The air inside the ruined city tasted like ash and old dreams. Every breath Irin took felt heavier, as if the place itself weighed on his lungs.
Massive stone walls rose around them, some cracked, some half-collapsed. Ivy and dead vines crawled up their surfaces, but nothing green truly lived here. The city was a graveyard — not of bodies, but of memory.
Somewhere far behind, on the edge of the misted valley, he could still hear the faint echo of hunting horns.
They didn't have much time.
Lera clutched the strap of her bag, eyes darting from broken tower to shattered arch.
"What is this place?" she whispered.
Irin shook his head. "I don't know. But... it feels like it's waiting for something."
Or someone.
The mark on his wrist glowed faintly under his sleeve. Every step they took, the pull from the Ashstone grew stronger, like invisible threads guiding him deeper into the ruins.
He didn't fight it.
He didn't dare.
They moved quickly through the crumbling streets, keeping to the shadows where they could. Statues lined the old plazas — most broken, faceless, half-swallowed by earth. Some were so weathered it was impossible to tell if they had ever been human at all.
The further they walked, the stranger things became.
Walls twisted at odd angles, as if the stones themselves had melted under some ancient force. Doorways led to nowhere. Stairs climbed into empty sky.
This wasn't just a city that died.
It was a city that had been erased.
Forgotten on purpose.
Destroyed by something that feared it.
They found temporary shelter in what remained of a grand hall — a building larger than any Irin had ever seen, even in books. Its high ceiling had long since caved in, but the thick stone pillars still stood, casting deep shadows.
In the center of the hall, beneath broken beams and ash, lay a circle of blackened marble. A symbol was carved into it — not just with tools, but with magic.
Irin felt it hum through the soles of his boots.
The symbol was familiar.
A broken circle. Two jagged lines through its heart.
The same as the mark on his wrist.
"Someone knew," Irin murmured, kneeling by the symbol.
"Knew what?" Lera asked, standing a little way back.
"About this." He lifted his hand slightly, revealing the glow beneath his sleeve. "About me. About the Ashborn."
Lera stepped closer, hesitating only a moment before kneeling beside him. "What do you think it means?"
"I think..." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "I think I'm not the first."
A gust of cold air swept through the hall, stirring the ashes around them.
Lera shivered.
"And if you're not the first," she said softly, "where did the others go?"
Irin didn't answer.
The ruins answered for him.
As they searched the hall, they found fragments — broken shields, torn banners, scraps of metal that might have once been armor. The banners were burned, but here and there Irin could still see remnants of a symbol.
Not the Mage Houses' crest.
Something older.
An emblem of flame and ash intertwined — a spiral consuming itself.
A warning or a promise, he couldn't tell.
On one broken piece of wall, words were faintly carved, worn almost to nothing by time.
Lera squinted at them, tracing the letters carefully with her finger.
"'We were not the first... nor shall we be the last.'"
She looked up at him.
"What does it mean?"
Irin didn't know.
But he felt the weight of it settle on his shoulders like another layer of ash.
As the sun began to fall, casting the ruins into deep gold and then blackness, Irin led them deeper into the city.
They needed a place to hide for the night — somewhere with walls still strong enough to shelter them.
The hunting horns had fallen silent, but that made it worse.
Silence meant the hunters were close.
Too close.
Near the heart of the ruins, they found a library.
Or what had once been one.
The building was mostly intact, its walls thick and defensive. Strange for a library. Inside, the shelves had collapsed long ago, but scraps of parchment still fluttered in the dark. Charred, brittle — yet stubbornly clinging to existence.
Irin lit a small, controlled fire with a flick of his hand. The light revealed murals along the walls.
Paintings of cities wreathed in fire. Of figures crowned in flame, standing atop mountains of ash. Of battles not between armies — but between gods.
It wasn't history.
It was prophecy.
A future written in fire long before Irin was ever born.
Lera crouched near a half-burned tome, trying to read faded lines.
"This one... it says something about 'the Chain of Ash'... 'the Silent Reign'... and..." She squinted. "'The Day the Ash Walks Again.'"
Irin stared at the words.
He didn't understand them.
Not yet.
But he knew — with the certainty of instinct — that the hunters were not the only ones seeking him now.
The ruins had awakened.
The old powers were listening.
And others would come.
Some to kill him.
Some to use him.
Maybe none to save him.
That night, they slept in the library's hollow shell, hidden among broken knowledge.
Or rather — Lera slept.
Irin sat awake by the dying fire, staring at the mark on his wrist, feeling the hum of the Ashstone against his chest, and listening to the heartbeat of the ruined city around them.
It was faint.
But it was there.
A slow, steady pulse.
Like the breathing of something vast and ancient.
And somewhere in the darkness, beyond the crumbled gates and shattered towers, eyes were already watching.
Waiting.
The Ashborn had come.
And the Forsaken Realm was stirring once more.