Varkai: Arc I — Ashes of the Shatterworld
> "They come in the quiet. When the pulse runs low. When the torches sleep."
The evening hung heavy over Venshade, thicker than usual. Clouds of ash drifted through the air like dying fireflies, and even the twisted wind over Scarspire Ridge had gone still.
Inside a weather-worn hut built beside the shrine ruins, seven-year-old Vrakon curled beside a shallow hearth, arms around his knees. His eyes—pale with fractured spiral irises—reflected the dying embers.
Elder Shayra sat nearby, grinding dried ashroots into a pale dust. Her hands moved slowly, bones creaking beneath her cracked skin. The flicker of Genesis Pulse in the crystal beads braided into her hair pulsed faintly—steady and tired, like her.
Vrakon's voice was a whisper. "Why does the Pulse feel… scared?"
Shayra's hand stopped mid-grind. Her gaze, blind in one eye, turned toward the boy. "You feel that?"
He nodded. "It's like… something is looking through it."
She leaned back with a sigh and gently closed the mortar. "Then it's begun."
---
🌫️ Flashback: "Ash and Echoes" (Five Years Earlier)
The storm that killed his parents had turned most of the village into scorched hollows. Stone-glass husks lay everywhere—paralyzed in screams, their final expressions preserved like shattered statues.
And in the middle of it all, she found him.
A toddler, wrapped in a burnt cloth. Sitting unharmed on the broken steps of the Pulse-Seer shrine. The storm should've flayed his soul apart. But it hadn't.
He didn't cry. He pulsed.
Shayra approached him through a field of crackling ash. Her own Pulse flared defensively, prepared for corruption.
Instead, the child tilted his head.
And the Pulse in Shayra's own body… hummed.
The spiral mark in his left eye faintly glowed as if echoing something ancient.
Her breath caught. "You… shouldn't be alive."
She lifted him into her arms. The world around her wept embers, and still, he watched her silently.
"They'll fear you," she whispered. "But I will not."
And so she took him.
To her hut.
To the ruins of a forgotten shrine where fractured gods were once heard.
And there, she raised him.
---
🩸 Present — The Raid Begins
That night, something moved beyond the outer trees. Torches—not village torches—moved too swiftly, too deliberately.
Shayra stood suddenly, Pulse beads dimming.
"They come."
"Who?" Vrakon asked.
She handed him a vial of dried ashroot. "Hide behind the offering altar. Do not speak. Do not blink."
Vrakon backed into the shrine's shadows, hiding near the cracked relief of a forgotten god.
The door burst inward.
Three men and one woman, armor pulsing red with stolen energy, strode in like shadows given bone.
At their front was Maro Kren—a known Pulse-Leecher from the southern ruins. A Level 2 Essence Initiate, his body shimmered with artificial Pulse corruption.
His eyes locked onto Shayra.
"I heard you're keeping something strange, old woman."
Shayra stood tall. "Only bones and prayers remain here."
Maro's grin split wide. "Then let me see the corpse."
He motioned, and the others moved. One tore aside the altar screen. Another knocked over the incense jars.
Vrakon flinched, but stayed still.
Until one of the raiders caught a glimpse of spiral light.
"There!"
Maro stepped close, crouching. "Well, well. You're a pretty little Pulse echo, aren't you?"
Vrakon screamed as they dragged him out.
Shayra stepped forward, Pulse flaring. Her core crystal glowed fiercely as she raised her hand—ready to ignite a shockwave.
But Maro was faster.
A wave of bloodlight struck her chest.
She fell to her knees, coughing.
"Shame," Maro said coldly. "Could've sold your core."
He turned.
"Bag the spiral-eyed one. We leave before another storm."
---
🛤️ On the Road to Old Therum
Bound and half-conscious, Vrakon was dragged across ash-slick hills for hours.
Beside him were two other children: a girl named Saelin, age 8, from a farmstead east of Bonevale Grave, and a silent boy named Thren, who had a faint Pulse flicker around his neck.
Saelin whimpered. "Where are they taking us?"
Vrakon, bruised and quiet, looked up. "I don't know… but the Pulse is screaming."
Maro's voice echoed from up front. "To Old Therum, my little sparks. A place where souls bloom."
He laughed.
No one else did.