From the edge of the high ridge, the vast region of Ruinhold looked almost… small.
What sprawled below—endless provinces stitched together by winding rivers and cobblestones, dark rooftops, and smoke trails from chimneys—should have felt intimidating. But from here, where the wind blew past jagged cliffs and thinned the heavy breath in his lungs, it felt like something else entirely.
It felt… manageable and distant. Less cruel, even.
A boy sat still in his wheelchair, a blanket tucked around his legs that had long stopped responding to his will. The weight of the world didn't press so hard at this height. Down there, he was nothing but a stain on his father's legacy. Up here, the sky made room for him. And suddenly, the world seemed bearable.
But he knew better, for he could never stay up there forever.
"Young Master," his caregiver called out behind him, her voice trembling with fear. "It's too high here, we should go back now." She moved closer to him. "Your father The Warlord would be concerned now, we've been gone for hours!"
The boy glanced at her coldly, and then returned his gaze to the city of Ruinhold that looked like a toy once more.
The boy knew better. He knew his father wouldn't be concerned—he'd be happy to learn of his death, in fact.
For the eleventh time in sixteen years, he'd failed the Testing again.
After the first Phantom War which was a Battle between Gods and Men, fueled by King Zod the Cruel, it was said that the men who prevailed were bestowed immense powers by Queen Lyra, the goddess of Life, to commend them for taking down the Cruel god, her counterpart and husband.
Since then, The Testing had become an ancestral process performed in noble Houses across the empire of Bloodcrest to determine which of the six powers—Fire, Ice, Earth, Wind, Poison and Mind—they wielded.
For certain Houses had direct lineage to the earlier men bestowed the powers, said certain Houses had peculiar powers which they'd preserved for centuries. House Draeven, the current Warlord House of Ruinhold and his family, had always wielded Fire. House Evaran of the Glacien Reach wielded Ice, House Thornmire of Osnyr wielded Earth, House Aurellan—the ruling House of the Bloodcrest Empire—wielded Wind, while Mind was rare and random; most scholars regarded to it as the Gift of Wielding to be cultivated, but that was yet to hold any water.
However, this boy was yet to create any flame.
One time when he was seven, he'd created a spark so dim that it could only wink. But that was all it was. Years later, they'd tried other methods—both new and old.
Locked him in a hot cauldron: If he had the Fire in him, his body could adapt to the heat and he'd survive. That had failed. In fact, the only thing that had manifested was his scalded skin that looked so disgusting to the eye.
They adopted other methods too, with the Elders hypothesizing that he just couldn't wield the Fire, but could definitely wield one of the other four.
He's been suspended in air, with the hope that he'd survive by wielding Wind. He'd been buried in glaciers and ice tombs, only to be rescued on the verge of death.
Series of attempts to help him find his spark had proven unsuccessful, and the Elders grew tired of trying. But his father had grown increasingly frustrated, until he'd managed to convince him to let him take the Testing again.
Ever since, it'd been a series of unfortunate disappointments that made him a laughingstock of Ruinhold, the subject of mockery for his six brothers, and his father's greatest disappointment.
It didn't even help matters that he was on a wheelchair after being pushed off the roof by Alan, his oldest brother.
The mockery only worsened.
No flames, and no legs. How would you live, brother?
You're as useless as your nonfunctional legs.
You're my greatest disappointment. Sometimes, I wish I'd stopped after Onyx was born. You took my wife's life and gave me nothing for compensation. You fucking imbecile!
That was all the memory he had of how life had been for him in sixteen years.
So, no. The boy knew his caregiver was telling him a big fucking lie.
His father couldn't care less if he died or went away, never to return. In fact, he'd be happy to never have to cater for him again, nor bear the embarrassment of having a useless child.
Nor would his brothers bat an eyelid if they saw him dead. They might've been disappointed, but that'd be because they weren't the ones who killed him after successfully driving him to madness.
