There are cities that sleep, and cities that forget.
But Astrael was neither. Astrael remembered everything. Even the gods had tried to silence it, burying it in snowstorms, drowning it in shadow, cracking its spires with thunder—but still, the city stood. Reborn. Rebuilt. Cursed again.
Astrael was once known as the First Flame of the North, its marble towers brushing the clouds like fingers of white fire. Its scholars mapped stars others feared to name. Its warriors wielded blades carved from celestial stone. Its children were raised not to obey—but to question.
And that was its first sin.
While other cities bent the knee to the twin gods—Solvaron, god of light and order, and Nythra, goddess of night and chaos—Astrael chose a third path: its own. It crafted a creed known as the Vow of the Unbound, a doctrine older than stone, which proclaimed:
> "We shall not kneel to light nor shadow, for both demand blindness. We choose vision, though it cost us everything."
The gods listened.
And they wept. Then raged.
They descended, not as gods, but as storms. Solvaron's wrath scorched half the city into white ash; Nythra's sorrow drowned the other in black fog. Together, they spoke a single decree over the broken stones:
> "Let Astrael die a hundred deaths. Let it rise again each time, only to suffer anew. May its people be reborn with every century, cursed with new horrors—but never peace. Never rest."
Thus began the Infinite Curse.
The first cycle birthed a city of flame. Towers burned without fuel, and its people combusted every dawn—only to awaken the next night, screaming.
The second became a city of silence. Voices were torn from throats at birth. Children grew with no names, and died with no memory of sound.
The third birthed a city of mirrors. Everything reflected itself—buildings, emotions, even thoughts. Madness bloomed like ivy on every corner.
And so it continued. The Fourth Curse, the Fifteenth Curse, the Forty-Seventh...
With each rebirth, the gods changed the shape of Astrael's suffering. Sometimes subtly—a star that never set, a song no one could stop singing. Other times horrifically—skin that cracked with truth, dreams that bled into daylight, gravity that fell sideways.
And yet...
Every cycle, there were a few—no more than three, sometimes only one—who began to remember.
Fragments, at first. A flash of fire. A name spoken through sleep. A wound that had healed long before it was made.
They became known in old songs as the Ashborne—souls bound to Astrael's endless reincarnation. Some believed they were chosen by fate. Others whispered they were mistakes the gods could not erase.
But among them, one boy always returned unchanged.
His name was Kael, though it had not always been so. In some cycles, he had worn crowns. In others, rags. He had once ruled Astrael as its golden prince, and another time tried to burn it down with his bare hands. But no matter the cycle, no matter the curse, Kael remembered all of it.
He remembered the fire that never died. The silence that stole love. The woman with flame in her hair, who stabbed him in one cycle—and kissed him in the next.
He remembered because he had asked for it.
In the First Age, before the first curse, Kael had been a prodigy—the youngest Astral Scholar, the voice behind the Vow of the Unbound's final line. He had watched his city crumble. He had watched his friends scream as they died.
And in desperation, he had climbed to the Celestial Apex, a mountain that scraped the edge of the sky, and whispered a prayer to the stars—not to save Astrael, but to give him the power to fix it.
He begged:
> "Let me remember every fall, every failure, every flame. I will carry the burden. I will find a way to stop the curses."
The stars listened.
But they were not kind.
They gave him what he asked for—and nothing more.
Not the power to stop the curses. Not the truth to understand them. Only the memory.
And so Kael became the first and final witness of Astrael's pain. Every cycle, he woke in a new body, surrounded by new people, under new skies. But the ache remained.
He bore it like armor. Like chains.
He became quiet. Cold. Focused. Not on vengeance—he had tried that—but on understanding. Each cycle, he mapped the curse's patterns. He recorded its horrors. He searched for the Cursekeeper, the mythical figure said to hold the key to the cycle's end.
Sometimes, he found her.
Sometimes, she found him.
But the truth always slipped through his fingers—until the 87th Curse.
The one of smoke. Of crimson moons. Of Nyra.
But that is not this chapter.
This is the beginning.
The part where Kael wakes again, lungs filled with ash, heart filled with memory, and eyes turned upward toward the sky that still dares to shine.
The part where the curse returns—but this time, so does hope.