Kaelen awoke to the rasp of fine ash against the cracked windowpane. Dawn had painted the distant obsidian dunes in hues of bruised violet and burning ochre, a brutal beauty bleeding through the grime-streaked glass. His breath misted briefly in the frigid air of the shared miner's lodge, now eerily vacant. Only his cot remained occupied. A profound rest had claimed him. Not the heavy, dreamless slumber of exhaustion, but a deep, vital calm that resonated through bone and spirit. It was the whisper of his Cinder-Mark, the anomaly hidden beneath his skin, drawing strength from the very desolation outside. Every atom of his being hummed with an unfamiliar, vibrant energy, a silent testament to the bond he shared with the Sundered Earth. No weariness clung to him, only a sharpened readiness. Slowly, Kaelen rose. His muscles unwound, limber and responsive. He felt the minute vibrations of the Ashfall Dominion through the rough timber floor, a constant, low thrumming that others ignored or simply didn't perceive. He was a part of it, and it, a part of him. --- Daylight, raw and unfiltered, clawed its way across the barren landscape. Even this early, the solar flare seemed to scorch the air, a white-hot gaze from a sky the color of stale ash. Once, such intensity would have driven Kaelen to seek shelter, to shield his skin. Now, he simply met it, his body unburdened by the sun’s fury. This too, was a facet of his unique inheritance. Footfalls crunched on packed cinder as Kaelen stepped out, leaving the lodge's oppressive silence behind. Onyxfall Outpost, though a scar on the vastness of the Ashfall, held a stark grandeur. Dusty shacks leaned against one another, fortified with scavenged metal and petrified timber. The settlement was a knot of desperation and resilience, a vital artery for the Obsidian Shard Mines. Caravans, their colossal dust-sailers often visible as distant silhouettes on the horizon, halted here, trading goods from the outer settlements for supplies that could only be found near the deepest veins of the Ashfall. Wares from distant, less-ruined lands mingled with the grit and despair of the Outpost. Adventurers, those foolhardy souls chasing rumors of forgotten relics in the perilous Ashfall, also passed through, stocking their gear before venturing into the deeper, more dangerous tunnels. Consequently, a small, chaotic market had sprouted at the Outpost’s heart. ‘First, I must understand this place,’ Kaelen thought, his gaze sweeping over the crude stalls. Information gleaned from the desperate whispers of miners was one thing. Witnessing its stark reality was another entirely. His life in the desolate wastes had taught him to trust only what his own eyes could confirm, what his own senses could decipher. Few figures moved through the market's meager lanes. The hour was early, and the miners, those shackled to the depths, had not yet emerged. Their shifts stretched for days, sometimes weeks, deep within the Obsidian Shard Mines. They carried provisions, ate and slept in the suffocating dark, for the journey in and out was a waste of precious, brutal time. A wretched existence. Kaelen had heard the tales, found them almost unbelievable. His hidden power, his Cinder-Mark, offered a different path, a desperate hope. He would hone it, sharpen it, or else, he knew, he would share their fate. That, he would prevent. A pang in his gut reminded him of his hunger. He hadn't truly eaten since the meager rations of yesterday. Food, first. --- Seeking sustenance, Kaelen navigated the labyrinthine alleys of the market. Few proper eateries existed here, but a savory scent, rich and oily, drew him. At the rear of a row of ramshackle stalls, an old man hunched over a crackling fire, skewers of meat sizzling on a griddle fashioned from repurposed sheet metal. A figure of bone and sinew, the old man’s face was a map of deep creases, etched by sun and hardship. A sparse, ash-white beard clung to his chin, and spectacles, one lens spiderwebbed with cracks, perched precariously on his nose. Age was difficult to discern in this world; some men withered at thirty, others clung to life with an almost petrified defiance. This man seemed to embody the latter. Kaelen settled onto a worn crate before the stall. His voice, usually a low rumble, was soft against the sizzle. “What kind of meat is this?” “Best not to ask, boy. Best just to eat,” the old man rasped, his gaze sharp through the broken glass. A thin, knowing smile played on his lips. Kaelen nodded. In a world where livestock was a ghost of memory, and even lab-grown meat a luxury of distant Solara cities, one learned not to interrogate providence. In the deepest ash-wastes, scavenged carrion and the tougher desert creatures were often the only sustenance. He plucked a skewer, the roasted meat dark and