Chapter 3: Ash and Ember

  Dawn cracked the sky like a promise it couldn't keep.

  By midday, Kael stood before what he'd built from the ruins.

  A pyre of ash and memory.

  Timber and cloth, His sister's doll. His father's fishing net, mended so many times it was more repair than original rope. His mother's favorite cup, cracked through but holding together.

  He'd gathered them moving through the transformed village like he was collecting pieces of himself. The doll made his throat close. The net made him remember hands teaching him knots he'd never tie again.

  The Veil Festival taught the words: "Do not leave the soul among ruins. Let the ash rise. Let the wind carry the name."

  He offered nothing but silence to the sky.

  Standing there with flint in his scarred palm, Kael found those words had burned away too.

  He struck the spark.

  Fire caught fast. Flames climbed through timber and cloth, consuming what couldn't be saved, releasing what he couldn't carry. Smoke rose in spirals, carrying scents he tried not to remember. He watched until the fire burned low, until wind scattered the last smoke toward a sky that had room for one more grief.

  Then he turned away from the ashes.

  That was when he saw it—a skyship cutting through clouds with patched hull gleaming.

  Crooked and strange, built from ironwood and bone, stormglass stretched across its frame like scar tissue. It flew deliberate and low, beautiful the way broken things were beautiful when they refused to stay broken.

  Mismatched sails caught wind—canvas, silk, something that looked like membrane stretched thin. On its side, a sigil: an inverted star, hollow at the core.

  The ship circled once, shadow passing over ruins, then began descending.

  A voice echoed from a windbound horn: "You alive down there? You bleeding? If not, we've got room."

  Kael's feet moved before his mind caught up.

  A rope ladder dropped with the casual precision of a crew that had done this before. The skyship hovered just above ground, engines humming.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Kael climbed.

  The ladder swayed with each gust. Higher he went, the more the world below looked like someone else's tragedy.

  Wood groaned as he hauled himself over the rail onto a deck scarred but solid.

  Faces turned toward him—some curious, some wary, all marked by a living that left scars. A woman with gold where her eyes should be, her face mapped with old burns. A man whose skin bore runes that shifted with his breathing. A girl barely older than Kael but moving with the balance of someone who'd learned which planks would hold.

  They watched, sizing him up.

  A woman stepped forward, pipe between silver-lined teeth. Sharp-cut hair, sharper eyes. She moved with the poise of someone who'd earned authority through something other than birthright.

  "You're marked," she said, looking where his sleeve covered the sigil. "Which means trouble."

  Kael said nothing.

  She grinned, showing a set of oddly beautiful silver lined teeth.

  "Good. We like trouble. Welcome aboard The Nimbus.

  Don't die before breakfast—we've got eggs."

  The crew returned to interrupted tasks. The ship lifted, engines humming as they caught wind. Kael felt the deck roll.

  "Captain Mireya," the woman said, extending a calloused hand. "And you're the one who touched something he shouldn't have."

  Not a question.

  Kael took her hand. Her grip tested him.

  "How did you know?"

  Mireya's smile flickered.

  "We saw light tear through the clouds two nights back. Bright enough to wake the dead. Figured whatever hit ground that hard might be worth the trouble."

  She glanced down at his covered hand, then back up. "Didn’t expect to find someone still breathing."

  She gestured around the ship. "The Nimbus runs salvage, mostly. Sometimes cargo. Sometimes people who did what they shouldn't have done."

  The mark pulsed beneath Kael’s sleeve.

  "What do you think I’m carrying?"

  Her smile faded.

  "I don’t know," she said. "But whatever it is you touched sure gave you enough to quake your boots ."

  She turned toward the wheel where a man with brass ear fixtures adjusted course.

  "We'll talk once we're clear of the Hollow's reach. For now, eat. You look like you haven't since the world ended."

  That night, Kael stood alone at the prow.

  Skies stretched wide, full of shattered light from distant Shards. Below, far beneath floating islands, the Hollow churned—not visible but felt like the memory of falling.

  He'd eaten with the crew, listened to stories of salvage runs and narrow escapes. They'd accepted him with casual indifference of people who'd seen stranger things. Almost normal, except for how conversations stopped when he moved his left hand, how eyes lingered on his covered hand.

  Now, alone with night wind, he could think.

  The stars seemed different —dark spaces where light should be. Others burned too bright, trying to compensate.

  The Thorn's sigil pulsed faint and slow.

  The prophecy echoed: The child of splinters shall rise, bearing the lie that bleeds.

  He didn't know what it meant. But standing there with slightly violent wind coursing and deck solid beneath his feet, something settled.

  Not purpose—too grand a word.

  Direction.

  He was no longer just a survivor, the Thorn had marked him, changed him, made him into a question the world would have to answer.

  If the gods wanted silence, if truth demanded a blade—Kael would learn to be that blade.

  But first, he'd learn what he carried, why it chose him, what the prophecy meant and what it would cost.

  The Nimbus drifted through fractured sky, it's crew asleep, sails catching the wind.

  Kael watched stars strike across a distant sky, trying to find their place.

  Tomorrow would bring questions. Tonight, he had a ship beneath his feet and a horizon stretching beyond old grief.

  Enough.