The first thing Garrett Cole felt was heat—a coal-ember warmth buried somewhere behind his sternum, pulsing in a rhythm that didn't match his heartbeat.
The second thing he felt was the rough wood of a cart floor against his cheek.
He wasn't dead. This was unexpected. The last thing he remembered was the ceiling coming down, rebar and concrete and the screaming of overstressed steel, and then pressure in his chest that felt like being stepped on by God. He'd had time to think well, that's that, and then nothing.
But this wasn't nothing. This was sensation: the sway of wheels on rough road, the smell of unwashed bodies, the clank of chains. And that strange warmth, pulsing, waiting, like something had been planted in his chest and was now deciding whether to take root.
He kept his eyes closed. Old habit from sites where you didn't know who controlled the ground. Assess before revealing awareness.
Voices nearby, speaking a language he'd never heard but somehow understood, the meanings arriving fully formed like memories he'd always possessed.
"—three more days to Ashenmire."
"Heard there's Thornblood raiders on the eastern pass."
Bored professionals. Men doing a job they'd done a hundred times.
Garrett opened his eyes.
Gray canvas above. A wagon. He lay on bare planks alongside a dozen other bodies—men and women, filthy and still, chained at the ankle in a long line. He was one of them. Iron bit cold against skin that felt too smooth, too young.
His hands were wrong.
He lifted them slowly, examining fingers that didn't belong to him. His hands had been a map of thirty-four years—calluses, scars, the permanent crack in his thumbnail from a dropped hammer. These hands were younger, softer, unmarked. A stranger's hands attached to arms he was somehow operating.
The warmth in his chest pulsed. For a moment—brief, disorienting—he felt observed. As if something behind his ribs had opened an eye.
Then the sensation faded, and Garrett was alone with his inventory of wrongness.
He catalogued the body clinically. Early twenties. Male. Malnourished. Taller than he'd been. No wounds beyond general wear. The rough-spun clothes smelled of someone else's fear, which meant this body had a previous owner. Disturbing, but not immediately actionable.
The woman chained beside him was watching. Hollowed eyes, a face carved to angles by deprivation.
"New fish wakes up," she said flatly. "Thought you might be dead."
"Where are we?" His voice was wrong too—higher, softer.
"Slavers' cart. Ashenmire-bound." She said it the way you'd say Tuesday. "You were bought in Verath. Don't remember?"
"No."
"Might be a blessing."
She turned away. Conversation over.
Garrett lay still and let it settle. Slavers. Slaves. He was property now, in transit to somewhere called Ashenmire, inhabiting a body that wasn't his. Dream logic said he should be terrified, searching for escape. But dreams didn't smell like this. Dreams didn't have chains that bit when the cart jolted.
And dreams didn't come with a strange heat behind the sternum, pulsing like a second heartbeat, patient as stone.
He was somewhere else. Someone else. And the part of him that should have been horrified was instead quietly interested.
Three days taught him the basics. This world had normal physics—sun, weather, gravity. The other slaves were war prisoners, debtors, heretics. Heresy meant questioning the church, and the church apparently ran everything. The guards feared their overseer, a priest named Demos who rode at the convoy's head with the expression of a man who'd never been told no.
The warmth in his chest never faded. If anything, it grew stronger as they traveled—a low thrum that seemed to respond to his attention, settling when he focused on it, flaring faintly when strong emotions passed through him.
Garrett watched everything. It was what he did—finding load-bearing elements, stress points, places where systems failed. People weren't different. Everyone had architecture.
The guards were professional but not zealous. The slaves were broken in varying degrees. The convoy prioritized survival over speed, which meant the cargo had value. He was merchandise. The thought should have been degrading. Instead, he found it clarifying. Merchandise had parameters. Parameters could be worked within—or around.
Ashenmire revealed itself on the fourth morning: a valley that looked like the earth had developed a skin disease. Great pits scarred the landscape, surrounded by scaffolding and strange machinery. Smoke rose from furnaces. The air tasted like metal.
The moment they crossed into the valley, the warmth in Garrett's chest surged. Not painful—but intense, like a current suddenly finding ground. Something in this place resonated with whatever had taken up residence inside him.
He filed that away. Another variable. Another question.
"Welcome to the Ashenmire Reclamation Facility," a guard announced. "Property of the Ascendancy of the Eternal Flame. You are now assets of the church. Serve well and earn redemption. Serve poorly and earn a quick ending."
Processing was efficient. Slaves sorted, rechained, assigned. A bored clerk recorded names without looking up.
"Garrett Cole." The stylus paused. "Not from around here."
"No."
"Place of origin?"
"I don't remember."
"Head injury. Common enough." A note scratched. "Pit Fourteen, Deep Ore Extraction. Report to Foreman Aldric."
Deep extraction. He filed that as he was shuffled toward the grimmer section of camp. The warmth in his chest pulsed stronger with every step toward the mines, like a compass needle finding north.
Foreman Aldric gathered Garrett's group and assessed them like resources. "You're miners now. Doesn't matter what you were. The church wants godite. You bring it up." He paused. "The ore does things. Colors that aren't there. Sounds that shouldn't exist. Some adjust. Some don't."
Godite. The word meant nothing, but Garrett caught how the others flinched.
"Don't touch raw ore bare-handed. Don't look into the deep veins. And if you hear something calling your name from the dark—ignore it."
When the group dispersed, Garrett lingered. "The ore. It does things to people. Is that connected to how the church works?"
Aldric studied him. Something sharpened in his gaze. "You ask dangerous questions. The kind that get men burned."
"I'm not interested in trouble. I'm interested in understanding."
"You're in a mine. You dig. That's all the understanding you need."
Garrett nodded and turned away.
He made it three steps before the screaming started.
A slave was running—sprinting toward the perimeter with the desperate speed of someone who'd decided death in the attempt beat death in the pits. Guards shouted, moving too slow.
Overseer Demos was not slow.
The priest stood a hundred yards away. He didn't run. He didn't raise his voice. He lifted one hand and looked.
Fire.
Not fire from anywhere—fire that simply was, erupting from the slave's body without source or fuel. One moment a man. The next, a pillar of flame shaped like a man, screaming at a pitch that would haunt sleep. Then ash. A heap of gray powder and the glint of a half-melted chain.
Demos lowered his hand. "Let that serve as reminder that the Flame's justice is swift."
The camp resumed. And Garrett stood motionless, staring at the settling ash.
The warmth in his chest had flared when the fire erupted—a sympathetic pulse, like recognizing a cousin. Something inside him knew that flame. Resonated with it. Wanted it.
He should have been horrified.
He was fascinated.
Magic. Real, functional, weaponized magic. And somewhere behind his sternum, something ancient had woken up and started paying attention.
Garrett Cole had died saving people he barely knew—not from heroism, but from a momentary weakness he'd spent years regretting. Whatever accident had deposited him here had given him something his old life lacked.
A system worth breaking. A power worth claiming. And no one left to disappoint when he did.
He turned toward the barracks, already designing experiments.
The overseer's fire had been meant as warning.
For Garrett, it was an invitation.
End of Chapter One