The boy dared to move closer just then. He wheeled himself closer to the end of the ridge, daring to stare down to fathom how deep it was from the sky. He wondered what it'd feel like to fall from such a height, with nothing reining him.
He wondered what it felt like… to die and feel nothing.
"Young Master!" His caregiver gasped in shock as she moved closer, trying to wheel him away from the edge. "That's… that's dangerous! Please get away from the edge!"
He laughed lightly just then, his gaze still fixated on the lush green landscape that laid out beneath the ridge he was.
"This is hardly dangerous," he muttered. "If this is danger, then everything I've had to face up until this moment has been nothing but cruelty."
"Please get away from there, Young Master!"
Instead, he dared to inch closer, just then. He could feel the adrenaline flowing through his body as his heart hammered against his chest. He embraced the thrill, and soon, his pounding heart became the only sound he could hear.
The boy took one final glance at Ruinhold—the one place that could never provide him a home, despite all of its vastness—with resentment in his heart.
For the first time, he'd hated them all.
At first, he'd blamed himself for everything.
He'd blamed himself for his mother death when in reality, she had drugged herself before labor which in turn, had caused her to be too numb to push.
He'd blamed himself for never being able to create the slightest of sparks.
He'd blamed himself for being the stain on the family's perfect portrait and being his father's biggest shame and his brothers' subject of mockery because they weren't proud of him.
The boy had blamed himself for every single misfortune that befell him and never found it in him to hate them because that way, it was much easier to admit that he was the problem; not the world. It was much easier to loathe himself and convince himself that he was the broken one and not those around him.
But staring at Ruinhold from that height had changed that.
How could the world be so vast, and still not make space for him?
How could the Continent be filled with thousands of people and not one could love him?
How could the goddess be so cruel to him that he couldn't be blessed with the Gift of Wielding?
Was he really simultaneously unworthy of love and power?
It all came crashing down on him and something snapped. The first two wheels of his wheelchair were dangling now, and the only thing holding him back was the back wheels and his caregiver's hands.
He loathed them.
He loathed everything.
He hated them all: both the rules, the Gift of Wielding, the Testing, and goddess of Life.
So, he braced himself, forcefully willing his legs to give him just the final push to walk away from the world and ditch it all behind.
The boy mustered every ounce of strength in his body and jumped from the wheelchair.
He didn't fight it. Rather, it felt liberating. As the wind mercilessly whipped at his face, and the pressure smothered him, knocking the air out of his lungs, he didn't feel the pain.
Instead, he took it as a normal day, and that his brothers were simply torturing him or his father was simply punishing him for being weak.
"Free, at last."
Were the final words that could pathetically leave his mouth as the lush green forest gave way to the rocky landscape that crested beneath them.
As his head cracked against the rocks, the only thing that could linger on his mind, was how something as simple as a crack could put an end to his misery, and how relieving it felt to close his eyes without the burden of ever opening them again.
Somewhere in the Glacien Reach…
A boy laid tattered on the cold ground, blood dyeing his cloth as he slowly lifted his head. He'd passed out.
Pain.
Pain was all he felt as his bones felt like a bag of lead in his skin. It echoed in his skull and the rest of his entire being, but he felt no bleeding. He hadn't lost blood, no. So where was the pain from?
Slowly, he began acknowledging his surrounding. It started with a solid iciness pressing against his body. The smell of ice and thick air tickled his nostrils, almost causing him to sneeze.
Cold bit into his bones as he shivered on the ground. Finally, his eyes cracked open slowly and he looked up to see what was happening.
He didn't understand.
He'd committed suicide previously, killing himself by falling off The Ruinhold cliff on his wheelchair. Now, he sat in the middle of what seemed like a trial, and he could feel his legs.
The boy gently lifted himself off the ground, standing on his legs. He had legs. His legs were functioning, and his wheelchair wasn't anywhere near him.
But where was he? He couldn't say.
He had no idea.
The joy of having the one thing he'd desired so much for years smothered him. He could walk again!
"Kavik." An elder in a dark blue tunic called out, his eyes cold like ice, betraying no emotion.
