The boy was born under a sky veiled in smoke. No stars. No moon. Only fire.
The village had been burning for hours when he came into the world—screaming, not because of life, but as if he knew already what life would cost him.
The midwife dropped him when the roof cracked overhead. Her hands trembled as she picked him back up from the dirt, covered in blood, smoke, and soot. "He don't cry like a babe," she muttered. "He screams like mourning."
By the time his lungs first tasted air, everything else was ash.
His mother clutched him close despite the burns licking her arms, murmuring lullabies over the howl of collapsing timber and dying screams. She named him Ashen not out of cruelty, but because there was nothing else left. No home. No cradle. Not even the baby blanket she'd sewn in secret. Just ash and a heartbeat.
The villagers survived—some. Not enough to forget what they saw. A child born as their lives were buried. "Cursed," they whispered, not loud enough to be brave, just loud enough to hurt.
Fourteen years later, Ashen woke in dirt. Hunger twisted his belly like a blade. He coughed against the cold, tasting smoke that wasn't there, as if memory still burned on his tongue.
Another night, another empty stomach.
His ribs pressed against his skin like the fingers of a dying god, and still, he stood. The dawn was reluctant, grey as always. Clouds hung low over the ruins of his village—if it could still be called that. Rotting shacks. Collapsed roofs. A few dead fields pretending to grow food. But he wasn't here for crops. He was here because he had nowhere else.
Ashen scavenged a corner of the collapsed storehouse, searching for something—anything—beneath broken beams and moldy sacks. A single cracked bowl sat like an old wound. Useless.
He sat down beside it, head in his hands. His hair was matted, black as coal, and his skin had grown pale from too many seasons without sun or food. His clothes hung off him like regrets.
That's when the footsteps came—deliberate, too calm to be a scavenger.
Ashen looked up.
A man stood before him. Not old, not young. Dressed in a long coat patched at the shoulders and boots that had seen war. He carried a satchel slung across his back and a flask at his hip. There was something about him that didn't belong in this graveyard of a village—something too alive.
The man tossed something through the air. Ashen flinched, caught it—bread. Stale but whole. His hands shook as he stared at it.
"You going to eat, or just glare at it like it offended your ancestors?" the man said, voice like worn gravel.
Ashen didn't answer. He bit into the bread, barely remembering to chew.
"Thought so," the man said, crouching beside him. "Didn't expect to find anyone left here. Place smells like memory and mildew."
Ashen finished the bread too fast. His stomach growled in protest. He looked at the man, cautious. "Who are you?"
"Not important. Not yet." The man eyed him, unreadable. "You got a name?"
"Ashen."
The man snorted, not unkindly. "Of course it is."
They sat in silence, the kind that only exists between strangers who might become something else. The wind picked up. Ashen wrapped his arms around his knees. He didn't ask why the man was here. He was too tired.
"You ever thought of leaving this place?" the man asked suddenly. "Or are you planning to rot here with the rest of it?"
Ashen's eyes narrowed. "I don't have anywhere to go."
"I know a place that takes people like you." The man looked toward the horizon. "They'll give you food. A bed. Purpose."
"What's the cost?"
The man didn't smile, but something flickered in his face—like he appreciated the question.
"You fight. That's the cost. Not for gold or land or kings. For survival. For answers, maybe. There's something coming. Bigger than plagues. Worse than fire. And we need people who aren't afraid to live in a world that wants them dead."
Ashen was quiet.
"Eat again tomorrow," the man said, rising. "If you want more than crumbs and rot, meet me at the bridge just before dusk. If not, stay here. Keep starving."
He turned and left without asking again.
Ashen sat alone, the crust of bread still heavy in his gut like stone. The wind howled through the empty homes around him. A crow landed on a broken beam above and stared down like it was waiting for him to die.
But he didn't. Not yet.
The village had named him after the ashes he was born from. Maybe they were right. Maybe he was a curse. But curses live. Curses survive.
And survival, Ashen had learned, is the first act of rebellion.