PROLOGUE I: THE COVENANT'S END
The wind clawed through the eaves of the Marucho manor, dragging the scent of sulfur and distant ash-fires through shattered panes. Light from the forges bled orange over every surface, flickering across banners scored by time—dragons dancing in blue and gold, now dust-heavy, threadbare, ignored by the two figures waging their war in a narrow upstairs chamber.
Akari's knuckles blanched white around the edge of the birthing cot, sweat and blood soaking the linen beneath her. Her face was gaunt, the hollows of her cheeks shadowed, mouth drawn in a line of fury and pain. Ren crouched beside her, one rough hand gripping hers, the other mopping her brow with a rag stank of iron and salt.
"Baby, push—come on, you got this!" His voice trembled at the edges, trying to sound unbreakable, but the cracks shone through. Each contraction wracked Akari's frame, and she gritted a snarl between her teeth.
"Don't—don't call me 'baby,' you idiot," she hissed, her eyes bright with unshed tears and a rage that felt older than the world. "Just... just hold my hand. I don't need your cheering, I need your strength."
Ren let out a breath—half laugh, half sob—and leaned close, his lips brushing her forehead. "You always were the stronger one," he murmured, letting his thumb trace the scar at her temple—the one she'd earned fending off a Voidkin ambush the day after their wedding, the one he'd kissed every night since.
A shriek—barely human, all ache—tore from Akari's throat as another wave hit. The midwife was a stooped woman with eyes as cold as the Veyrholt snows, knelt between her knees, hands quick, and voice low and steely.
"You're almost there. One more, Akari. Give this world a reason to remember the Marucho name."
Outside, thunder rolled. The walls rattled with it—the kind of omen that, in Emberfall, meant more than weather. Something in the air tasted of endings.
Akari's scream was primal, shaking dust from the rafters. The room shrank to the ragged, gasping space between breaths. Then—sudden silence. A sound—soft, wavering, full of the terror and wonder of a first breath—rose: a baby's cry.
Ren's hands trembled as the midwife lifted the infant, swaddling it in blue silk. The child's eyes—one emerald, one amber—opened, and in that gaze was a mirror of every prophecy Emberfall had ever whispered.
Akari reached out, arms trembling. "Let me—let me see—"
The door burst open, slamming into the stone. Drayce stood framed in molten light, his Dragontic glyphs crawling across his jaw, a wicked grin splitting his face. Behind him, shadows writhed—Voidkin, their bodies half-formed, eyes pits of nothingness, mouths wide with silent hunger.
Ren moved first, seizing a sword from the mantel, his body between Akari and the door. "Drayce—don't. Not here. Not now."
Drayce's smile didn't reach his eyes. "I warned you. The Council warned you both—prophecy breeds rebellion, and rebellion breeds ruin. Step aside, cousin."
Akari cradled the baby to her breast, her fire sparking in the air, wreathing the sheets in smolder. "If you touch him, I'll burn your bones to dust."
Drayce only sighed, a strange regret darkening his face for a heartbeat. "You think this is about hate? It's not. The prophecy made me a monster before I ever chose it." He stepped forward. The Voidkin flowed around him like smoke. "Give me the child."
Ren lunged, blade arcing with crackling blue. Drayce caught it barehanded. The air exploded in a storm of sparks—fire, lightning, void, all colliding in an agony of light.
The Voidkin swarmed. Akari screamed Ren's name, voice raw, as Drayce's shadow loomed over her. The baby—Tenchi—wailed, the sound so piercing it hurt.
In the chaos, the world narrowed to hands and blood and the sickening snap of fate. Drayce wrenched the baby free, and for a moment their eyes met: emerald and amber, void-black and storm-bright. Then he turned and was gone, the Voidkin melting into the darkness, leaving only silence and a cot slicked with blood and betrayal.
Ren fell to his knees, hands clawing at empty air. Akari's face was a ruin of grief—she let out a howl so raw it seemed to shatter the glass.
"They took—Ren, they took—" Her voice broke, dissolving in sobs. "I couldn't—I couldn't—"
Ren crawled to her, gathered her in his arms, and held her as if to fuse their shattered hearts into one. He rocked her, rocking himself, repeating "I'm here, I'm here," as if the words alone could stave off the darkness.
