When we dragged the beast's carcass back into the village, the singing stopped.
Every voice. Every drum. Every breath.
Gone.
Only silence remained.
They stared—children, warriors, elders. Wide-eyed and unmoving. Not at the beast.
At me.
At the ash-mark that still burned faintly across my chest, and the glowing bones of the thing Ka'lenna and I had brought down.
They had called me Ashava. A cursed title. A half-whispered myth. A warning wrapped in skin.
Now?
Now they didn't know what to call me.
The elder approached first.
His movements were slow, deliberate, as if he were weighing the world with each step. He placed a hand on the beast's spine and muttered a prayer—or a spell—or a warning. I couldn't tell.
He turned to Ka'lenna.
"You rode the bones."
She nodded once. "He was not prey."
Then, the elder's gaze fell on me.
"You killed a Firstborn."
"I helped," I corrected.
Ka'lenna didn't speak, but she didn't deny it.
The elder's eyes narrowed slightly.
"We thought them extinct. Dormant beneath the bloodstone ridge."
"Apparently not," I said, still catching my breath. "And if that one was young…"
"They wake," the elder muttered. "The old wounds open again."
He stepped forward. "Come."
He led us deep into the ridge caves, beyond the fires and dwellings, through narrow stone corridors slick with moss and time. Down into the dark.
Ka'lenna walked beside me, silent as always.
At one point, I asked her, "You've killed one before?"
She shook her head. "I've seen one kill. A full-grown Firstborn. My mother tried to protect a scouting party when it emerged from the obsidian flats. She died standing."
"…I'm sorry."
"She left me her blade."
A pause.
"She left me enough."
The path ended at a sealed vault door—old, half-buried, and humming with dead power.
Tech.
The elder touched a panel in the stone. It glowed faintly. Responding not to motion, but blood.
The door groaned open.
Inside was a chamber of ash and light.
Not a natural cave—a ruin.
The floor was blackened metal. The walls pulsed with pale blue nodes like nerve endings. In the center stood a pedestal. On it: a fragmented console, a cracked helmet, and a long glass cylinder half-filled with decaying fluid and bone.
A human spinal cord floated inside it—augmented with alloy vertebrae and microfusion links.
Ka'lenna inhaled sharply. "What is this place?"
The elder looked at me.
"You carry the mark," he said. "So did the ones who built this vault. They came before. When the stars bled and the ground was still waking. They made us. Or shaped us. And then they burned themselves away."
I stepped forward.
The console blinked once—low power. But not dead.
I tapped it.
ACCESSING: BABEL CORE // TRIAL REPOSITORY // GENETIC COMPATIBILITY RECORDS
A wave of static hit my visor. Then words scrolled across the fractured interface:
"TRIAL OF ASH: STATUS – CALIBRATION INCOMPLETE""ACTIVE SUBJECTS REMAINING: 1"
Me.
Only me.
The others—the architects of this trial—were gone. But their system was still running. Still waiting.
Still watching.
I turned to the elder.
"What do you want from me?"
He didn't answer. Ka'lenna did.
"You came from the stars. Your people left you behind. But the fire did not kill you. You walk with the bones now. With us."
She stepped closer, her expression unreadable.
"You say you are not one of the ones who built this world. Not one of the liars who shaped blood with machines. But your name echoes in the ash."
I didn't know what to say.
So she said it for me.
"Maybe you were not chosen by your people. But the fire still marked you. So now we ask…"
She extended her hand.
"Will you walk with us? Or will you burn alone?"
I looked down at her hand.
Callused. Strong. Stained with blood, sweat, and ash.
The kind of hand that didn't offer itself lightly.
I took it.
"I'll walk," I said. "But not behind you. Not ahead of you."
Her grip tightened. Just for a moment.
"Beside you, then."