"You are chosen. Open the gate."
---
The next morning broke like any other in the Ash Ring—gray, wet, and loud with the hiss of steam pipes and distant airships.
Elric's stomach snarled. He hadn't eaten since yesterday's barley husks, and the ache behind his eyes told him it might be a while before that changed. Rain still drizzled from the rooftops as he trudged barefoot across slick stone paths, his ragged coat wrapped tight against the cold.
He was headed toward the old duel grounds, just past the Mage District's refuse zone—where the spellwrecks were dumped.
Mage duels didn't just break people. They broke ground. Buildings. Mana-forged steel. And anything too twisted or corrupted by unstable magic was tossed into the district's trashfire pits—eternal fires that burned with blue embers under arcane wards.
And sometimes, if you were desperate and stupid enough, you could find something there.
---
Elric stood atop a slope of broken sigil tiles and shattered staves, looking down into the wide crater below. Steam rose in spirals. Blackened bones and scorched metal jutted from the wreckage like the ribs of a giant beast.
It was said that once, long ago, the trashfire pits had been part of a battlefield. Where heretics and crestless rebels had made a last stand. But now it was just another place the nobles didn't bother to clean.
Elric slid down the incline, coughing as ash clung to his throat. His boots were long gone, so every step was a gamble against rusted nails and glass shards.
> "Come on… just one relic. One coin. One ring. Something."
He dug through a melted chestplate, then through a pile of scroll fragments, but everything disintegrated in his hands. Worthless. Dead.
Then he saw it.
A small black shape, half-buried in the slag.
He brushed ash and soot away, revealing a book—its leather cover burned almost entirely black, the edges singed and curled. Its spine was cracked and bound with strange, crisscrossed cords like veins, and a metallic clasp sealed it shut.
No title. No crest. Just a faint, throbbing heat.
And one symbol.
A jagged, incomplete circle drawn in blood-red ink. It pulsed once as he touched it.
Elric blinked.
> What… is this?
He pulled the book from the ashes. It was heavier than it looked—almost resisting him. The moment he held it in both hands, the air around him shifted.
The flames in the pit dimmed.
The steam pulled inward like breath.
And the book whispered.
> "You are chosen. Open the gate."
Elric dropped it.
Hard.
It landed with a thud, dust swirling around it in spirals.
> What the hell was that?
He stared at the book, heart pounding. He'd heard things before—street gossip, madmen's rants about cursed grimoires and haunted scrolls—but this wasn't a story. This was real. The whisper had been cold. Ancient. Like it remembered things no man should.
> "Nope," he muttered, stepping back. "Nope, nope, NOPE—"
The book pulsed again.
> "Touch the seal. Blood binds us."
He hesitated.
He should run. He should throw it back in the fire and pretend he never saw it.
But…
He looked at his own hands. Bruised. Shaking. Powerless.
No food. No name. No crest.
No future.
And here, in the one place no noble ever dared look, something had spoken to him.
> To me?
Swallowing his fear, he knelt and picked the book up again.
The symbol on the cover glowed faint red.
He pressed a finger against it.
Pain flared—a small sting as the book bit him. A tiny bead of blood welled up and sank into the symbol like ink into paper.
The cords unknotted.
The clasp clicked open.
And the cover shuddered.
Inside, instead of parchment, the pages shimmered like molten obsidian, swirling with runes and forbidden diagrams. They moved on their own, flipping open to a page scrawled in a language he didn't recognize—but somehow understood.
His breath hitched.
> "The Demon Art Codex…"
That name wasn't written. It was felt. Etched into his mind like a scar.
> "You are the Crestless. The marked unmarked. The gate is open. Rise, Ashborn."
Elric staggered back.
"No… No, this isn't real. This is a trick. I'm just—hungry. Delirious."
But the air kept twisting. The fires around the pit dimmed further, and the smell of sulfur replaced the ash. The Codex pulsed with heat, and strange sigils burned into his vision—inverted circles, forked glyphs, and slanted lines that reeked of forgotten ages.
He tried to close the book.
It wouldn't close.
Instead, the pages flipped again. A new spell appeared:
> "Ashbind: First Seal of the Demon Arts. Burn the chain. Mark the flesh. Bind what cannot be bound."
Elric backed away.
"Nope. Not doing it. Not casting demon magic. I'm not—some heretic! This is how people get executed!"
And yet…
The spell shimmered like temptation incarnate.
Ashbind.
What would happen if he cast it? What if it could make him stronger? Smarter? Seen?
The book trembled, as if reading his thoughts.
> "You have been forgotten. You have been broken. Now rise."
Suddenly, a roar echoed from up above. A trashfire cart was dumping a new pile of waste—flaming wreckage and broken steel—heading straight toward the pit.
Elric's eyes widened.
"No, no—!"
He dove sideways, book clutched to his chest. A blast of ash and debris erupted as the pile crashed down. Flames whooshed outward.
Instinctively, Elric opened the book and screamed:
> "ASHBIND!"
The Codex flared.
Runes spiraled around him. The flames bent sideways—not away, but toward him.
And wrapped around his body like chains of smoke and coal.
He screamed in pain as they bit into his arms and shoulders, forming glowing shackles that didn't burn his flesh—but marked it. Symbols carved themselves onto his skin, flickering like molten scars, before fading beneath the surface.
Then silence.
The flames died. The air stilled.
Elric fell to his knees, panting, trembling.
The Codex closed itself with a thud.
In the distance, no one noticed. The guards didn't come. The nobles were busy with their banquets and politics.
But something had changed.
Inside him… a door had opened.
A gate.
He didn't know what he'd just done.
He didn't know if the Codex was a curse or salvation.
But for the first time in his life, Elric Dorne Vale felt it:
Power.
Raw. Untamed. Terrifying.
He could feel the world breathing differently around him. The heat no longer scorched. The ash no longer choked. Even the rats nearby hesitated to draw near.
He rose, clutching the black book to his chest.
And laughed. A quiet, broken laugh.
> "First I find a talking book. Then I cast demon magic. What the hell is my life?"
The laugh turned hollow.
But the fire in his eyes was real.
---