Kaelen’s legs buckled. Every tremor of the Ashen Marches, every shifting dune of fine, grey dust, felt like a direct assault on his skeletal frame. His command over the ash, usually an extension of his will, had dissolved into a faint whisper, leaving him hollowed and exposed. Days of relentless trudging, coerced by the Elder Xylos, had drained him utterly.
Ash-energy, a vital current within him, had dwindled to nothing. He had conserved it, hoarded it, but the vast, suffocating waste demanded more than he possessed. The ash beneath his feet no longer answered his silent call.
Never had Kaelen pushed his singular gift to such an extreme. A lifetime of solitude had granted him immense power, but never the need for such brutal endurance. His chest heaved, pulling in the stale, metallic air, each breath a struggle.
Xylos marched ahead, a gaunt silhouette against the perpetually dim horizon, his back a monument to indifference. Not once did the Elder pause, not once did he glance back at the younger Ashwalker, floundering in his wake.
Kaelen had gritted his teeth, refusing to show weakness, refusing to give Xylos the satisfaction. But the pretense shattered. His knees gave out. He sprawled, face-first, into the cool, insidious dust.
Gasps tore from his throat. The ash coated his tongue, gritty and tasteless. A shadow fell over him. He lifted his head, vision swimming, and saw Xylos looking down, a faint, condescending tilt to his ancient head.
“A needless expenditure of my valuable time,” Xylos rasped, voice like grinding stone. “All for a fool such as you.”
Xylos dropped to a crouch beside Kaelen, producing two thin strips of blackened, preserved meat from a pouch. One, he chewed deliberately, his ancient jaws working. The other, he flicked onto the ash beside Kaelen, a silent command to retrieve it.
Kaelen couldn’t move. His limbs felt disconnected, heavy as slag. His throat was a parched wasteland, his mouth a desert within a desert. The thought of chewing, of swallowing such dry fare, was an agony.
Without water, the effort could break him. Xylos knew this. Kaelen could see it in the Elder’s knowing, cruel eyes. Yet, Xylos remained silent, watching, his own chewing slow and deliberate.
“Old Aerthos was a quiet slumber,” Xylos finally spoke, words measured, each one a stone dropped into a still pool. “Weakness was a luxury. Kindness, a common currency. But the Blight changed everything.”
He tore another bite from his jerky. “This world, Kaelen, is a hungry maw. The weak are consumed. Only the strong, the survivors, claim what little remains. Does it burn? Does it ache? Then lie there. Death is a softer bed.”
Kaelen’s jaw clenched, a phantom pain echoing through his exhausted body. He had known many souls in his isolated existence, the few scattered remnants of humanity he had protected. None had ever spoken with such venom, such unvarnished brutality. It felt like a shard of obsidian piercing his chest.
“If ease is what you seek, then surrender. But if you cling to this pathetic existence, if you wish to breathe another breath, then rise. On your own. You imbecile.”
A deep silence fell. Xylos returned to his jerky, ignoring Kaelen, his gaze distant, lost in the ochre haze. Xylos, too, had forgone water. Kaelen noted the precise, slow chewing, the way saliva was coaxed, not wasted.
The pale, dying light of Aerthos’s sun began its swift descent. The ash-wastes would soon plunge into their chilling nocturnal embrace. Without warmth, without shelter, the cold promised a swift, silent end.
Kaelen knew. He wouldn’t die. Couldn’t. He dragged himself forward, a worm wriggling through the dust, inch by agonizing inch.
His fingers scraped against the ash, inching closer to the discarded jerky. Finally, his hand closed around it. He opened his mouth, shoving the fibrous strip past his cracked lips. Ash mingled with the meat, but he cared nothing for the grit. He chewed, slow, painful, his throat a burning pipe.
Swallowing felt like tearing flesh. But the morsel, small as it was, ignited a flicker. A faint warmth spread through his core. A spark. A whisper of ash-energy stirred within.
Kaelen pushed himself up, resting on his elbows, then to a sitting position. Xylos tossed another strip of jerky. Kaelen caught it, chewing without a word of thanks, the faint shame of his earlier collapse a bitter taste.
Slowly, painstakingly, vitality seeped back into his bones. A trickle of ash-energy returned, a shallow stream after a devastating drought.
Xylos spoke, his gaze piercing, as if seeing the flow of ash-energy within Kaelen’s very veins. “Body and Ash-Sense are one. Only in a vessel of hardened will can the ash flow freely. To master your gift, you must master the vessel. Never cease the forging.”