Footsteps pounded down the hall, and the midwife vanished. The air stank of ozone and something more profound, a rot that bit at the soul. The world beyond the window was silent, and the sky over Emberfall was blackened by something more than night.
Akari drew in a ragged breath. "We failed them. We failed the prophecy, we failed the world—we failed our child."
Ren shook his head, but his eyes were empty. "No. This isn't the end. We'll get them back. We'll do whatever it takes."
She turned to him, her eyes wild with desperation. "They'll kill him, Ren. Or worse. They'll twist him into something we can't save. The Council won't help us—they'll call it fate, or justice. They always do."
He gripped her shoulders, voice low, fierce. "Then we won't ask the Council. We won't ask anyone. We'll do what they forbid. I'll tear the world open to get them back."
Akari met his gaze, and for a moment the fire returned—ragged, vengeful. "The Covenant. The old rites. You remember the stories?"
"I do. I remember every word you ever whispered in the dark." His fingers traced the dragonbone pendant at her throat—a relic older than law, hot as guilt.
She rose, legs shaking, blood trailing behind her as she wrapped herself in a tattered robe. Ren moved to her side, supporting her as she staggered to the door.
Down the stairs, past the family shrine—its ashes still warm from last night's prayers—into the echoing, haunted dark beneath the manor. The dragonbone caverns waited there, where the world's first Dragontic had bled fire for a child he could not save.
Ren lit a torch, the flame guttering in the blackness. "If we do this and break the Covenant, there's no turning back."
Akari's voice was almost a whisper, yet it echoed in the cavern's bones. "There never was."
They walked hand in hand into the belly of Emberfall, shadows swallowing them, grief and fury the only light. Behind them, the manor stood empty, banners limp and useless, and somewhere far above, thunder cracked as if the world itself mourned.
The darkness deepened, and from somewhere beneath, something ancient stirred. The ritual waited, hungry for the desperate, and the old bones remembered every scream.
Akari's feet slipped on the slick stone as she half-ran, half-fell down the winding steps, a trail of blood from her torn birth wounds marking the path like a second heartbeat. Every echo in the caverns pressed against her chest, growing heavier as if the mountain itself mourned. Ren stumbled behind her, the torch trembling in his grip, his breaths sharp and ragged, his face cut by the light into a mask of terror and longing.
"REN, COME ON! WE'RE DOING THIS NOW!" Her voice splintered, shattering the hush. She seemed taller than the world for a moment, flame in her eyes, but the next, she was just a girl, running from loss, her cheeks streaked with tears that caught fire in the torch's glow.
Ren slowed, his boots scraping bone and dust. The words fell through him like stones: I'll never meet our kid. Not the first or the second. I'll never meet our kid at all...
Akari whipped around, fury and grief boiling from her. "I GET IT, REN! I WANT TO SEE OUR KID TOO! I DON'T WANT OUR KID TO LIVE WITHOUT PARENTS! I DON'T WANNA SEE HER BE WITHOUT ANYTHING! I WON'T LET THEM BE IN DRAYCE'S HANDS!"
He reached her, grabbing her shoulders, and for a heartbeat they stood forehead to forehead, breaths mingling, not sure if they wanted to scream or to break. "You think I want this?" he ground out, voice nearly lost in the cavern's immensity. "You think I wanted prophecy? All I ever wanted was a family. Not a legend. Not a sacrifice."
Akari shoved him back, hands trembling. "Then what do we have left, Ren? If not us, if not Tenchi, then what? You think the Council will save her? You think the world will save anyone but itself?" Her voice cracked. "Then... then Tenchi will be us. Both of us combined. Fused. Or... they'll be reborn. But there won't be anything. Not another echo. Not another dead prophecy."
Ren's hands went to his belt, fumbling, pulling out a battered, rune-etched camera—the only relic he owned that wasn't weapon or ward, the only thing that had survived every battlefield and every homecoming. His fingers hesitated, then flicked the lens open, recording in the jagged light of the torch.
He pressed record, and his voice was softer now, almost strangled. "Hey, Tenchi. If you see this ever... I want you to know we love you, kid. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything. Carry the sins. I hate that you were prophesied. I hate that the world made you a symbol before you could crawl. But you're ours. Not theirs. Remember that. Please remember that."
