The city of Caldre was quiet when it should've screamed.
Steel towers loomed like watchmen, their mirrored glass reflecting the pulse of the Vanta Order—the silent rulers of the world. Drones skimmed the skies like vultures, and in the alleys, cameras blinked like eyes that never slept.
Lucien Drae ducked behind a rusted metal dumpster, breath sharp, eyes on the curfew patrol drifting past. Their footsteps were soft, mechanical, like the breath of something artificial and cruel. Black-clad enforcers, faces hidden behind polished visors, held stun rifles loose at their sides—ready to kill a whisper.
Lucien waited.
He didn't blink. Didn't breathe.
The last enforcer passed.
He exhaled.
"Drae, you idiot," he muttered to himself, pulling up his hood and slipping through the back alleys like a shadow that had learned to run on fire. "You were this close."
By now, the others would be in lockdown—families behind steel-shielded doors, afraid to make a sound, afraid of being taken. But Lucien? He had no door. No family. No silence in his bones.
Only a name on the Vanta list, printed weeks ago in a hidden whisper: Lucien Drae – Suspected Disturbance Potential.
He didn't know what that meant.
But he was starting to feel it.
He reached the scrapyard just past midnight. An old junker lot filled with metal corpses—the remains of cars, drones, machines no one remembered. Lucien kicked over a busted bot, its core glowing faint blue. He used to strip these for parts, trade them for burner food and a few minutes of power at the wire stations.
Now?
Now even the junk refused to feed him.
He climbed up the side of a fractured bus half-buried in sand and sat cross-legged on the roof. This was the highest place in the yard. He could see the surveillance drones flickering past like stars—watching, always watching. But they never came this far out. The signal towers cut short. This place was forgotten. That's why he came here.
To burn.
He held out his hand.
Stared at it.
The knuckles were cracked again. Faint red lines spiderwebbed up his wrist, glowing only when he got mad. Or scared. Or desperate.
Like last week—when the enforcer tried to take that little girl on Level 3. Lucien didn't remember what happened. He just remembered heat. An explosion. The enforcer screaming. And his hand—his hand—lit with orange veins that shouldn't exist.
Since then, he hadn't slept.
He flexed his fingers.
"Come on," he whispered. "Show me. Just once."
Nothing.
No fire.
No glow.
Just shaking hands and a head full of questions.
A metal clang echoed in the distance. Lucien shot to his feet. A flicker of movement in the shadows. He dropped down silently from the bus roof, landing in a crouch behind a broken vent panel.
Two figures.
They were moving through the yard fast, low. One tall, one shorter. Both dressed in black, but not Order-black. Not polished, not uniformed. These clothes were street—stitched, armored, dust-worn.
Lucien followed.
He had a rule: If it's not Order, it's worth knowing.
They ducked into a storage pod half-collapsed by rust. Lucien edged up behind a broken steel beam, listening.
"—he's close," the tall one said. Voice: male, deep, calm like a knife left on ice.
"You sure?" the other replied, a female voice—sharp, wired, skeptical.
"His Ember flared last week. We caught it on residual sweep. Level 3 tower cams shorted the moment it happened."
Lucien's breath hitched.
They're talking about me.
"He's not trained," the woman said. "Could've been a one-off."
"Not with that much surge."
A pause.
Then: "We bring him in?"
The man replied, "No. We test him."
Lucien didn't wait to hear more.
He turned to run—and stepped on a loose pipe.
CLANG.
Silence shattered. The voices inside went dead.
He sprinted.
Behind him, footsteps gave chase.
Lucien ran like the city itself wanted him dead.
Through broken fences, under collapsed rails, across cracked cement bleeding weeds. His heart thundered. His breath burned. Behind him, the pair moved fast—too fast. They were trained. He could hear it in the way they didn't waste movement. Like shadows that learned to hunt noise.
He vaulted a wire fence—and stumbled. Landed hard. Palms skinned. Blood.
A hand grabbed his shoulder.
He twisted, swung a fist.
Caught air.
The man was behind him now—Lucien didn't even see him move.
"What the hell do you want!" Lucien shouted, fire screaming behind his ribs.
The man held up his hands. No weapon.
"We want to help," he said simply.
Lucien blinked. "Help?"
From behind, the woman stepped forward. "You lit a flame last week. Burned a patrol unit. That gets attention."
"I didn't—" Lucien started, then stopped.
She raised an eyebrow. "You're shaking."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You're not crazy," the man said. "You're Ember-touched."
Lucien's eyes narrowed. "That a fancy word for freak?"
The man smirked slightly. "No. It's a word for the rare few who still burn in a world soaked in control."
He stepped closer.
Lucien didn't flinch, but every nerve in his body wanted to.
"You've felt it, haven't you? The heat. The ache. Like something crawling in your chest, begging to be let out."
Lucien said nothing.
"You don't know it yet," the man said, "but your veins aren't normal anymore."
The woman added, "And if the Vanta Order confirms it's you… you're dead. Or worse."
Lucien's fists clenched. "So why are you here?"
"To offer you a choice."
The man pulled something from his pocket. A coin. Old. Burned. One side bore a flame. The other, a chained skull.
He flipped it to Lucien.
Lucien caught it. Warm to the touch.
"You can run," the man said, "until they catch you."
"Or?"
"You come with us. Learn what you are. What the fire wants from you. What you can do with it."
Lucien stared at the coin.
The flame glowed faintly in his palm.
And for just a moment—
—his hand lit with a slow, crawling orange.
The fire was inside him.
He looked up. Into the night. Into the city.
Then at the man and woman who weren't offering him salvation—
—just truth.
He didn't trust them.
But he didn't trust the world more.
Lucien Drae stood tall, eyes blazing.
"Then teach me."
End of Chapter 1