Kaelen nodded, a slight, almost imperceptible dip of his head. He felt it. Deep within his core. His attempts to gather ash-energy while prostrate, while utterly spent, had yielded nothing. The ash remained inert. Only when some physical strength returned, fueled by the crude sustenance, did his inherent power begin to coalesce.
With his ash-energy climbing, survival now felt less like a desperate prayer, more like a fragile possibility. He breathed, a long, shuddering sigh. The world, having teetered on the precipice of oblivion, now seemed to possess a renewed, stark beauty.
Above, the deepening twilight bled into a vast expanse of dark, velvet sky. Countless stars, piercing chips of cold fire, dusted the firmament. A breath-taking, desolate grandeur. Back in the ruined settlements, he had never spared them a thought, too burdened by the daily struggle. Now, after his dance with death, they resonated with a profound, melancholic beauty.
“They remember a time before the Ash.” Xylos’s voice, rough and sudden, cut through the quiet contemplation. Kaelen startled. He looked around. Only the two of them, stark figures in the boundless ash. No one else, not even a phantom echo of a friend.
Kaelen turned to Xylos, who sat, cross-legged, an ancient, blackened shard of obsidian resting before him. Its facets caught the faint starlight, gleaming with a cold, inner fire. Xylos was speaking to it.
*Is he mad? Or is that shard…alive?*
Conversing with a piece of sharpened rock in the depths of the desolate wastes seemed far beyond the bounds of sanity. Xylos, however, seemed entirely oblivious to Kaelen’s bewildered gaze, or simply indifferent.
“Yes, the Scarred Peaks,” Xylos murmured to the obsidian. “A good place. The Apex Lurker still resides there, no doubt.” He paused, listening. “Indeed. My memory grows dull. A debt owed, old friend.”
Finishing his strange communion, Xylos’s gaze flickered to Kaelen. A chill, inexplicable and profound, tightened Kaelen’s chest. The night deepened, and with it, the cold intensified. Despite his immense power, Kaelen was not immune to the biting chill of the Ashen Marches.
He shivered, sleepless, throughout the long, brutal night. Xylos, in stark contrast, slept in serene comfort, a relaxed, almost serene posture amidst the encroaching frost. The Elder’s calm slumber sparked a surge of frustrated, helpless anger within Kaelen.
The first, bruised light of dawn eventually stained the horizon. Xylos stirred, rising with an easy grace. His first action: he wrung his travel cloak, collecting the dew that had condensed on the fabric, drinking it in measured sips.
It clicked. A flash of insight. Kaelen understood why Xylos had spread his cloak so deliberately, so widely, before sleeping. He quickly mimicked the action, wringing his own garment. The collected moisture was meager, a pitiful few drops compared to Xylos’s collected bounty.
*Knowledge. A simple trick, yet profound.*
A surge of bitter resentment toward Xylos, unwarranted perhaps, but potent, twisted in Kaelen’s gut. He realized then: every gesture, every habit of the Elder, was a finely honed mechanism of survival. Even the smallest action. Survival was Xylos’s very essence.
*I must learn. Everything. Every flicker of his knowing.*
Kaelen vowed, a silent, desperate promise. By mimicking the Elder, by observing every detail, he would not only survive but grow. One day, he might even surpass him.
---
Kaelen wrung every last drop of moisture from his clothes. The paltry sips only partially quelled his burning thirst, but it was enough to dull the edge.
Xylos was already moving, a distant figure in the early light. “We proceed.”
Kaelen nodded, knowing any question about their destination would be met with silence or scorn. He had spent only a single day under Xylos’s harsh tutelage, yet the Elder’s nature was already starkly clear. Utterly self-absorbed, relentlessly unkind. He offered no aid, extended no consideration.
Xylos had demanded Kaelen’s presence, but implicitly commanded Kaelen to ensure his own survival. To endure this man, Kaelen needed to be sharper, quicker.
He ran, ash-energy now fully restored, catching up to the Elder. Yesterday’s near-fatal exhaustion had etched the importance of ash-energy management into his very bones. Kaelen unleashed the skill he had, in desperation, forged yesterday.
*Ash-Stride.* His feet skimmed the surface, riding the manipulated dust, each step covering ground with impossible ease, leaving barely a ripple.
