He woke up, choking on air that burned.
It wasn't air.
It was Smoke.
Smoke had a smell, Sulfuric, lron.
It was heavy. Metallic. Alive.
He inhaled, and it scraped down his throat like ground glass soaked in fire.
His eyes opened.
Above him stretched a ceiling of blackened stone, pulsing with slow, lava-red veins. The cracks glowed faintly, as if the rock itself were bleeding. The scent of sulfur and iron invaded his senses.
He was lying on a surface that felt wrong.
The floor shifted under his weight—soft, warm, like living muscle. Panic jolted through him. He scrambled to his feet too fast, and the world spun.
His hands slapped the ground, and he recoiled. But something else caught his attention: his fingers.
They were wrong.
Too long. Tipped in dull, dark claws. Skin stretched tight over bone and tendon—ashen, and glowing with faint markings, like embers beneath his flesh.
He froze.
This wasn't his body.
"What—"
A flicker of something else: cold rain. Car horns. White lights. A hand reaching for him. A voice calling his name.
Then it was gone.
Pain exploded behind his eyes. He clutched his head, trying to remember. He couldn't. All he had was the twisted certainty that something was missing. Something vital.
And wherever he was, he didn't belong.
He had died. Hadn't he?
The memory was fragmented. A moment of impact. Cold. Then… nothing. And now, this.
Footsteps echoed in the chamber.
Slow.Deliberate.Circling.Watching.
He lurched to his feet, every instinct screaming. Around him, the shadows stirred. From the walls emerged tall humanoid figures, their forms distorted by the heat. Their armor looked forged from obsidian, their eyes slits of red and gold.
They observed him in silence—not with hatred, not suspicion.
Something worse: expectation.
One stepped forward, larger than the rest, robed in layered black cloth that moved like smoke. Its face was hidden beneath a snarling obsidian mask.
It raised one clawed hand and spoke in a voice that sounded like shards of glass scraping in a narrow tunnel.
"The Fourth has awakened."
The others dropped to one knee in a single, fluid motion.
Caelan's mouth went dry. "Fourth?"
The lead figure ignored his question and gestured to him.
"Born of fire. Blood of House Virel. Flesh of the Second Ring."
Caelan said nothing. He didn't understand any of it.
But the name—Virel—echoed inside him. Not new. Familiar, in a way that felt wrong. Like a name stolen from a dream and engraved into his soul.
He opened his mouth—but stopped.Something tightened in his chest. Not fear exactly. Something colder.A warning, buried deep:Stay silent. Stay still. Let them believe you're one of them
So he stayed silent.
Another figure stepped forward, hands outstretched. In them: a robe of dark, shifting cloth, faintly smoking at the edges, and a ring—simple, black, set with a single crimson gem that pulsed like a heartbeat.
The leader spoke again.
"The mantle is yours. The blood welcomes its child."
Caelan took the robe. The fabric was warm—almost alive. He hesitated with the ring. As his fingers brushed it, a surge of cold energy shot up his arm, violent and sharp. The air around him rippled.
No one reacted.
He slipped it on.
The temperature dropped.
From the far end of the chamber, a wide door groaned open. Beyond it: darkness. Vast. Moving.
The robed figure stepped aside and gestured.
"The court awaits, my prince."
Prince.
Caelan blinked.
He wanted to scream.He wanted to run.He wanted answers.
But first, he needed to survive. Assess. Learn. Only then would the answers come.
He stepped forward.
The crowd parted, bowing their heads.
As he passed through the threshold and into the shadows beyond, chanting rose behind him—a language he didn't understand, a rhythm that felt ancient. Wrong.
He walked down a long corridor. Torches flickered along the walls. The air grew heavier with sulfur and iron. Each step echoed louder than the last.
Through the stone he caught glimpses of things: wings dragging across the floor… eyes watching from cracks… hands reaching from the walls only to vanish again.
This place—wherever he was—breathed. It watched.
It was watching him.
At the corridor's end stood a tall, cracked mirror, its frame carved from bone.
He looked into it.
The thing staring back was not human.
Its eyes glowed faintly—red slits swimming in molten gold. Its skin was dark, cracked like cooled magma. Its posture—upright, still, cold—was that of ancient royalty. But its expression was haunted.
And deep in those eyes… there was still something. A flicker. A spark.
Caelan.
He touched the mirror. For a moment, it felt warm. Familiar.
Then the surface rippled, and the image was gone.
Silence followed, deep and absolute.
And a single thought echoed through his skull, clear and sharp:
I don't belong here.
But Hell seemed to disagreed.