Arc 1, Chapter 4: First Blood

  One week had passed since Ash woke in the cave with crimson eyes and memories of a life he had yet to live.

  He spent those seven days seated on the cold stone floor. He kept his legs crossed and his breathing in sync with the pulse of the world. He drew mana from the hidden currents of reality with a precision he had never managed in his eighty years of struggle. The Seed of Life responded with a speed that felt wrong. He felt his muscles and bones saturating with a power that was both terrifying and addictive.

  Ash stood at the cave entrance as dawn stained the canopy. The sky looked like wine spilled on black lace. The Seed of Life pulsed hot against his chest, swollen with a power it shouldn't contain after such a short time.

  He had devoted decades to learning how to gather mana in his previous life. It had been a process of draining meditation and constant aches just to build a reserve that could sustain a single fight. It usually took months to gather what most mages called a decent pool of energy.

  One week in this body had given him the equivalent of seven months of progress.

  The Crimson Eyes changed the rules of his existence. He felt mana gravitating toward him like iron filings to a magnet. He didn't have to hunt for it. The energy simply flooded inward.

  A sharp cramp twisted his stomach. He was hungry. Even with the power of a legend in his eyes, his body still required food. He looked out over the trees and let his mind drift. He wondered what his sisters, Lysara and Veren, were doing.

  The thought of them felt heavy. In his first life, he had been too consumed by his own desperation to remember their faces. They had always treated him like a child. He had spent years trying to prove himself in training yards and libraries, but he had always been the failure of the family.

  The thought of them made his eyes flare. He didn't trigger the change on purpose. The crimson circles in his irises simply began to spin with a sudden intensity.

  The world transformed.

  Mana flooded his sight. It wasn't an abstract idea anymore. He saw rivers of molten light flowing through the air. Threads of energy connected the earth to the sky and the trees to the stones. He saw pools of power gathering in the shadows, pulsing with an alien rhythm. He had only ever read about this in crumbling scrolls.

  The world was drowning in magic.

  “It’s real.”

  His voice sounded strange in the quiet forest. He realized the old texts weren't just philosophy. Magic was the foundation of everything. The currents of mana shifted around him as he spoke, reacting to his presence.

  He noticed a specific concentration of energy to the northeast. It burned like a beacon through the trees. It felt like a wound in reality, far stronger than the ambient light around him. The power pressed against his skin like a fever. Curiosity won out over his hunger, and he began to walk.

  The forest grew thick. Thorns and shadows created walls that he had to push through. The canopy blocked out the morning light until the woods felt like twilight at noon. The mana pillar ahead only grew brighter as he approached. He wondered if it was a natural phenomenon or some ancient artifact bleeding corruption into the dirt.

  He pushed through a final wall of ferns and stopped.

  The land ahead was a ruin. Nothing lived in this circle of desolation. Scorched earth stretched for dozens of paces. Trees had been reduced to blackened stumps that looked like accusing fingers. The soil had been cooked from the inside until it turned into something glasslike and brittle. Fissures split the ground, and he could hear things moving in the darkness below.

  The mana here was a nightmare. Corrupted streams poured from the cracks in the earth. The energy was black and red, twisted into shapes that were painful to look at directly. Fire mana mixed with rot, creating currents that hissed when they met the clean air.

  The smell hit him. It was a mix of sulfur, rot, and burning metal. His instincts screamed at him to leave. He stepped forward carefully. The charred earth crumbled like charcoal under his boots. The corruption was so thick that every breath felt like it was coating his lungs in something slimy and alive. The Seed of Life in his chest recoiled from the air.

  He took another step, and the ground gave way.

  He had no time to grab a root or cast a spell. He fell through absolute darkness. Wind screamed past his ears as gravity claimed him. He hit the stone floor and rolled. His body moved on instinct, executing a controlled tumble that he had never practiced. The Seed of Life flared, flooding his muscles with mana to absorb the impact.

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  He stopped and pushed himself up. His shoulder ached and his ribs were sore, but nothing was broken. In his first life, that fall would have killed him. Now, it was a minor annoyance.

  He looked around the space. He was in a tunnel that was massive beyond reason. The ceiling was lost in the dark. The walls were smooth curves that suggested an enormous scale. He realized that tools hadn't made this. No picks or chisels had carved the stone. Something had moved through the earth like a fish through water, devouring the stone as it passed.

  The air tasted of burning minerals. He raised his right hand and focused. A magic circle formed in the air before his palm. It was a simple, foundational light spell.

  An orb of pale light bloomed and floated to his shoulder. It pushed back the darkness just enough for him to see. The tunnel walls looked melted. He chose a direction and started walking. His footsteps echoed off the distant walls, making it sound as if a thousand ghosts were following him.

  He found pockets of corruption as he traveled. The air would become unbreathable for a few steps before clearing. He saw corrupted mana seeping from the walls like infected pus. It pooled on the floor and hissed.

