The cold gnawed at him first.
It wasn't the kind of cold that clung to the skin and passed—it was the kind that lived inside bone, that whispered of death, that felt less like weather and more like punishment. His body trembled, but the memory of fire still coiled behind his ribs.
Rael Ashthorne opened his eyes to a ceiling of warped wooden slats, rotted and black with mildew. His breath came ragged and sour, and the tattered blanket covering him smelled of mold and old blood. Everything was wrong—his limbs, his size, the beat of his heart—fragile, human.
But his soul was not.
I remember… everything.
He sat up slowly, the motion alien, painful. The bones were not his—the muscles too weak, the joints tight with malnutrition. A cough rattled in his chest, and when he brought his hand to his mouth, he found blood.
Still, he grinned.
So I really did it.I died. And I was reborn.
The last memories of his former life hit like a falling blade: the Tower of Crowns aflame, betrayal by the one he'd loved most, a dagger between his ribs. Kael the Black Flame, they'd called him. Archmage of Ten Thousand Curses. Breaker of the Holy Compact. He had conquered cities and slain dragons—but he had died a virgin, unloved and untouched.
All his power. All his glory. Not a single woman in his bed.
He spat. The blood steamed slightly in the air. Even my spit remembers fire.
No more. Not this life.
He swung his legs over the side of the straw mat. His bare feet touched frozen stone. He was in a hovel—a crumbling hut barely clinging to existence. The door was half-off its hinges. A rat scurried past his foot without fear.
His body was young. Sixteen, perhaps. Pale skin stretched over sharp cheekbones, dark hair matted and tangled. But his eyes—Kael's eyes—still burned beneath the flesh.
Rael Ashthorne, he thought. A fitting name for rebirth from ashes.
The door creaked.
He turned just as a hunched figure entered—a woman with windburned skin and gray hair tucked into a threadbare shawl. She carried a bowl of something thick and steaming, the scent more swamp than soup.
"You're awake," she muttered. Her eyes narrowed.
Rael said nothing.
"You should've died. Fever took six others last week. Thought you'd follow."
"I don't die easy," he said, voice hoarse.
She grunted. "You're not special, boy. Just lucky. Eat. Then work."
She shoved the bowl into his hands. The stew was thin and gray, floating with clumps of something that might have once been meat. He stared at it.
"Where is this?" he asked.
"Darnhollow."
The name froze the air more than the wind. A cursed place. He'd heard it once in his old life—buried deep in a grim tome written in blood and bound in flesh. Darnhollow. The village where the gods look away.
Perfect.
Rael ate in silence. The stew burned his throat but gave him strength. His fingers trembled less with each bite. As the old woman swept out, muttering something about chores, he closed his eyes and reached inward.
His soul was like a broken throne—shattered but familiar. The core of his power, the Black Flame, was there, dimmed to a single ember. No incantations. No spell circles. Just a raw, ancient presence inside him. Waiting.
Slumbering, but not dead.
He laughed softly, the sound rasping through his teeth.
This time, I will live. And I will taste everything I was denied.Women. Wine. The thrill of flesh pressed against mine. The sweat, the sound, the surrender.
And power, again. Enough to burn the heavens.
Two Days Later
The cold never left Darnhollow.
Rael walked through the village with a bundle of firewood, studying the place that would be his crucible. The sky was a permanent overcast gray, the sun a vague smear behind thick clouds. Crooked buildings leaned into each other like drunks. Mud swallowed boots to the ankle.
The villagers avoided him.
Old men spat at his passing. Mothers clutched children and whispered prayers. One boy threw a stone, but it missed wide and Rael didn't flinch.
"Demon-borne," someone whispered."Shouldn't have lived.""No one survives the blood-fever."
Let them fear me.
A part of him savored it. In his old life, fear had come after his rise. Here, it came as a seed. It would bloom soon enough.
At the edge of the village sat a broken chapel, its steeple half-collapsed and stone blackened by old fire. The gods had abandoned this place long ago. He stepped inside anyway.
Dust thick as snow covered the pews. The altar was shattered. He touched it—and felt nothing. No divine presence. Just void.
He smiled.
No gods. No laws. No eyes to see what I become.
That night, he dreamed again.
He stood in a field of ashes, naked under a crimson sky. His skin burned with runes—old magic, his own. A woman watched him from across the field, cloaked in black, hair long and silver as starlight.
She did not move. Did not speak.
But her presence twisted something deep inside him—like fate snapping taut.
"Who are you?" he asked.
She tilted her head. Her eyes were mercury. Beautiful. Empty.
"You lived," she said.
Then she vanished in a blink, and fire erupted around him.
Rael woke with a gasp, drenched in sweat. His hands trembled, and when he looked at them, he saw flickers of black flame licking along his fingertips before vanishing.
It had begun.
Later That Week
The first harem piece appeared in the form of a blade.
Rael was gathering firewood near the forest's edge when he saw her—moving between trees like a whisper of silk and steel. Tall. Graceful. Cloaked in deep gray. Her presence was impossible to ignore.
Her hair, long and tied in a warrior's braid, was silver-blonde. Her body was a weapon—toned, balanced, undeniably lethal. And yet—feminine. Curved. Ripe.
She stopped just before the treeline. Looked toward the village.
Rael froze, half-hidden behind a tree, breath caught. She hadn't seen him—or so he thought.
Then her head turned. Their eyes met.
Time bent.
Lyria.
The name echoed in his skull like a memory stolen from the future. He didn't know how he knew it—but he did. She held his gaze for a long moment, unreadable.
Then she turned and walked away, vanishing between the trees like she'd never been there.
Rael stood motionless for a long time, heart thundering.
That was no dream.
Back in the village, he asked an old drunk near the well, "Who comes from the north woods?"
The man narrowed one eye. "You don't ask about her."
"Why not?"
"Because she ain't someone you find. She finds you. When she wants. And she never wants the same thing twice."
Rael tilted his head. "She's a killer."
The drunk gave a hollow laugh. "She's death with tits, boy."
"Does she have a name?"
A pause.
"Some call her the Widow Blade. Others say she's a ghost. I seen her once, years ago. Stabbed a priest through the eye for touching a girl. Didn't even flinch. Just vanished like smoke."
Rael smiled.
So the first of his future ten had already found him.
You don't even know it yet, do you, Lyria?You were born for me. And I for you.
That night, while the village slept, Rael carved a rune of binding into the chapel wall using a shard of bone. It was weak, childish compared to his former power—but it held. The air shifted, pulsed. Magic answered.
His soul flared. The ember grew.
He could feel it now. The pull of destiny. Of heat. Of hunger.
I will rise again. I will claim what I never dared.The world. The women. The throne.This time, I will not die untouched.This time, I will burn with more than power.