Ashveil always smelled of warm bread and metal.
The scent floated through narrow streets, mixing with the soft blue glow of the barrier pylons above. The pylons pulsed slowly, like the calm beat of a giant's heart, wrapping the city in its protective hum.
From a distance, Ashveil looked like a fortress from an old story. Thirty-meter alloy walls circled the stronghold, their surfaces etched with thin, glowing lines called wards. Watchtowers stood at each corner, their rail cannons scanning the wasteland beyond. And above everything, the pylons rose like silver trees, casting soft rings of light into the night.
Kael Stormfell had loved the pylons for as long as he could remember. He would stand on the balcony and count them one by one, tracing the ghostly lines that linked each tower to the next. His mother had taught him the proper name: the pylon grid.
"The grid is our shield," she would say, pointing to the faint shimmer that sometimes flashed over the rooftops when a gust of Veyra rolled in from the wilds. "Each pylon is covered in sigils—special shapes that guide Veyra. When the pylons connect, they make a shield around Ashveil. We call it the grid."
"Who keeps it on?" Kael had asked the first time.
"Vitalis Veyrants," his mother said. "They're Veyra users who weave protection, healing, and support. They don't throw fire or swing giant blades, but they hold this city together. Without them, the grid would flicker and fail."
His father liked to put it another way. "Vitalis are the reason we sleep at night," Darius would say, tapping the railing with two fingers. "Without them, all the hunters in the world wouldn't be enough."
Inside the walls, life felt warm. Markets buzzed from sunrise to sunset. Merchants under patched canvas awnings sold bread, spare pylon batteries, and strange bits of polished tech pulled from old ruins. Hunters leaned on steel benches, armor plates stacked beside them, trading stories in loud voices. Children dashed through the crowd chasing paper gliders that rode the pylon breeze.
Ashveil was a Stronghold—the last safe place before the Outer Ring. People often talked about the four kinds of settlements left after the Gate appeared:
1. Hearthholds — huge, well-shielded cities deep inland, where rich families and elite hunters lived.
2. Bastions — big towns with strong walls, closer to danger, but steady and organized.
3. Strongholds — border fortresses like Ashveil, where hunters trained and patrols launched into the Rings.
4. Outposts — tiny camps far out in monster territory, where survival was never promised.
Ashveil was a ladder between safety and the unknown. Most days, the ladder held. Some nights, it shook.
⸻
Kael's routine began with breakfast and numbers. He was six, but numbers were his favorite toys. He liked how they fit together, clicked, and made the world make sense. His mother, Mira Stormfell, was an Archivist. She couldn't use Veyra—people like her were called Drifters—but she was quick-minded and careful. Archivists gathered knowledge, old and new. They kept records from before the Gate, mapped monster paths, copied sigils, stored battle reports, and kept designs for weapons and barriers in neat, permanent files. Liora worked in the Archive Hall, a wide, bright room full of quiet voices and glowing tables.
Kael loved the Archive Hall almost as much as he loved warm bread. He would sit in the corner with his puzzle-glove—a small device that projected shapes into the air—while Mira sorted reports and updated maps. Sometimes she let him help.
"Sort these by Ring," she would say, sliding a stack of reports toward him. "Ash, Ember, Coal. We'll send the rest to the patrol board."
"Some people say Amber instead of Ember," Kael would point out, proud of this tiny piece of trivia.
"They do," his mother would smile. "The old-timers like how it sounds. But the official rank is Ember."
He liked the way she said official, like it made the world tidier.
On the way to the hall, Kael had a path he liked to walk. First stop was Brenna's Bakery, where the air was sweet and the ovens never seemed to rest. Brenna always saved him the end slice of a honey roll.
"For the fastest errand boy in Ashveil," she'd say, pressing the warm piece into his palm.
Next came Tovin the Gearwright, who sold metal parts, drone wings, and odd gears with teeth like tiny jaws. Tovin let Kael twist screws and test the joints on broken drones as long as he promised not to "accidentally make them fly into my face again."
