Kaelen swallowed, tasting copper and dirt. He spat a mouthful of bloody saliva into the mud at his boots. The rain over the Karst Ridge vanguard camp was steady, a miserable, freezing drizzle that smelled like sulfur and stung the eyes. He wiped his face with a mud-caked sleeve, smearing the grime rather than clearing it. He blinked, trying to get the grit out of his lashes.His left hand pressed hard against his ribs. The boiled leather armor was split there, the fabric underneath soaked through and heavy. Blood seeped between his fingers, warm and sticky, contrasting sharply with the freezing rain. It was a stupid wound, caught from a stray piece of shrapnel during the first wave an hour ago. Now it throbbed with a dull, rhythmic ache that matched his heartbeat. He shifted his weight, and a sharp spike of pain shot up his side, forcing him to lean heavily on his right leg.He looked down at his right hand. He was gripping a standard-issue iron longsword. Most of it was gone. Only ab

Kaelen Thorne stood in the mud, staring at his hands.He tried to curl his fingers into a fist, but his joints felt stiff, protesting the sudden lack of chronic fatigue. For three years, starvation had lived in his belly like a coiled snake. Now, that snake was dead, replaced by a dense, freezing weight that anchored him to the earth.The air tasted like dirty copper and burnt hair. Sickly violet rain drifted down in a steady drizzle, carrying flakes of abrasive Aether ash that clung to his wet skin. He coughed, a dry, rattling sound that scraped the back of his throat. He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, leaving a smear of dark mud across his jaw. His arm trembled slightly, the adrenaline of the kill slowly seeping out of his muscles.Around his boots, the pride of the Solar Aegis Order lay in pieces.Five knights. Their silver armor, usually polished enough to blind the lower castes, was bent and torn. One helmet was crushed entirely inward, the metal warped around a sku

Kaelen stopped walking. He leaned his shoulder against a fractured stone pillar, ignoring the way the rough surface snagged his shirt, and unlaced his left boot. He tipped it over. A handful of crystalline dust spilled out, catching the pale violet light of the sky before settling into the dirt. He knocked the heel against the pillar to clear the rest, slid his foot back in, and tied the laces tightly. The Wasteland of Echoes offered nothing but silence and sharp edges. The ground was composed of shattered Aether-glass that ground down into a fine, abrasive powder underfoot. It got into his clothes, his hair, the corners of his eyes.He wiped a layer of the grit from his forehead with the back of his hand. His knuckles were bruised, the skin split and crusted with dried blood. The black veins threading beneath his wrists pulsed with a slow, heavy thrum. He stared at his hands for a long moment. He tried to pick at a flake of dark blood under his thumbnail, but his fingers were stiff.

The sole of Kaelen's left boot caught on a jagged lip of volcanic glass. He stumbled, catching his balance with a heavy footfall that sent a spray of black dust over the edge of the ridge. He stopped for a moment, staring blankly at the dust as it settled onto the dead earth below. His calves burned from the climb. The air up here didn't feel like air. It tasted like old pennies and sulfur, heavy in his lungs.He dragged the back of his wrist across his mouth. It came away smeared with a mix of sweat and the dark, dried blood of the Aegis hounds he had killed hours ago. The stain on his skin bothered him, but he didn't have the water to spare to clean it. He just wiped his wrist against his leather trousers and kept moving.The Obsidian Mountains stretched upward, a desolate expanse of pitch-black stone and jagged spires. Above, the sky was the color of a day-old bruise, a sickly violet choked with slow-moving currents of ash. It was pure Aether radiation leaking from the upper peaks.

The wind tasted like old pennies and rotten eggs. Kaelen spat a glob of dark saliva over the edge of the rock, watching it fall into the violet mist below. He rubbed his mouth with the back of a filthy glove, feeling the grit of the ash against his skin. His boots ached. The long climb into the higher elevations of the Obsidian Mountains had left his calves burning and his breathing shallow in the thin, toxic air. His coat was torn, stiff with dried blood from the lesser beasts he had butchered along the way.Down in the valley, half-swallowed by the bruised purple fog, sat a ruined temple. Jagged stone pillars jutted from its roof like broken ribs. Colossal mana crystals, cracked and bleeding sluggish purple light, clung to the masonry.Kaelen didn't care about the architecture. He was staring at the courtyard.Something massive was breathing down there.It sounded like boulders grinding together. The creature was easily three stories tall, an ugly, heavy thing that moved with a slow