He sat calmly in the middle of six other elders, looking regal and authoritative. He must be the leader.
It seemed like his name, considering the others shot their eyes at him, lips curled in disdain.
He looked down at himself to see a tattered, blood-soaked tunic around his neck and barely covering his entire body.
Whoever this Kavik was, he'd been tortured to death. Somehow, the boy thought this new life wasn't better.
"How is he still alive!" Another man sneered, stretching his arms towards Kavik as the icy ground began to slowly crack. "The Void must've possessed his soul!"
"Sal, stop!" The leader seized control of the ice, returning it to its original state.
Then it struck him. The Art of Ice Wielding. Blue tunics and a seven-man court. The boy let his mind wander down the history lessons he'd taken for sixteen years.
"Red is for Ruinhold, and Green is for Osnyr, Black is for Serpent's Hollow, Amber is for House Aurellan…" They'dsing in History class.
Provinces had their symbolic colors and sigils, and they were the first you'd learn as students.
"…and Blue is for Glacien Reach." He completed, as the first words he'd said as Kavik.
So, he was in Glacien Reach. But why?
"Do you know what you did, Kavik?" The elder's voice held no emotion. Kavik, confused, shook his head negatively, earning a scornful expression and a disapproving grunt from the other elders.
"You wielded the Phantom Flame and attacked your classmates with it."
Kavik had no memory of that. In fact, he had no memory at all. But one thing echoed in his head: he could wield.
He wielded the Phantom Flame?
"I…did?" He sounded unsure, staring at his palm. He could feel the surge of rage and power and so much fury in his veins, but he wasn't sure.
"Don't play with us lad!" Elder Sal, who had attacked Kavik, raged out again. "I bet you're getting ready to wield all that flame and burn a hole through us again, you forsaken monster!"
"Isn't it odd, Sal, how quickly you turn on your own student?" A woman amongst the elders smirked, her voice the perfect pitch as she set her mug down. "Up until now, you've paraded your students who excelled at the various Noble fields. Suddenly one of them is a monster for following your own footsteps? Or does repentance fully wash you of your past?"
Elder Sal sneered, his face reddening with rage. "Liana—"
"Enough, you two." The room dropped silent at the elder's voice again.
"Kavik." The Leader didn't look at him with hatred, but with the weary detachment of a man observing a plague victim. "Come closer."
He took a step. The sensation of his heels hitting solid ground was euphoric. He was sturdy. He was standing.
"Six students are in the infirmary, Kavik," The elder continued, his voice resonating through the court. "Their lungs are charred, yet there were no embers. Only a lilac haze that defied the laws of the Goddess. Do you deny this?"
"I... I don't remember," Kavik whispered. It was the truth, but it was obvious they didn't buy it. They'd made up their mind on what to believe, and Kavik's words were not part of it.
"He is a seed of King Zod!" Elder Sal barked, frost crawling up his arm like armor. "Shatter his core before he burns the Reach to cinders!"
"We do not shatter students," The Elder countered, standing up. The air in the room seemed to vanish. "We prune them. Kavik of the Reach, you are hereby Severed."
The word felt like a physical blow. It felt as if something had been pulled from his chest painfully.
Severance wasn't merely a term, it included the removal of a spiritual binding to the Reach itself.
"Your name is struck. Your lineage is forfeit. By law, you are a Phantom-mark, fit only for the wolves. However..." his eyes turned cold as the ice beneath them. "You have an Uncle in the Grey Barrens. A man who knows much about fire and even more about things the Empire wishes to forget."
He signaled the guards.
"Take him. If he returns to the Reach, kill him. If he Wields that cursed filth on the road, kill him."
As the guards lunged for his arms, Kavik didn't fight. He looked at his functioning hands, feeling the oily, frantic pulse of the power they all feared. He had legs now. He had a flame.
As they dragged him away, one thing became clear to him: whatever life this Kavik led, it was his now. And he intended to use it to the fullest.