glistening, and bit into it. A burst of rich, gamey flavor, unfamiliar but potent, filled his mouth. --- Old man Dust watched Kaelen through his fractured lenses. “A new face, eh? Just arrived?” “Yesterday. The meat is… surprisingly good.” Kaelen chewed slowly, absorbing the taste. “Ah, the survivor from the dust-wyrm ambush. News travels faster than a gale through the canyons here.” Kaelen felt a prickle of annoyance. “So quickly?” “Nothing stays hidden in Onyxfall, save perhaps the color of a man’s last breath. By tomorrow, even the dust-wyrms will know your name. And your luck.” A dry chuckle rattled from the old man’s chest. “A lucky man with no mark, they'll say. And luck, boy, makes you a target.” Kaelen's jaw tightened. He held no such mark, not that anyone knew. His Cinder-Mark was a secret, a burden, and his true strength. “Be wary, boy,” Old man Dust continued, his voice losing its jocular edge. “I don’t know why you chose this place, but it is no refuge. It swallows men whole.” “A refuge? No. I came to make my own way.” “Heh. ‘Make your own way.’ Without a pickaxe, without tools, you expect to claw Cinder-Shards from the rock?” Old man Dust’s gaze was unsettlingly keen, stripping away Kaelen’s carefully constructed facade. “Not the attitude of a man here to earn.” Kaelen’s brow furrowed. The old man saw too much, too quickly. He changed the subject. “You’ve been here long, then?” “Since the first vein was struck. An old-timer, you could say.” He gestured with a gnarled hand towards the interior of his stall, where a bewildering array of dusty, forgotten objects lay piled high. Discarded tools, rusted trinkets, broken instruments, all coated in a uniform layer of fine ash. “All of it. Collected since the beginning.” “Those who came first, just like you. Those who held on, or tried to.” Old man Dust’s voice dropped, acquiring a gravelly edge. “They resist the mines, fiercely. When coin runs out, they sell whatever they possess. Worthless trinkets first, then their most cherished possessions. When nothing remains, only then do they descend into the dark. That’s the cycle. Useful things get sent to Solara cities, sold for real marks. The worthless scraps, like these, are left behind. Traces of the desperate, boy. The final leavings.” A chilling laugh escaped the old man, a dry, rustling sound like dust skittering across rock. His gaze, through the broken glass, seemed to tell Kaelen that he too, might become one of these relics. Kaelen’s appetite withered, the rich taste of the meat turning to ash in his mouth. He swallowed the last bite, forcing it down, and stood. --- “How much?” Kaelen asked, his voice flat. “Ten cinder-coppers for a skewer.” Kaelen blinked. “Ten? For a single piece of meat?” Even in the distant, prosperous cities of Solara, such prices were unheard of. Here, in the Ashfall’s maw, it was an insult, a blatant gouging. “That’s… robbery.” The old man remained unmoved, an indifferent statue in the face of Kaelen's indignation. He had clearly weathered such reactions before. “Everything is precious here, boy. Food, gear, even a simple pickaxe. That’s why everything has its price.” “What if I refuse to pay?” Kaelen's hand instinctively went to the hilt of his concealed obsidian blade, a weapon he had forged himself from compressed ash. A soft chuckle, barely audible. “Boy. There’s a reason a withered old man like me has done business in this rough place for so long.” Around them, a subtle shift occurred. Other stall owners, previously absorbed in their own desolate transactions, turned their heads. Their gazes, cold and sharp as obsidian chips, settled on Kaelen. A silent threat, understood without a single word. Kaelen grit his teeth. ‘An old-timer,’ he remembered. He understood now. The old man was not just a vendor; he was a nexus, a silent power within the market’s fractured economy. Refuse him, and the Outpost would refuse Kaelen. “Damn it,” Kaelen muttered, lowering his hand. “I’m short on cinder-coppers.” “Still, your wits aren’t completely dust-choked. Some fools just rage.” Old man Dust’s smirk widened. “No coin? Then perhaps you have something else. A Cinder-Shard, perhaps?” --- Kaelen’s gut twisted. Give up a Cinder-Shard for a mere skewer? The very essence of his journey, the key to his purpose here, for a fleeting taste of meat? He shook his head, a defiant tremor. “I have nothing.” “Heh. A rumor that you carry a Cinder-Shard will spread through the Outpost within the hour, boy. Do you think you can protect it then?” Old man Dust’s eyes glinted, a dark amusement stirring in their depths. The source of the rumor, Kaelen knew, would be the old man himself. Kaelen glared, but the fury felt hollow. He had faced countless hardships, weathered the impossible in the ash-wastes, but this old man, with his broken spectacles