The storm clouds didn't just hang over the valley—they pressed down like a giant's fist, squeezing the life out of everything below. Wind sliced through the dead trees with a sound like screaming, carrying smoke that burned Kael's throat and the metallic stench of blood that had soaked into the earth three days ago.
He stood barefoot in what used to be his home.
Now it was a graveyard.
Charred wooden beams jutted up from the mud like broken ribs. The fires were long dead, but their hunger lived on in every blackened stone, every collapsed roof, every terrible silence where laughter used to live. Kael was sixteen years old, and he was the last person alive in a village that didn't even have a name anymore.
His feet were raw and bleeding, cut open by debris and stones, but the pain felt distant. Everything felt distant now. Like he was watching someone else's nightmare through glass.
He walked through the ruins slowly, stepping around memories that hit him like physical blows. There—a child's wooden horse, split in half, its painted red mane now the color of ash. His chest tightened. Little Emma had carried that horse everywhere, talking to it like it could hear her.
Emma was dead now. They were all dead.
His sister Mira's red scarf hung from a fence post, dancing in the wind like it was trying to wave goodbye. Kael's hands shook as he reached for it, then pulled back. If he touched it, if he felt the wool between his fingers, he might fall apart completely. And he couldn't afford to break. Not yet.
The blacksmith shop where his father had sung while he worked was a black crater in the ground. The anvil that had rung with the sound of creation now sat twisted and melted, silent forever.
Everything was silent forever.
Kael dropped to his knees in what used to be the town square and started digging through the wreckage with his bare hands. Splinters bit into his palms. Ash filled his nose and mouth, coating his tongue with the taste of destruction. But he kept digging, desperate, frantic, because there had to be something left. Something that proved this place had mattered.
His fingers closed around metal.
The pendant was cracked but whole, its silver surface warm despite the cold air. The carving was simple—just the shape of a seed—but it seemed to pulse with its own heartbeat. This was his mother's pendant, the one she'd worn every day, the one she'd pressed into his trembling hands the night the killers came.
"Run, Kael. Take this and run. Don't let them catch you. Don't let them win."
Her last words. Her last breath. Her last desperate hope.
The seed.
That's what she'd called it. Just "the seed." Like it explained everything and nothing at all. Kael had spent three days searching through his memories, trying to understand what made this simple piece of silver worth murdering an entire village for. But every answer led to more questions, and the questions led nowhere except deeper into the nightmare.
A branch snapped behind him like a bone breaking.
Every muscle in Kael's body went rigid. His heart hammered against his ribs so hard he thought it might burst. Slowly, like a man turning to face his executioner, he looked over his shoulder.
A figure stood in the shadow of a burned cottage, tall and still as death itself. Dark leather armor hugged a lean frame, and a cloak that seemed to drink light hung from broad shoulders. But it was the mask that made Kael's blood turn to ice—bone white, carved to look like a grinning skull, covering everything below a pair of eyes that seemed to glow with their own cold fire.
The air itself seemed to hold its breath.
"You shouldn't be here, boy."
The voice was neither male nor female, neither cruel nor kind. It was simply inevitable, like winter following autumn, like death following life. It was the voice of someone who had seen empires rise and fall and felt nothing but mild interest.
Kael's throat was so dry he could barely speak. "This was my home."
"Home is for the living." The stranger took a step closer, boots silent on the debris-strewn ground. "This place belongs to the dead now. And the dead don't like visitors."
Lightning flickered overhead, casting twisted shadows across the ruins. Kael wanted to run—every instinct screamed at him to flee—but his legs felt like they were made of stone. He'd run once before, when the screaming started. He'd hidden in the forest like a coward while his family died. Never again.
"Were you one of them?" The words came out like broken glass. "One of the bastards who burned everything?"
The skull mask tilted to one side, considering. "If I had been, little rabbit, your blood would be feeding the crows by now."
That should have been terrifying. Instead, it made something tight in Kael's chest loosen just a fraction. At least this killer was honest.
"Then why are you here?"
"Because something sleeps beneath this cursed ground. Something that was old when the world was young. And you..." Those glowing eyes fixed on him like a predator sighting prey. "You're tied to it by blood and bone and choices you haven't made yet."
The pendant in Kael's hand began to warm. Then to burn. Light leaked between his fingers—soft green radiance that pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat. He opened his palm and stared as veins of luminescence spread across the silver surface like living roots.
"What is it?" he whispered.
"Power." The stranger's voice carried a weight of reverence and fear. "The kind that reshapes the world. The kind that drives men mad. The kind that gets entire bloodlines murdered in their sleep."
The light intensified, and with it came a sensation Kael had never experienced—like lightning was flowing through his veins, like the earth itself was singing in his bones. For one impossible moment, he could feel everything: the slow pulse of sap in distant trees, the heartbeat of a deer miles away, the patient breathing of the mountains themselves.
Then it vanished, leaving him gasping and weak.
"What's happening to me?"
"You're waking up." The stranger turned away, cloak billowing in the storm wind. "The question is whether you'll learn to control what's inside you before it controls you."
