Ash clung to Kaelen’s breath, a familiar taste of rust and decay. Days blurred into a grey procession across the Ashen Marches. He moved with an efficiency born of necessity, each step measured, each breath controlled. His new Ash-Shroud, born from the leviathan’s Blight-Heart, felt like a second skin, a muted extension of his will against the biting air.
Xylos marched ahead. The elder's form, a hunched silhouette against the eternal twilight, never faltered. No wasted motion, no glance back. His pace was relentless, a grim testament to some unseen destination. Kaelen had walked with him since the Blight-Spring had faded, yet the elder remained an enigma, a pillar of hardened mystery.
He had offered no words of his past, no hint of his purpose. Xylos simply moved, propelled by a silent, unwavering will. His presence was a stark counterpoint to Kaelen’s solitude, a heavy silence that pressed in from the desolate expanse.
Only when the ash-winds grew too fierce for travel, forcing them to seek shelter in a shallow depression, did Xylos break his grim vigil. He would set his axe, Grave-Cleaver, upright in the ash beside him. Kaelen watched, hidden by the deepening gloom, as Xylos’s gnarled fingers traced the weapon’s pommel.
Initially, Kaelen dismissed it as the madness of the Blight-touched, a symptom of long years spent in the wastes. A man conversing with a piece of steel was a man losing his grasp. But the daily ritual persisted. Xylos’s hard gaze softened, a flicker of something ancient and raw igniting in his eyes as he leaned close to the axe. A faint, almost imperceptible hum sometimes seemed to emanate from the blade, a silent answer to Xylos’s unheard whispers.
A profound sadness etched itself onto Xylos’s face during these moments, a brief fracturing of his usual stern mask. Then, as the light of the false dawn began to spread its grey pallor, the mask would reform. His eyes would regain their sharp, furious intensity, capable of burning holes through the very ash.
Kaelen chewed on a piece of preserved blight-moss, its earthy taste a dull comfort. His body had undergone a profound shift after consuming the leviathan’s Blight-Heart. Muscles now corded beneath his skin, lean and resilient. Fatigue, once a constant companion, now seemed a distant memory. He could walk for endless cycles, the arduous trek a mere extension of his will.
He knew this newfound endurance was Xylos's doing. Without the elder’s brutal intervention, Kaelen would have fallen to the Ash Leviathan. He wouldn’t have known of the Blight-Heart’s potency. It raised a thousand questions, unasked, unspoken.
‘Who is this man? What drives him through these dead lands? And why am I here, following him into nothingness?’
The ash-moss felt like grit against his teeth. He swallowed, his throat dry. From a pouch crafted from leviathan scales, thin and surprisingly supple, Kaelen drew a meager mouthful of purified water. He had filled it at the fleeting Blight-Spring. Each drop was a precious commodity, a taste of life in a world of decay.
He re-secured the pouch. A tremor, faint yet distinct, ran through the ash beneath his feet. His enhanced senses, sharper than ever before, picked up a ripple. Not the wind, not a settling dune. Movement.
Kaelen stilled, his head cocked. The tremors expanded, originating from several points. Ten distinct contacts, closing in. He felt their presence within a ten-meter radius, a low, guttural vibration through the grey earth.
He found no joy in this heightened perception. Only a sharpening of his resolve.
Slowly, deliberately, they emerged. Obsidian-plated shells gleamed dully in the perpetual gloom, their surfaces like polished night. Each creature stood taller than Kaelen, six segmented legs propelling them forward. Mandibles, sharp as splintered bone, clicked in the suffocating air, splitting into two vicious pincers. A pair of segmented antennae twitched, sampling the blighted air.
Ash-Drones. He had seen their remnants, shattered husks littering ancient battlefields. They moved in packs, predators of the deep ash, known for their relentless ferocity. A single drone appearing meant a nest, a subterranean labyrinth teeming with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of their kind.
Their true terror lay in their venom. A bite from an Ash-Drone did not kill quickly. It immobilized. The mind, however, remained lucid, aware. Victims endured the horrific sensation of being consumed alive, unable to move, unable to scream. Tales whispered in the sparse, isolated settlements spoke of choosing self-destruction over such a fate.
Mandibles clacked, a chilling rattle. They encircled Kaelen, their mineral-like eyes reflecting the bleak sky. Kaelen raised a hand, ash swirling at his command. A concentrated burst, an Ash-Lance, surged forward, striking the head of the nearest drone.
The impact sent the creature reeling, a metallic screech echoing in the air. But its head remained intact. Its obsidian carapace, resilient as a hardened meteor, had shrugged off the blow. Kaelen felt a prickle of unease. These were tougher than anything he had faced before.