  The light eventually touched something white. It was bone. Huge, ivory-colored bone. He moved closer and raised his light.

  He was standing next to a dragon skull.

  The size was staggering. It was larger than most buildings. The jaw was open, revealing teeth the length of swords. The eye sockets were deep enough to hide a man. His light traveled down the skeleton. Ribs arched up to create a cage large enough to hold a cathedral. The spine stretched into the darkness like a line of wagon wheels.

  Corruption saturated the remains. Corrupted mana dripped from the ribs and pooled in the empty chest cavity. It wasn't just the dragon that was tainted. The entire tunnel felt like it had been poisoned by something worse than death.

  He walked along the creature's length. He saw a skeletal wing stretched out from the body. It wasn't broken. It had been positioned with intent. Ash ducked under the arch of the wing and found another skeleton.

  It was a human. The bones were fragile and small compared to the dragon. A set of armor covered the remains. Even after centuries, the quality of the craftsmanship was obvious.

  “Dragon rider armor,” he whispered.

  House Mercer still kept riders in their ranks, but this was something older. This was a warrior from an age when dragons ruled the sky. The dragon had tried to shield its rider even at the very end.

  The corruption pressed harder against his chest. His lungs burned. He needed to leave this grave. He looked up at the hole in the ceiling. It was twenty meters above him. In his previous life, jumping that high would have been impossible.

  He bent his knees and launched himself.

  The ground fell away. Air rushed past his face. His boots hit the edge of the hole, and he pulled himself onto the solid earth above. He gulped down the clean air. He coughed to clear the rot from his throat.

  He looked at his hands. They were steady. The jump had been easy. He wondered what he was becoming.

  Movement caught his eye at the tree line. Yellow eyes stared back at him. He counted twelve sets of eyes gleaming in the twilight.

  They weren't normal wolves. They were too large and hunched. Corruption leaked from their fur in wisps of black smoke. These were the creatures he had spent five years hiding from in his youth.

  The lead wolf stepped forward. It was a massive beast with corruption smoking from its jaws. It watched him with a terrible, focused intelligence.

  Ash raised his hand. He drew on the Seed of Life and shaped the mana.

  “Dark Gate: Dark Aura.”

  The spell released a wave of raw pressure. It wasn't an attack. It was a statement of authority. The invisible shockwave hit the wolves. Their eyes widened. Their bodies went stiff as if they had been struck. The leader flattened its ears and whimpered. They turned and scattered into the forest like prey fleeing a predator.

  Ash stood alone. He looked into a stagnant pool of water in a charred root. His face was a mask of glowing crimson light. The patterns in his eyes were spinning so fast they looked like rings of fire.

  He realized he was a beacon in the dark. He closed his eyes and commanded the mana to retreat. It took a moment for the heat to fade. When he looked again, the glow was gone. His eyes were a deep wine-red, but they no longer announced his presence to every monster in the woods.

  He started walking back to the cave. He felt like he was forgetting something. He had been distracted by the mana and the dragon. He decided it would come back to him later.

  Three more days passed in the cave.

  He sat cross-legged and held his hand out. He gathered dark energy from the Seed and formed it into a swirling sphere. He commanded it to transform into fire.

  The sphere flickered. He felt a brief flash of heat before the spell collapsed. He cursed. He had done this thousands of times in his old life. Turning dark magic into fire was a basic skill.

  He spent three days failing. He achieved nothing but blisters and steam. He realized the Seed of Life was the problem. He had more mana than he knew how to handle. The reserves were so high that they changed how the transformation worked.

  He tried again. He reached into the Seed and pulled until his chest felt tight. He focused on the concept of burning. The air smelled of ozone. His palms were raw and covered in burns from his previous attempts.

  “Change,” he hissed. “Transform. Burn.”

  The sphere ignited.

  Real fire bloomed in his hand. Then his Crimson Eyes flared. He felt the connection between his eyes and the Seed of Life lock into place. The fire turned crimson, matching the shade of his irises.

  The entire cave lit up in red and gold. The shadows danced on the walls. The heat was immense. He stared at the flame, which was more stable and powerful than any fire he had ever seen.

  Then, black smoke began to pour into the cave. It didn't come from his spell. It curled in from the entrance. It grew thicker and filled the space until he couldn't see. His eyes watered. He extinguished the crimson flame and ran for the opening.

  He burst outside and sucked in the air.

  Wolves surrounded the cave. Dozens of them watched him from every direction. Their yellow eyes gleamed in the twilight. They weren't running this time. They were hunting.

  The large leader stood in the center. Corruption smoked from its mouth. It looked at Ash and seemed to smile.

  Ash finally remembered the thing he had forgotten. He had spent ten days training and exploring, but he had forgotten to hunt. He hadn't eaten. He was weak.

  The forest had come to collect the debt.