"It was only once," Kael would protest.
"Once is a tradition waiting to happen," Tovin would reply, but his eyes were always kind.
By midday, Kael and Mira reached the hall. The entry doors slid open with a whisper, letting them into the soft light. Archivists walked between tables, talking quietly, dragging glowing shapes of maps and sigils across air-screens. The hall smelled faintly of old paper and hot ink, even though most of the work was done by projection now. Liora guided a floating list with her finger and showed Kael a row of reports.
"Border sightings," she said. "Ash-tier shadow-wolves yesterday, Ember-tier tusk-runners two nights ago. Coal-tier? Not this week. Good news for us."
Kael sorted them carefully. Ash on the left. Ember in the center. Coal on the right—empty today. He liked when Coal was empty.
In the late afternoon, Kael and his mother walked home along the main street. The pylon grid hummed above, steady and calm. Children traded marbles made from smooth monster shell. Vitalis in pale coats carried cases of glowing crystals to the wall towers. Drifters fixed boots, repaired carts, and haggled loudly over the price of pylon batteries. Veyrants—people who could use Veyra in battle—passed by in armor, their eyes bright with the same faint shimmer Kael sometimes saw in his father's.
Two kinds of people kept Ashveil alive: Veyrants and Drifters. One held the walls. The other held everything inside them. Kael liked that both mattered.
⸻
By evening, the light mellowed to a soft gold. That's when Darius Stormfell came home—Kael's favorite part of the day. You could hear Darius coming before you saw him. Not because he was loud, but because everyone greeted him on the walk back: a nod from the watch sergeant, a wave from Brenna, a promise from Tovin that this time the replacement hinge would hold.
Kael would wait on the balcony and squint down the street. When he saw the tall figure with the long coat, he would shout, "Arm wrestle?"
Darius would look up, grin, and call back, "You're not ready!"
"I'm readier than you!"
By the time Darius reached the door, Kael was already bouncing on his toes. The entryway became a battlefield of laughter and fake grunts as Kael tried to pin his father's hand to the table. Darius would let him get close, then wobble dramatically.
"He's winning, Mira!" Darius would gasp. "We're doomed!"
"We were doomed the moment I married a child," Mira would say, but she'd be smiling when she said it.
Some nights Darius' coat smelled of oil and cold air. On others, it carried the slight metallic tang that followed Veyra-heavy patrols. He was Voidtouched, a kind of Veyrant who could pull Veyra into his own muscles and bones, making him stronger and faster. Kael thought his father was the bravest person alive. Not because of how he fought—but because he always came home laughing.
They ate simple dinners. Bread, stew, sometimes fried meat if the day had been kind. Stories always came with the food. Darius told them best. He could make a near-disaster in the training yard sound like the funniest thing in the world. He could turn a quiet night on the wall into a legend about a pylon that refused to hum in key until someone sang to it.
"Did you really sing to a pylon?" Kael asked.
"No," Darius said solemnly. "I hummed."
Mira threw a crust of bread at him. He caught it without looking.
⸻
That night, while they were cleaning up, there was a knock—two quick taps and a scrape. Old Marrek, their neighbor from down the hall, stepped in without waiting. In Ashveil, you didn't need to wait if your feet already knew the path.
"Pylon grid's steady tonight," Marrek said, leaning on his cane. "Storm shook it yesterday. Vitalis were up there all afternoon patching sigils and swapping cells."
"Good," Darius said. "I like steady."
Kael slid a cup of water toward Marrek. "What's it like when the grid shakes?"
Marrek's eyes softened. "Feels wrong in your chest. Like a big drum that forgot the beat." He sipped, then nodded at Kael. "So. Have you learned the monster ranks yet?"
