Joren’s breath came in shallow gasps, each inhale scraping like fire against his throat. He lay sprawled on a bed of frostbitten moss and ancient pine needles, the remnants of pain still clinging to his nerves like ghostly barbs. Though the agony had faded, its memory pulsed behind his eyes. He had screamed—but no sound had come. Not into the world.

  The stone was silent now. Its faint ember-glow had extinguished entirely, leaving behind a dull, cracked surface, as if the act of awakening him had drained whatever strange power it held. The clearing around him had grown colder, more alien. The mist had thickened, and the trees loomed closer than he remembered.

  But something was different.

  He could feel it—not just in his bones, but deeper, like his very essence had been scorched clean and filled with something wild and raw.

  He reached for his satchel with trembling fingers. Still there. Still heavy with dried rations, a coil of rope, his journal. But when his fingers brushed against the leather cover of the journal, a ripple ran through his arm. Faint. Barely noticeable.

  Until the pain struck.

  A flash of heat raced down his forearm. He yanked back his sleeve with a gasp.

  His skin was unmarked—but beneath it, lines of faint red light pulsed just under the surface, tracing patterns like molten filigree. They twisted and writhed when he stared directly at them, shifting in a way that defied logic.

  He clenched his hand into a fist. The light dulled.

  Stat synchronization failed. Manual progression required.

  The message echoed faintly in his mind, lingering like the taste of ash. No one he knew had ever heard of such a thing. When people Awakened, they received clean, familiar messages—pre-approved templates from the Worldfire System. Class, attributes, skills. All arranged in neat columns. Stats to be trained, levels to be climbed. Power, earned and measured.

  This? This was… something else.

  He felt no interface. No floating screens. No readable stats. Just that raw sensation of pressure behind his ribs. A whisper on the edge of hearing.

  And then, faintly:

  Tenacity: 1

  He blinked. Not on a screen. Not in the air. It existed only in his thoughts, etched in sensation rather than light. He tried to focus on it.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  A warm pulse responded. Like a heartbeat, echoing in the void.

  No menu. No system map. Just… awareness.

  He stood—slowly. The act of moving felt foreign, like his body didn’t quite trust him yet. His muscles resisted, sore and tight, but alive. He moved with the stiffness of someone who’d been reshaped from the inside out.

  The forest watched him. He felt it in the hush of the wind, the stillness of the boughs.

  He took a step forward.

  No crackle of leaves. No whisper of breath.

  Another step. Then another.

  The mist parted before him, not like fog pushed aside, but like a curtain retreating.

  Then, without warning, a sound: scratching.

  It came from the right. Sharp, deliberate. Not animal. Not natural.

  Joren crouched instinctively, heart hammering. He didn’t draw the dull utility knife at his belt—it wouldn’t help. Whatever had Awakened him had not given him strength, or agility, or skill with blades. But it had given him something. Tenacity. The will to keep moving.

  He followed the sound.

  Slow. Silent.

  The trees thinned. Another clearing. This one darker. The moonlight failed here, swallowed by the strange luminescent fog that clung to the ground. At its center sat a creature.

  No—not a creature.

  A construct.

  Metal plates, half-buried in earth. Its shape was humanoid, but collapsed, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Rust covered its joints. Its chest had been shattered open, revealing a hollow core filled with wires and ancient glyphs.

  It twitched.

  A faint blue light pulsed from within, struggling to glow.

  Joren didn’t run. Instead, he crept forward, step by step, until he stood a few feet away.

  The construct’s eye—only one—blinked open. It glowed faintly.

  Then, to his shock, a voice rasped from its chest, weak and static-glitched:

  “Designation... Ashbound. Core spark detected. User… incomplete.”

  Joren stared, wide-eyed. “You… you can see it?”

  The machine wheezed. “Core resonance confirmed. Bond unregistered. Manual interface required.”

  “Manual? What does that mean?”

  The eye dimmed.

  A panel on the construct’s side popped open with a slow clunk. Inside, a hollow cavity filled with gears and strange, pulsing threads.

  Joren hesitated.

  He reached inside.

  The moment his fingers touched the inner structure, a surge of energy raced through his arm. Not pain—but understanding. Words, foreign and ancient, filled his mind.

  Ashbound Protocol: Reintegration. Ember Core Compatible. Initiate Sequence?

  “Yes,” he whispered before he could stop himself.

  The machine shuddered. The eye glowed brighter.

  “Binding initiated.”

  Its limbs twitched. Plates shifted. Something in its chest reassembled—not into power, but into memory.

  Images rushed into Joren’s mind. Not his own.

  A battle in a sky of fire. Machines like titans. A man in black, standing atop a crumbling spire, wielding flame and void in tandem. The fall of a citadel. The scream of a forgotten king.

  And then—

  Stillness.

  The construct slumped forward. Dead, but different.

  And in Joren’s chest, a new presence.

  Skill Gained: Echo Core (Fragmented)

  Effect: Gain passive access to forgotten combat data. Synchronization: 4%. Incomplete.

  More whispers. Fractured words. Images. Movements that were not his. He stumbled back, mind reeling. It wasn’t like learning—it was remembering something he’d never known.

  The machine’s eye flickered one last time.

  Then, silence.

  He stayed in the clearing for a long time, until the first hints of dawn began to creep through the canopy above.

  He was no longer just a boy without a system.

  He was something new.

  Something the world had forgotten.

  And it had only just begun.