It started with fire.
Not the metaphorical kind—the kind that eats. That devours. That roars louder than screams.
Joshua Kane didn't remember what caused the accident. Just the shattering glass. The smell of burning wires. The way the ceiling collapsed in slow motion as if time itself was gasping.
Then darkness.
Then—
a voice.
Not a human one. Not even a god's.
> "This soul does not belong."
He floated in black. Weightless. Thoughtless. Dead… probably. Maybe.
> "Unmarked… Unwritten… Unworthy."
A cold wind cut across nothingness. Then heat. Burning. Pain that pulsed inside his chest, like something was being carved into him.
> "Yet still… it burns."
Suddenly, Joshua opened his eyes—not to a hospital, but to a sky that bled gold and violet. He lay in the middle of a crimson desert, the sand warm and pulsing like it had a heartbeat. Above him, two suns burned in perfect silence.
He sat up slowly. No buildings. No people. Just endless dunes and the ghost of wind.
"What the hell…"
He checked his chest. His shirt was gone—burned away. But etched onto the center of his chest, glowing like a coal under skin, was a mark.
Not a tattoo.
Not a scar.
A living brand, shaped like a broken circle, its flames flickering unnaturally in and out of existence. Every few seconds it changed shape—never settling on one form.
And it hurt. Not like skin pain.
Like soul pain.
He gritted his teeth and stood. "Okay, okay… this is a dream. A coma. A dying hallucination. I'm not in a freaking double-sun desert with a magic symbol on my chest."
Then the sand exploded.
Something burst from beneath the dunes—twenty feet tall, armored in obsidian plates. Its face was a cracked mask. Its body hissed like burning metal. A Wyrmwalker.
And it saw him.
It roared—a screech that made his ears bleed—and charged.
Joshua couldn't run. His legs wouldn't move. The thing was closing in.
That's when it happened.
The brand on his chest flared.
His body arched back as something ignited inside him—not power, but memory. Of pain. Of failure. Of watching someone he couldn't save.
The mark answered.
With a sound like shattering glass, fire burst from his back in a wheel-shaped halo, forming a flaming sigil behind him. The sand beneath his feet fused to glass. His right arm lit up—coated in shifting fire and black sparks.
He didn't think.
He moved.
One punch. Just one.
And the Wyrmwalker exploded into ash.
Silence followed. Not peaceful silence. The kind before a storm.
He collapsed to his knees, breathing hard.
The mark on his chest pulsed once, then faded to a dull ember.
> "That… wasn't normal."
---
From the dunes, three robed figures watched him.
One whispered, "He bears the Chaosmark."
Another said, "Impossible. That mark is extinct."
The third, with eyes like burned paper, only smiled.
> "Then the world is about to burn again."
Then memories surged into his mind causing an agonizing scream.They were memories of Kael ashbourne
---
[END OF CHAPTER ONE]