Akari's hand came down on his shoulder, squeezing so hard it hurt. "We're doing this," she said, not asking, not pleading. Deciding. She turned, striding to the altar—a vast slab of dragonbone, fossil runes pulsing faintly with ancient power, coils of ash, and scales curling along its edge. The air above it rippled with heat and memory, alive with the ghosts of all who had knelt before.
Ren caught up, set the camera on the far end of the altar, and fixed the lens on the spot where their lives would end or begin again. He met Akari's gaze—she was shaking, but her eyes were steel.
"How do we start?" he whispered, the fear in his words making them heavier than iron.
Akari looked up, letting the fire in her veins find her voice. "With everything we have left. With blood, and bone, and the last of our will."
She pressed her palm to the dragonbone, digging her nails into the groove where a thousand desperate parents had wept. Ren did the same. The runes flared, greedy, drinking in their warmth. The old magic surged—not gentle, but raw, a riptide of hunger and history.
Akari drew her knife, the one she'd carried since she was fifteen, the one with her mother's blood in the hilt. She looked at Ren, her hand shaking. "Together?"
He nodded, his voice rough. "Always."
Their blades cut deep, palm to palm, blood mingling and hissing on the dragonbone, each drop scribing a new rune into the altar's memory. Akari began to chant, her voice a litany of rage and hope:
"In fire, we are born. In lightning, we are broken. In blood, we are bound. In grief, we become."
Ren's voice joined hers, thunder rolling beneath her flame:
"In bone, we remember. In ash, we endure. In love, we defy."
Their souls strained. The world narrowed to two flames, entwined and burning. The air screamed around them—glyphs igniting, bone cracking under the weight of the ritual, every law of the Council unraveling, every old oath breaking.
The cavern shuddered. Ash poured from the ceiling. The runes on the altar blazed, a spiral of memory and grief. Their blood boiled, nerves set alight by a paradox older than language: You must die to give life; you must give up everything to leave anything behind.
Akari clutched Ren's hand, her voice raw. "I don't want to leave you."
He managed a laugh, crooked, choked. "We won't leave each other. Not really. We'll be there. In the eyes. In the heartbeat. In the scars. Even if Tenchi never knows our names."
Her fire spilled from her veins, burning in wild arcs along the altar, melting fossil into magma. Ren's lightning shot through the cracks, splitting bone and memory, fusing them into something new. The magic tore at them, shredding flesh and spirit, unraveling every dream they'd ever clung to.
Akari gasped, her skin turning to flame, her eyes the color of dawn. "Ren—I'm scared—"
He squeezed her hand, his form flickering, lightning crawling up his jaw, tears falling through the sparks. "Me too. But I'm not running. Not this time."
The world fractured. The torch guttered, darkness sweeping in, punctuated by one last flare of light: fire and lightning, blood and dragonbone, love and agony, all braided into one impossible knot.
The altar shattered, and the magic screamed. For a moment—no time, all time—there was nothing but pain and memory, the sense of two souls dissolving into a void that tasted of ash and broken lullabies.
And then—a breath. A heartbeat. The first scream.
It tore through the cavern, echoing against bone and stone, shaking loose the memories of every child lost, every parent sacrificed, every hope burned and remade. Not prophecy. Not perfection. Not even salvation. Just a paradox—Tenchi, reborn, a vessel of fire and storm, a child born from annihilation and longing, an answer to a question the world had never dared to ask.
The flames died. The lightning faded. The ash settled. In the smoldering crater of the altar, a child stirred—small, trembling, swaddled in the last tatters of a blue scarf singed and streaked with soot, hair wild as a thunderstorm, eyes cracked open, one green, one amber.
Akari and Ren were gone. Their echoes lingered—embers in the air, static in the silence, the afterimage of a love fierce enough to sunder the world.
Above, the mountain was quiet. In the streets of Emberfall, thunder rolled far away, unheeded. Deep beneath, in the dragon bone dark, a new cry rose—a vow, a curse, a legacy.
And somewhere, far above, the camera's light blinked red, still recording, the last confession of a love that had broken itself to forge a new dawn.