"Wait!" Kael stumbled forward, his legs shaking. "I don't understand any of this! I don't know what this thing is, or why people died for it, or what I'm supposed to do!"
The stranger paused at the edge of the ruins. "Understanding is earned, not given. Survival comes first. Everything else is luxury."
"Why should I trust you?"
A sound that might have been laughter came from behind the bone mask. "Trust? Boy, trust is a blade that cuts both ways. I'm not here to be trusted. I'm here to keep you alive long enough to become dangerous."
"Dangerous to who?"
"To everyone." The stranger's eyes seemed to burn brighter. "Including yourself. Now move. There are hunters closing in, and they won't show you the mercy I have."
Kael looked back at the ruins one last time. At the scattered stones where his sister had played hopscotch. At the cold forge where his father had taught him to shape metal. At the empty spaces where love had lived and died.
Then he followed the stranger into the darkness.
They moved through the forest like ghosts fleeing dawn, the stranger flowing over obstacles that left Kael scrambling and bleeding. Every root seemed designed to trip him, every branch reached out to tear at his clothes. His lungs burned. His legs ached. But he gritted his teeth and kept going, because stopping meant dying, and he wasn't ready to die yet.
Hours blurred together in a haze of pain and exhaustion. The forest grew thicker, darker, older. These weren't the familiar woods near his village—these were ancient trees that remembered the world before men, their trunks twisted into shapes that hurt to look at. The path grew rocky, then treacherous, winding up mountain slopes where one wrong step meant a fall into shadow.
When they finally stopped, Kael could barely stand. They stood before a cave mouth hidden behind a curtain of thorns and twisted vines. The entrance was small and dark, nearly invisible against the weathered stone. But carved into the rock above it was a symbol that made Kael's heart skip—the same seed shape that adorned his pendant.
"Welcome," the stranger said, lighting a lantern that cast dancing shadows on the walls, "to the last sanctuary of the forgotten."
The cave stretched back into darkness, its walls alive with history carved in stone. But these weren't crude scratches—they were masterworks that told a story spanning thousands of years. Here was a tree so massive it dwarfed mountains, its roots weaving through the foundations of cities, its branches holding up the sky itself. There were scenes of peace and plenty, of harvests that fed nations, of magic that healed the sick and made the desert bloom.
And there were scenes of war.
The tree burning, consumed by black fire that fell from a crimson sky. Armies clashing in its shadow while its leaves turned to ash. And throughout it all, a single seed passing from hand to hand—from heroes to children, from queens to beggars, always one step ahead of those who would destroy it.
"You're part of something older than kingdoms," the stranger said, running pale fingers over the carvings. "The world thinks the age of magic is dead. But death and sleep are not the same thing."
Kael stared at a carving that showed a figure standing before a throne grown from living wood. The person's face was weathered away by time, but something about the stance, the way they held their shoulders, looked familiar.
"What am I supposed to do with this power?"
The stranger was quiet for a long moment. When they spoke, their voice was softer than before, almost human. "Power doesn't make you a god, boy. It makes you responsible. What grows from the choices you make... that will determine whether you're remembered as a savior or a monster."
Night had fallen while they talked, bringing with it a silence deeper than death. Kael lay on the stone floor, the pendant warm against his chest, and tried to process a world that had changed beyond recognition in the span of a single day. This morning he'd been a grieving orphan. Now he was apparently the heir to some ancient legacy that could reshape the world.
The weight of it should have crushed him. Instead, he felt something else stirring in his chest. Purpose. Direction. The first real hope he'd felt since the fires went out.
When sleep finally claimed him, it brought dreams of impossible beauty and terrible responsibility.
He stood in a meadow that stretched beyond the horizon, grass so green it seemed to glow with its own light. Above him stretched a sky of perfect blue, and before him rose the World Tree in all its ancient glory—massive beyond comprehension, its trunk broad enough to house cities, its branches reaching into stars that sang with celestial music.
At its base sat a throne of living wood, roots and branches woven together in patterns that seemed to shift when he wasn't looking directly at them. It was empty, waiting, calling to something deep in his blood.
A voice spoke from everywhere and nowhere, older than language, deeper than thought:
"The tree that would grow high must sink its roots deep. Your roots run deeper than oceans, boy. But depth means nothing without the will to rise."
The dream shattered like glass.
Kael woke with thunder echoing in his bones and lightning crackling behind his eyes. The pendant blazed against his chest like a captured star, and when he looked at his palm, he found a mark there—the seed symbol, but alive now, pulsing with green light beneath his skin.
Outside the cave, the storm had passed, but the air itself seemed to vibrate with tension. Far away, across kingdoms and continents he'd never seen, other eyes were opening. Some belonged to allies he'd never met. Others belonged to enemies who'd been waiting centuries for this moment.
The age of the Seed was beginning again.
And Kael—orphaned son of a burned village, heir to powers beyond imagination, bearer of hope and destruction in equal measure—stood at the very center of it all.
In his hand, he held the future of the world.
The question was: what would he do with it?