The ash never stopped falling.
It drifted in sheets across the ruin-scape like dead snow, curling through the broken arches of Draal's corpse-city, settling in the hollow eye sockets of charred statues and crumbling gods. Every breath tasted like old fire—bitter, metallic, dry enough to crack your tongue.
And yet, here I was, wading through it. Another idiot scavenger trying to bleed treasure from bones.
The sky loomed heavy, painted in bruised shades of black and ember-red, cracked with faint lightning that never quite touched the earth. Above, the bones of the old spires stretched crooked fingers at the heavens—burned husks of glass and stone where once the empire ruled.
An empire the gods themselves reduced to cinders.
I pulled my scarf tighter, crunching over slagglass and ash dunes, the weight of my pack digging into sore shoulders. It wasn't much to look at—the pack, or me. Faded cloak, patched leathers, cracked boots half held together with wire and spite. Scavenger's uniform, really.
But today wasn't a salvage run.
Today… I was chasing whispers.
They said the ruins were alive. That the Dead Zones clawed into your skull when the sun bled out, that shadows walked where men had burned, that if you dug deep enough in the bones of Draal… the past clawed back.
Normally, I called that superstition. I'd scraped these ruins for five years—wiring, relics, old tech panels pried from melted walls. Never found a ghost. Never saw a god. Just charred skeletons and the stink of history.
But last night, Old Lerrick staggered into the Outskirts with a melted hand and madness in his eyes, ranting about a crown buried beneath the fireglass fields. A crown that still pulsed with heat, with memory—untouched since the Burnfall.
And like any good scavenger, I smelled coin and idiocy in equal measure.
The cinders whispered as I pressed deeper into the ruins, past collapsed causeways and melted transit rails twisted into knots. The skeletons were everywhere—blackened shapes half-buried in ash dunes, caught mid-run, mid-scream, mid-prayer. Their mouths frozen open as if the gods' fire hadn't just ended them—but silenced them in the act of begging for mercy.
I didn't beg. Not anymore.
Mercy ran dry in Draal two decades ago—the day the gods burned their own empire to the bones.
I crested a dune of crushed slagglass, heat radiating faintly beneath my boots. The ground here still smoldered in places, decades later, like the fire never quite finished eating its fill. The horizon shimmered, rippling with the distortion of buried embers. Black spires clawed upward, skeletal remains of Draal's old citadel district.
And there, half-buried in melted stone, was the crown.
I froze. Pulse ticking harder. Mouth dry.
It didn't gleam—not like the relics from traders' tall tales. This thing was fused into the slag, blackened, edges warped by heat, runes scorched near illegible across its jagged frame. But it pulsed faintly beneath the ash, like breathing embers hidden in coal.
Old Lerrick wasn't as mad as I thought.
"Right," I muttered, flexing my fingers. "You're going to get cursed, gutted, or worse."
But I still stepped forward.
The crown called, quiet but relentless, humming through the soles of my boots, through the cracks in memory I didn't know existed. It wasn't… words. Not exactly. More like a pressure at the base of my skull. A forgotten song I'd never learned—but one my bones remembered.
I dropped to one knee, brushing away soot and glass shards, fingers shaking despite the layers of glove. The heat radiating off the crown wasn't natural—it coiled into your joints, threaded under your ribs. Closer now, I could see the faint etchings burned into its frame.
A broken empire's crest.
The mark of the Forgotten King.
The bastard they say angered the gods so badly they scorched Draal from the map.
And here I was, touching the last relic of his reign.
"Brilliant," I muttered, jaw tightening as my fingers closed around it.
The instant I made contact, pain lanced through my skull.
Flashes. Half-memories not my own. Towers cracking under fire. Screams. Golden banners burning black. A man's silhouette atop the citadel walls—crown ablaze, eyes hollow with fury—his voice searing through the smoke:
They will forget me. But they will choke on the ash.
I staggered back, breath ragged. The crown came loose, slagglass cracking as I wrenched it free. It wasn't heavy. Should've been, but it wasn't. It pulsed faint warmth in my grip, like a heartbeat.
And my head wouldn't stop ringing.
The dunes around me shivered. Ash kicked upward in swirls, shadows twisting where none should be. The city groaned—a long, low sound like stone cracking beneath weight that should've died with the empire.
I shouldn't be here.
But it was already too late.
The cinders thickened, vision narrowing. My hands trembled as the crown's glow intensified, runes flaring molten bright for a heartbeat—then dimming, like it had never burned at all.
And something new curled inside my mind.
Not words. Not images.
Memories.
But they weren't mine.
A voice, low, familiar like the ache of old scars, coiled behind my thoughts:
"You wear my ruin now, scavenger."
I dropped the crown, nearly lost my footing in the ash, panic prickling cold under my skin.
The dunes whispered with movement. Figures emerging. Not soldiers. Not scavengers.
Shadows. Twisted shapes in charred remnants of once-human forms. Ash-golems, stitched from soot and bone, their sockets empty save for faint embers.
They shouldn't exist. Nothing lived in the Dead Zones.
But they were here.
Drawn to me.
Drawn to the crown.
I cursed under my breath, scooping the relic back into my pack, fingers burning from contact. The whispers clawed deeper into my skull, fragments of the Forgotten King's memories bleeding through—his wars, his fall, his vengeance buried in glass and ash.
The figures closed in, their steps stirring cinders, their heads tilting unnaturally toward me, empty sockets wide.
One thought cracked through my haze:
The past isn't buried.
It's hunting me now.
And gods help me—I might not survive remembering it.