Enraged, the Ash-Drone lunged. Kaelen launched another Ash-Lance, then another, striking the same point. The creature staggered again. Kaelen saw his error. Dispersed attacks would do nothing.
He retreated a step, focusing his will, channeling his ash manipulation. A single, powerful Ash-Lance, dense as forged steel, erupted from his palm. It slammed into the drone’s head, and this time, with a wet, shattering crack, the carapace fractured. Ichor, thick and black, sprayed into the ash. The drone collapsed, its legs twitching.
Kaelen narrowed his eyes, a grim satisfaction hardening his jaw. He unleashed the Ash-Lance in rapid succession. Each strike, focused and brutal, caused an Ash-Drone’s head to explode, a sickening symphony of chitin and ichor. His mastery over the ash had grown, bridging the gap between his developing power and the drones’ formidable defenses.
He felt a surge of confidence. The drones, for all their armor, were falling.
Then, one of the remaining drones emitted a high-frequency shriek, a sound that vibrated through Kaelen’s very bones. It wasn't a cry of aggression. It was raw terror, an urgent plea.
Kaelen didn’t hesitate. Another Ash-Lance obliterated the shrieking drone. Three remained. He had to finish this, catch Xylos.
His senses screamed. Hundreds. An unimaginable multitude of vibrations pulsed through the ash. Before Kaelen could even process the sheer scale, the ground around him erupted.
Obsidian heads thrust from the ash, mandibles clicking, antennae twitching. An endless wave of Ash-Drones, their numbers overwhelming. They had answered the call.
Kaelen felt a cold dread. The shriek hadn’t been an alarm for him. It had been a summons for them.
A cacophony of chittering filled the air. They charged, a tide of clicking chitin and venomous intent. Kaelen moved. An Ash-Stride carried him clear of snapping pincers, leaving a cloud of disturbed ash in his wake. He retaliated with an Ash-Lance, blowing apart the drone closest to him. Black ichor splattered his Ash-Shroud, its pungent odor thick.
The other drones, spurred by the fresh kill, attacked with renewed savagery. Kaelen fought, a silent scream of defiance in his heart. He dodged, weaved, and blasted, his ash manipulation pushed to its limits.
On a high, windswept dune, Xylos sat. His Grave-Cleaver rested upright beside him, its ancient metal dully reflecting the ash-grey sky. He watched Kaelen’s desperate struggle, an unreadable expression on his scarred face.
“Ash-Drones,” Xylos murmured, his voice a low rasp against the wind, “flock when one of their own is attacked.”
He observed Kaelen's movements, the Ash-Lances tearing through drone after drone. The boy was powerful, surprisingly so. But his approach was... predictable.
“It is not enough. Not nearly enough.”
Kaelen possessed a rare gift, the Ashwalker’s command, unparalleled in this blighted world. Yet, he understood only a fraction of its true utility. Its depth, its potential, remained largely undiscovered. Such things could not be taught from a scroll. They had to be forged in the crucible of experience.
The world outside, what little remained of its order, categorized abilities, standardized growth. Martial, Arcane, D-rank, S-rank. A false hierarchy, a safe path that stifled true potential. They groomed their Awakened to fit molds, not to break them.
True power, true understanding, came only when one collided with the unforgiving edges of death. Only when flaws became glaring and survival hinged on innovation, on pushing past the perceived limits of skill. Only then could one truly grow. This, Xylos knew, was the only way.
But the remnants of Neo-Aerthos, safe in their shielded enclaves, scoffed at his methods. Too slow, they declared. Inefficient.
“Foolish, myopic children,” Xylos gritted, his voice thick with contempt. “So consumed by their petty squabbles, they fail to see the rot at the world’s heart.”
A hundred years. A century had passed since the Great Blight had scoured Aerthos, burying civilization, twisting the fertile lands into this toxic desolation. Xylos was one of the few who remembered. He had witnessed the horror, the despair, the frantic, futile struggles.
He remembered watching, helpless, as his family became prey, their lives extinguished in the blink of an eye. The raw, guttural anger never faded. It had festered, burning in his gut, a constant companion.
Some had told him to forgive himself. To move on. How could he? The image of his wife, consumed by the Blight, was as vivid now as it had been a hundred years ago. He was the greatest fool of them all, he knew.
A mad gleam in his eyes, Xylos watched Kaelen fight. The boy ducked with an Ash-Stride, retaliated with an Ash-Lance. Standardized. Predictable. It wouldn't be enough.
“Prove your worth,” Xylos snarled, a silent command carried on the ash-wind, “or drown in this ash, you idiot.”