and quiet authority, had seen deeper, lived longer, played a colder game. Compared to Old man Dust, Kaelen felt like a child. Once the whisper of a Cinder-Shard reached the mercenary Awakened and the brutal overseers, he would have no recourse, no hope of keeping it. A heavy sigh escaped him, a defeated exhalation of ash-laced air. Kaelen reached into his ragged tunic, carefully extracting a small, irregular fragment of raw Cinder-Shard, no larger than his thumb. Its surface shimmered with an inner, dark fire, a concentrated piece of the Sundered Earth’s raw power. Old man Dust’s eyes sharpened, a flash of genuine avarice briefly crossing his ancient face. “Ah. That size, it’d be worth… perhaps a hundred cinder-coppers.” “A hundred?” Kaelen’s voice was a low growl. “In Solara, this would fetch three times that, easily.” “This isn’t Solara, boy. This is Onyxfall Outpost.” “This is madness.” Kaelen’s knuckles whitened against the rough wood of the crate. “A treasure, boy, can become a disaster if you lack the strength to guard it.” Another dry chuckle, the sound like pebbles rolling in an empty jar. The urge to lash out, to silence the old man’s mocking wisdom with a swift blow, surged through Kaelen. Yet, he held back. Subduing this withered man would be trivial. The consequences, however, would be anything but. Old man Dust, a fixture here for decades, undoubtedly held sway with the Awakened guards, perhaps even Thane Varkos himself. The old man’s calm, almost dismissive demeanor hinted at a security Kaelen could not yet fathom. He felt himself shrinking, an echo of the boy he had once been, before the ash remade him. Finally, Kaelen relented. He placed the Cinder-Shard on the stall, the small, dark ember stark against the grimy wood. All his struggle, all his desperate journey to reach the mines with this precious fragment, reduced to this paltry exchange. “Why did I… bother?” he murmured, the words lost in the constant whisper of the ash-wind. “Heh. Don’t be so disheartened, boy. I’m not so cruel. I won’t fleece a newcomer to the bone.” Old man Dust picked up the Cinder-Shard, weighing it. He then counted out a small handful of dull, copper-colored coins, dropping them into Kaelen’s palm. “Here, ninety cinder-coppers. Keep them safe. This place is rife with nimble fingers and opportunistic thieves.” “Pretending to care, are you, old cat?” Kaelen grumbled, pocketing the meager sum. Old man Dust chuckled, gesturing towards the cluttered interior of his stall. “As a token for our first transaction, choose one item from the pile. A gift.” --- “That junk?” Kaelen's lip curled. “If you’d prefer not to.” A sense of stubborn defiance, a refusal to be entirely outmaneuvered, pushed Kaelen forward. He stepped inside the claustrophobic space, the air thick with the scent of dust and forgotten things. He didn’t expect to find anything of value; the old man had confirmed that all useful items were shipped out. This was truly the dregs. Kaelen ran a hand over a broken pickaxe head, a frayed coil of rope, a cracked ceramic flask. “There’s nothing here but scraps. What am I supposed to take?” Old man Dust watched, a slight smile on his face. He found Kaelen… vibrant. Most who came here were already broken, their spirits worn thin by the Ashfall. But Kaelen, even in his frustration, possessed a fierce, unyielding energy. He had a belief, a stubbornness that defied the crushing weight of this world. It was rare, and strangely compelling. Watching him rummage, grumbling and determined not to be entirely defeated, was a peculiar pleasure. Suddenly, Kaelen’s fingers closed around something small, smooth, and remarkably intact. He pulled it free from beneath a tangle of rusted chains and brought it into the light. It was a miniature hourglass, perhaps meant for a desk, its delicate glass casing still whole, though clouded with fine dust. The dark sand within had long ceased to flow, solidified into an obsidian lump at its base. “This?” Kaelen held it up to the old man. “Why is this here?” “No one wanted it,” Old man Dust shrugged. “Been here for decades. A useless bauble. A caravan brought it once, long ago. No one in this world bothers with such things.” “How about you choose something else?” Kaelen snorted. “Hmph. I doubt I’ll find anything more intact than this in your collection of rubble.” He turned, the tiny hourglass clutched in his hand. “Stop by again, boy,” Old man Dust called after him, his tone surprisingly warm. Kaelen paused at the stall's mouth, casting a look back. “I suppose we might cross paths often, Old man Dust.” “An unfortunate thought,” Old man Dust replied, a dry laugh rumbling in his chest. Kaelen, a frown etched on his face, walked away, the silent companion of the Ashfall embracing him once more.

A Speck of Dust, A Glimmer of Cinder