a reputation for merciless retribution. An Awakened One of the highest order. An Ash-Scourge with Lightning Magic, rumors said. A fearsome, destructive force. Even a low-rank Dust-Walker would be a death sentence; Roric was a force of nature. In the great Citadel of Ironwood, a B-rank Awakened One was practically royalty. For Kaelen, a simple Ash Weaver, to have crossed such a line… Roric cared little that his brother had been a thief. Blood for blood, especially in the Cinderlands. He had already begun sifting through the Ash-Patch, his fury a palpable tremor in the very dust. Kaelen had felt it, a distant, ominous hum that drove them to this desperate flight. “Today, I run. But Roric, you won’t forget this. Nor will I.” Kaelen’s voice was a promise whispered into the wind, a spark of grim resolve burning amidst the desolation. The dust-crawler was the only path out. It was bound for the Deep Ash Veins, a perilous mining operation far beyond the relative safety of the Ash-Patches. Kaelen had never imagined they would willingly choose this road. Outside the fleeting glimmer of the Veilhaven perimeter, the Bleeding Wastes stretched, an ochre-red expanse of perpetual twilight. Not a single sprout broke the endless, suffocating monotony. All manner of horrors lurked beneath the dust: monstrous sandworms, armored dust-beetles, and marauding gangs of scavengers, preying on any who dared brave the wastes. Near the Citadel of Ironwood, the beasts were fewer, their presence somehow curtailed. A false sense of security, but enough to keep the desperate clinging to its fringes. But with Roric on their trail, even that thin shield had evaporated. “If only I had Awakened fully…” The thought was a bitter, familiar taste. Decades ago, Aethel had choked on its own magic, becoming the Cinderlands. Ninety percent of life had perished. The survivors, a mere fraction, scraped by, some blessed (or cursed) with innate abilities – the Awakened Ones. They were the new rulers, the architects of whatever fractured order remained. Even a low-rank Awakened One commanded respect, privilege, protection. Kaelen was merely an Ash Weaver, a manipulator of dust, mistaken often for a harbinger of doom. Valer’s death, Kaelen’s escape – it meant nothing to the world at large. Just another wisp of ash in the wind. The Deep Ash Veins, seventy kilometers into the treacherous Ash-Sea, were a brutal destination. They yielded the lifeblood of Veilhaven: raw Cinder-Heart, fueling the city’s faltering power. But the mining was back-breaking, deadly work. Tunnels collapsed, poisonous gases seeped, and the wastes claimed miners relentlessly. Labor was always scarce. Veilhaven asked no questions, demanded no names, for anyone willing to ride the dust-crawler to the mines. A convenient hole to vanish into. ‘I will survive the Deep Ash Veins,’ Kaelen swore, staring out at the swirling dust, ‘and I will come back for Roric.’ The dust-crawler, a metallic coffin on wheels, slowly filled with its cargo of desperate souls. Mostly burly, hardened men, their faces etched with the Cinderlands’ unforgiving hand. “Hey, kid! Headed to the Veins too?” A man beside Kaelen, thick-necked and scarred, grunted, his gaze lingering a moment too long. Kaelen merely grunted in response, a noncommittal sound. “Got a fierce look, eh? Still, watch yourself in the mines.” His voice dropped, a predatory undertone. “Lots of hungry eyes in those tunnels. Especially for a little thing like you.” He scanned Kaelen from head to toe, a leer spreading across his ash-dusted face. Kaelen felt the familiar prickle of revulsion, the tightening in their stomach. The Ash-Patches had been full of such men, their lust for soft flesh as relentless as the dust winds. Kaelen’s lean frame, their quiet grace, had always drawn unwanted attention. Only a quick wit and a dangerous glint in the eye had kept them safe, until now. A tremor ran through Kaelen’s hands, not of fear, but of an old, familiar anger. The dust around Kaelen’s boots stirred, barely perceptible, a silent warning only Kaelen could feel, an extension of their will. A silent promise that this time, no one would make the same mistake Valer had.

The First Sifting