The wind howled like a dying beast as we reached the cliff's edge. Below us, the Black Maw Gorge yawned open a sheer drop into swirling mist and jagged rock. We'd fought monsters, crossed cursed lands, bled for each other. But standing there, I should've known. The silence behind me wasn't awe. It was decision.
"End of the road," Kane said.
I turned, confused. My pack was still heavy with the spoils from the Ruins of Targel. Enough coin and relics to buy our way out of the mercenary life. We were supposed to split it. That was the deal. That was the oath.
Then I saw it the flicker in Kane's eyes. The way Mira avoided my gaze. Roran gripping his axe just a little too tight.
"Don't do this," I said.
Kane smiled. Not the kind he used to not the half-drunk, victorious grin of a brother-in-arms. This one was slow. Cold. Practiced.
"You're the strongest of us, Ash. You always were," he said. "But you're also the loudest. The most dangerous... now that we have everything."
I stepped back, heels scraping loose stone.
"We survived this together. I trusted"
Roran moved first. Fast. An armored elbow to my gut folded me in two. Mira swung low, slicing at my hamstring sharp, precise. I collapsed, screaming.
Kane crouched beside me as I writhed, blood soaking into the dirt.
"No hard feelings," he whispered.
He shoved.
The world fell.
Mist swallowed me whole.
Pain blurred into nothing. Air vanished. Then impact. Bones cracked. My scream was silent, stolen by the gorge. Everything went dark.
I don't know how long I lay there. Could've been hours. Days. My body was a shattered ruin, but I didn't die.
Something else did.
When I woke, it wasn't the sun I saw it was firelight. Faint. Flickering. A shape moved beside it. Cloaked, hunched. It whispered in a tongue I didn't know, yet felt etched into the marrow of my bones.
The pain dulled. I blinked up into a skeletal face half-covered in runes, eyes like pits.
"You're not dead," it rasped. "But you should be."
I tried to speak. Blood bubbled at my lips.
"Let it fester. Let it grow. The world stole from you. Take it back."
It fed me something black, bitter. It burned down my throat like molten metal. My vision burst white, and I screamed.
That was the night I stopped being Ash, the mercenary.
That was the night I began my claim.
I crawled out of the gorge two weeks later.
My leg was twisted, barely useful. One eye swollen shut. My face, unrecognizable in the pool I drank from. But I was alive and something pulsed beneath my skin. Like the creature's fire hadn't left me.
Above, the world had moved on. Kane and the others were already legends. I heard it in whispers at village inns. "The Heroes of Target." Feared. Respected. Worshiped.
All lies built on my corpse.
I limped through forests, stealing food from travelers, cloaking myself in rags. Every night, the fire inside me whispered names: Kane. Mira. Roran. Over and over, like a prayer soaked in venom.
And the power it grew. Slowly. Unsteadily. I could feel when someone lied to me. Could smell fear. Shadows clung to my feet when I walked. When I bled, the blood steamed.
The creature had marked me.
I wasn't sure if I was cursed.
I didn't care.
I needed a name again. Not Ash he was dead. I took the name Cairne. A name that meant nothing to the world. Perfect.
The first town that recognized me was Darnhill. A drunk merc tried to take my coin and woke up with his jaw in three pieces. The innkeeper stared at me like I was a myth.
"Where did you learn to move like that?" he asked.
"Hell," I said, and kept walking.
Every village after, I listened. I watched. I mapped their movements. Kane had taken the commander's badge. Mira had opened a school for magic — funded by the gold they stole. Roran had become a warlord's pet executioner.
They were comfortable.
They were exposed.
And me?
I was no longer prey.
The dead man was walking.
And he had a claim