*If only there were a way to replenish ash-energy as swiftly as I deplete it.*
Xylos surely knew. But Kaelen knew better than to ask. He would have to discover it himself, as he had always done.
As Kaelen propelled himself across the wastes with Ash-Stride, his mind wrestled with the problem, seeking an answer. The sun, though still climbing, beat down with brutal intensity, reflecting off the pale ash. The ground radiated a scorching heat, a slow, insidious burn through his worn boots.
He gritted his teeth. Endured. With endurance came an innate patience, a deeper connection. His Ash-Stride grew smoother, more economical, a dance with the dust rather than a struggle against it.
The sun began its weary descent once more before Xylos finally halted. Kaelen gasped, dropping to the ash, utterly spent. But his ash-energy reserves remained, a testament to his newfound efficiency.
Physical exhaustion, however, was a heavy cloak. He felt his eyelids droop, his muscles screaming. He forced himself upright. A strip of jerky arced through the air. Kaelen caught it. No crawling this time.
He tore the meat into small pieces, chewing slowly, meticulously, allowing his saliva to break down each morsel. He had to draw out the process, make it last. He glanced at Xylos, halfway through his own jerky, who had barely consumed a third of his. A familiar sense of inadequacy, a bitter challenge, tightened Kaelen’s lips.
He chewed slower. So slow that a single piece lasted nearly thirty minutes. Still, his stomach rumbled, a hollow ache. He was still growing, still needing more. One piece was a cruel tease.
Asking Xylos for more was unthinkable. Pride, a stubborn ember in the desolation of his being, forbade it. Kaelen resolved to sleep on an empty stomach.
But first, preparations. He peeled off his tattered outer tunic, spreading it carefully on the ash. Tomorrow’s dew, however meager, would be vital.
Next, shelter. The cold bite of the ash-waste nights was trivial to Xylos, with his unknown, formidable powers. For Kaelen, it was a matter of life and death. His solution: an ash-bunker.
He still had a decent reserve of ash-energy. He exerted his will. The fine dust rippled, shifting, responding. A pit, deep enough for one, began to form. He lowered himself into the hollow.
With another surge of will, he drew the ash back over him, sealing the pit. Ordinarily, the dry, incoherent dust would collapse immediately. But Kaelen willed it to cohere, to bind, to form a solid, arched roof. Ash-energy pulsed, holding it firm.
The energy consumption was brief, only during the construction. Once formed, the bunker held, a warm, silent tomb. Kaelen breathed a sigh of relief. Last night’s restless, shivering vigil felt like a distant nightmare. Tonight, he would find solace.
A fleeting thought of Xylos, exposed to the elements, flickered through his mind. Should he offer the Elder a space within? Kaelen quickly dismissed it. Xylos would never accept. If the cold proved too much, Xylos would find his own solution.
With that, Kaelen drifted into sleep, the insulated warmth of the bunker a stark contrast to the rapidly plummeting temperatures outside.
---
An odd sensation jolted Kaelen awake. A faint vibration through the ash. He rose, pressing his hand against the floor of his bunker. The tremor grew stronger, a slow, rhythmic thudding.
He pushed through the ash-seal, emerging into the pre-dawn darkness. Xylos was already standing, an almost ethereal presence in the deepening gloom. His obsidian shard, the Shadowshard, was planted point-down into the ash before him, his gaze fixed on the impenetrable blackness.
Kaelen followed his line of sight. Nothing. The hour before dawn was the deepest black, obscuring all. But that was for ordinary eyes. Xylos’s vision, Kaelen knew, saw beyond the veil.
*Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!* The vibrations intensified, now distinctly audible.
Kaelen’s pupils dilated, trying to pierce the gloom. *Dozens, no… hundreds. At least.*
“Survive on your own, you idiot! Hehe!” Xylos’s voice cracked, a manic glee rippling through his words. His face, visible only as a faint, crazed rictus in the starlight, seemed alive with a strange, dark excitement. Like a child anticipating a spectacular, destructive display.
Kaelen felt no such mirth. The Elder’s warning was not an idle threat. Xylos would offer no aid. The realization solidified Kaelen’s resolve, hardening it to iron.
*I will survive. I must.*
The thudding grew into a thunderous roar. Shapes began to emerge from the black, indistinct at first, then coalescing into predatory forms. Hundreds of pairs of glowing, malevolent eyes, burning embers in the darkness, surged towards them.
“Ash-Strider Wolves,” Xylos whispered, a feral smile splitting his face. “A pack.”