Kaelren did not remember the face of the one who'd thrown him from the skies.
Only the heat of re-entry, the scream of splitting wind, and the impact of a body striking wilderness like a comet striking the earth.
He had fallen like a star.
The first thing he remembered clearly was the cold. The kind that crept beneath skin, into bone, and gnawed like hunger like death. He'd awoken in the heart of a blackened crater surrounded by scorched dirt and broken pine. The air stank of ash and blood. His clothes were in tatters. His breath came in shallow rasps.
His body was not normal.
Even then, before he knew anything about the world of Vel'Drakka, before he knew about gene refinement or rankings, before he knew the difference between bloodline and burden, he could feel it — a tight, dangerous coil of strength in his chest, as if something inside him had not yet finished arriving.
His tail twitched behind him — a long, black whip of fur — and the sensation startled him. Not just because he hadn't had one before, but because it felt natural, like it had always been there.
He sat up slowly, his muscles aching. Trees leaned away from the crater's edge, their bark charred. Steam hissed from the earth where his body had struck. Whatever force had sent him here hadn't been gentle. It hadn't been kind. But it had been deliberate.
Kaelren blinked at the rising sun. It was red. Not just with the morning, but with something... off. Too rich. Too deep. Like blood diluted in fire.
Then, the memories came.
He had died in a hospital bed, in a world already dying around him.
The Earth he'd known was no paradise. Long before he took his final breath, the oceans had died. The forests had withered. The air was filtered through rusted towers and thick with industrial ash. Civilization had retreated into domed cities like insects burrowing from fire.
His city — Hollow Bastion — had once been a sanctuary. Then the Bleaching came. A plague of forgetting. People lost themselves: names, thoughts, identities. They wandered like husks, pale and silent.
By the time Kaelren lay on his hospital cot, the machines still buzzed and blinked around him, but there were no nurses, no family. Just the scent of sterile sheets and the hum of collapse.
But even in that silence, he hadn't let go.
He remembered clenching his fists, though they were weak. He remembered his mind screaming — not in fear, not in pain — but in rage.
No. Not like this. I won't die like this. I won't die alone. Not in this forgotten place.
And something had heard him.
Something ancient. Something vast. Something watching.
Not a voice. Not a vision. But a pull — a thread yanked taut between worlds.
Then darkness.
Then falling.
Then now.
Kaelren pushed himself to his feet. His limbs trembled, and he realized how small he was. He looked down at his arms — thin, wiry, young. Barely eleven years old by the look of it.
He stumbled to the edge of the crater and caught sight of himself in the rippling reflection of a nearby puddle. Wild dark hair. Reddish violet eyes. Pale skin streaked with soot. His canines looked slightly too sharp. And the scar — thin, faded — stretched just beneath his headband.
He touched it absentmindedly, then ran his fingers across the bracer on his wrist — tarnished metal, but still intact. His black jeans, made from some kind of beast hide, were scuffed but durable. The boots? Solid. Tank top? Singed, but wearable.
They gave me a body suited for survival, he thought. Not comfort.
The sound of footsteps broke his reflection.
Kaelren turned, eyes narrowing.
A group of figures approached from the treeline. Clad in dark armor, roughcloth, and tattered mantles. Warriors. All of them scarred, armed, and dangerous.
One of them stepped forward, a burly man with a cybernetic eye and jagged metal plates fused into his skin. He looked Kaelren up and down with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance.
"You're the one who came down like a goddamn meteor?" he grunted. "Tch. Couldn't have been you. You Look like a rat pup."
A different warrior chuckled. "Rats don't leave burn craters, Gor. He probably just stumbled his way here from a destroyed village. Luck must be in his side to escape the beasts."
Kaelren didn't move.
His instincts screamed the men are dangerous — but he didn't run.
Instead, he met the man's gaze, unblinking.
A long silence passed. Then the one called Gor laughed.
"Well, the brat's got teeth. Fine. Pick him up. He'll live or die with the rest of Camp 12."
Camp 12 was not a sanctuary.
It was a meat grinder.
Set deep in the mountains of Vel'Drakka, it was one of many training camps run by the Blood Fang Clan and its uneasy allies. The purpose was simple: breed strength. Cull weakness.
Kaelren quickly learned the rules.
There seemed to be no friends, only competitors. No soft beds, only stone and ash. No food unless you earned it — or took it.
Children trained from dawn until the bones in their feet split. Then they fought. Fought for rank. Fought for rations. Fought because they were told to.
Kaelren slept in the lowest barracks. Rank: 68 of 70. We was ranked 2 above the lowest. Because of his good Physique.
He was eleven. Scrawny. Unremarkable to anyone looking for muscle.
But they all the low ranks felt it — a tension in the air when he passed. Something feral beneath the surface. Something waiting to break free.
The older recruits didn't care. They bullied him, shoved him, mocked his size.
But Kaelren watched. He learned.
He ate when he could. He healed in silence.
He knew his training would start soon.
And every night, beneath the cracked sky of this brutal new world, he whispered the same promise to himself:
I was forgotten once.
I will not be forgotten again.