"I know some," Kael said, sitting straighter. "Ash is the weakest. Then Ember—some people say Amber. Then Coal. After that is Iron, then Steel, then Obsidian, then Eclipse, and the worst is Voidborn."
Marrek smiled. "That's the list."
"And the Rings," Darius added, holding up fingers as he spoke. "Outer Ring—that's our border. Ash, Ember, Coal. Middle Ring—Iron, Steel, Obsidian. Inner Ring—Eclipse and Voidborn. And the Heart…"
"Is where no one returns," Marrek finished gently.
Kael shivered, but only a little. He didn't like to show it.
Marrek set his cup down and looked at the three of them as if weighing whether to tell the story that sat heavy behind his eyes. He decided to tell it.
"I was there," he said quietly. "Not in Ashveil. Far from here. Fifty years ago, I was riding with a trade caravan across the middle of the continent. Clear sky. Easy day. Then the sky… changed. It didn't look like a storm. It looked like someone had taken a knife to the air. The cut was black. Not dark like night. Black like… like it ate the light around it."
Mira pulled out a chair and sat. Darius leaned on the counter, arms folded. Kael didn't blink.
"We all stopped," Marrek went on. "The horses tried to run the other way. We couldn't. The ground felt heavy. Then it breathed."
"Breathed?" Kael echoed, though he knew the word. Everyone did.
"Not wind," Marrek said. "Not air. It pushed through us. Like the world had lungs and we were inside them. The breath rolled over the land. The first monsters came with it. Some looked like wolves with too many eyes. Some like shadows fighting to be real. We ran. People who could use this new energy—Veyra—started to awaken. They saved who they could. The rest of us ran for the walls and prayed someone had built them high."
He chuckled, but it wasn't a happy sound. "Walls weren't common then. The ones who had them survived. The ones who didn't… didn't."
Kael swallowed. "How did you get here?"
"Followed the caravans, one city to the next, until I found a place where the pylons hummed steady," Marrek said. "That place was Ashveil."
The room was quiet for a moment. The grid hummed above them, soft and sure.
Darius cleared his throat and reached for the bread knife. "Well," he said, letting the word hang, "Marrek saved the good stories for a night when I was home, I see."
"You'd ruin them with jokes," Marrek said, but he smiled when he said it.
"I would improve them with jokes," Darius replied. He cut three even slices and passed one to each of them, then tapped the point of the knife against the table. "Remember this, Kael: the world beyond the wall isn't just full of monsters. It's full of rules. We follow the rules, we live. We ignore them, we don't."
Kael nodded. He would have nodded even if he didn't understand, but he did. He understood rules. He liked them. They made big things small enough to hold.
After Marrek left, the three of them stepped out onto the balcony. The night was clear. From here, you could see past the wall—past the last pylon tower—to where the ground turned rough and dark. The Outer Ring lay out there, a wide, empty stretch broken by bones of old roads and toothy silhouettes of ruined buildings. Sometimes, if you listened closely, you could hear a sound that might have been wind and might have been something else.
Kael leaned against the rail and squinted as if squinting could push the darkness back. Darius rested a hand on his hair and mussed it gently.
"One day," Kael said, almost too softly to hear, "I'll see the Gate."
Darius made a thoughtful sound. "And then what?"
"I'll make it stop breathing."
Mira looked at him, then at Darius. Her smile was small but steady. "If anyone could turn a breath off," she said, "it would be my son."
They went inside. Mira set the table for the morning. Darius pretended to hide the last piece of bread behind his back, and Kael pretended not to notice before stealing it anyway. They argued playfully about who won the arm wrestle that never happened.
Later, in bed, Kael lay awake and watched the pale glow of the pylon rings slide across the ceiling in slow, gentle waves. He counted the pulses—one, two, three—until the numbers melted into dreams.
He dreamed of a sky with a black wound. He dreamed of a shield of light holding steady. He dreamed of sigils he did not yet know how to draw.
And somewhere, far beyond the walls, the Gate took another quiet breath.