Morning clung to the Soulforge Training Grounds like mist over a battlefield—soft at the edges, but hiding the bite beneath.
The grounds stretched across the cracked hills like a scar, a strange hybrid of old-world grit and arcane remains. Crumbling stone barracks leaned into each other beside humming pylons of brass and obsidian, Soulforge relics from a time when humanity shaped the world with light and will. Some still pulsed faintly—slow, steady heartbeats of forgotten power. Others were cold and lifeless, haunted by silence.
Trainees moved through formations like blades unsheathed, sweat glistening in the early sun. Threads of soul-energy flicked from their hands—lines of light twisted into lashes, arcs, or sharpened darts. Each flicker was a display of dominance. A living testament to how far their Soulbrand had carried them.
Cael stood on the edge of it all.
Thin, dust-smudged, alone.
His Soulbrand—barely a pale thread winding up his wrist—glimmered only when the sun hit it just right. A ghost mark. The weakest kind. Some called it a mistake. Others, a curse.
He tightened his fingers into a trembling fist.
On the training field, a girl spun with practiced grace, gold thread snapping from her palm. The lash struck a hovering orb dead center, splitting it in half. Cheers rose from nearby trainees. Confidence surged across the grounds like heat off sunbaked stone.
Cael inhaled. Felt the air in his lungs. The dust in his throat.
Now.
He raised his hand.
A faint shimmer answered—flickering essence sparked between his fingers—but it was wild. Unstable. It twisted before he could guide it and snapped back with a sharp recoil, cracking against his chest. He stumbled backward, breath knocked out of him, and landed flat in the dirt.
Laughter cut the air.
"Still trying, weakling?"
He didn't look to know who it was. Tarris. Rank Two. Loud, talented, and merciless.
Cael stared up at the sky, the clouds drifting lazy and uncaring overhead.
My Soulbrand's weak. Always has been. He sat up slowly, brushing grit from his tunic. Most kids spark bright by twelve. I'm nearly fifteen and I can barely shape a thread. Not even ranked. I'm nothing.
He looked down at the thread-mark etched into his skin. It shimmered faintly, then faded.
The Nine Ranks. That's the path. One through Nine—each level a step closer to the soul's full awakening. But most never climb past Three. Four if they're lucky. Rank Five? That's elite. Rank Six? Untouchable. The highest anyone's reached in the last hundred years. Only three living humans bear it.
And Rank Seven…?
Ancient myth. Names chiseled into the Vaultstones. Wielders of storms. Breakers of cities. If they existed at all, they belonged to another age.
I'll be lucky if I ever touch Rank One.
And yet…
Beyond the walls, just past the horizon, the blackened edge of the world waited—the Dead Zone. A jagged land where soul-energy twisted and bled into ruin. Where Cael's sister had vanished three years ago.
Lira.
Rank Five. Strong. Beautiful. The only one who ever believed he could be more.
She'd walked into the Dead Zone on a rescue mission.
She never came back.
He could still hear her voice in dreams, still remember how her brand glowed like wildfire the night she left. He had begged her not to go. She had smiled and told him to be strong.
I wasn't. I ran when the ash came. I watched her die and couldn't do anything.
He forced himself to his feet.
I won't run again.
A shadow passed over him, followed by the familiar crunch of heavy boots.
"Still wrestling with the wind?" came a voice like gravel and smoke.
Cael turned to see Instructor Bren—scarred, weatherworn, and built like an old war golem. His face was a map of battlefields. His left eye was milky and blind; his right burned like a blade waiting to swing. His brand—deep violet and ringed 5 times—glowed through the thin fabric of his sleeve.
A true veteran. Mabye one of the last, though it was said his power had long since withered.
Cael straightened. "Instructor."
"You thread like a drunk with broken fingers." Bren crossed his arms. "Your pull is slow, your focus worse. You want to survive the Dead Zone with that? You'll last ten seconds."
Cael opened his mouth. Closed it again.
Bren stared at him, then grunted.
"You think power's about brightness? About how loud your brand sings? Let me tell you something, boy—brands don't make men. Pain does. Surviving it. Learning from it. Living through what should've ended you."
He stepped closer.
"You want to climb the Nine Ranks?" he said. "Most die before they reach Four. Rank Six is the ceiling now. No one's gone higher in a century. The Rank Sevens—they're legends. Warnings carved into stone. Gods or monsters. Maybe both."
He let the silence settle.
"If you want to matter, you'd better start surviving the pain."
And with that, he turned and stalked off, barking orders at a nearby group.
Cael stood frozen for a beat. Then—
"Such poetic wisdom," came a drawling voice behind him.
Tarris.
Of course.
He strolled forward with that infuriating, easy gait. His Soulbrand—silver and coiled like a serpent—gleamed across his forearm. Elegant. Strong. Mocking.
"Let's see if it worked," Tarris said. "Maybe the speech boosted your spark."
"Get lost," Cael muttered.
"Oh? Starting to bite now, are we?" Tarris smiled. "Go on then. Impress me."
Cael raised his hand again, soul-thread flickering to life.
This time it came faster—his heart burning with the memory of Lira, of Bren's words, of everything he had lost.
But the thread twisted, slipped—and turned against him.
It snapped tight around his legs, pulling him down hard. Cael hit the ground with a choked gasp.
Tarris didn't even laugh this time. He just looked down at him, eyes cold.
"You'll die out there," he said. "Unless you figure out who you are."
And then he walked away.
Cael lay in the dust, fists clenched so tightly his nails dug into his palms.
He's wrong, he told himself.
But he wasn't sure.
A horn sounded across the grounds—a deep, resonant call that silenced even the loudest trainees.
All eyes turned toward the central platform.
Commander Deyra stood atop it, her black armor traced with burning red runes. Her Soulbrand was visible even at a distance—etched high across her shoulder like a scar left by the gods. Rank five. One of the few confirmed.
"ATTENTION," she called, voice carrying across the grounds. "The final culling begins at dawn."
A wave of silence rippled across the field.
"You will enter the Dead Zone in squads. Survival is the only measure of success. Those who return will be ranked. Those who fall… will be remembered."
Cael's blood turned to ice.
The Dead Zone. The trial. The place Lira had gone. The place he would now enter, not as a child chasing ghosts—but as a boy ready to become something more.
His hands shook. But his eyes stayed fixed on the horizon.
"I will survive," he whispered.
His voice didn't crack.
"I will become more."