The plaza of Veyhelm pulsed with light and magic.
A thousand luminous glyphs floated in the air, casting radiant colors across the ancient stone amphitheater. Students stood in rows robes pressed, backs straight, brows furrowed in anticipation each one clutching a Binding Crystal, waiting for the moment that would define their fate.
Among them stood a lone figure with neither pride nor excitement in his eyes.
Caelum Vire, draped in second-hand robes two sizes too large, kept his hands in his pockets as the line shuffled forward. The murmurs around him were low but sharp.
"He shouldn't even be here." "He's the one with no Binding Vein, right? No aura. No chance." "Just watching him makes me feel embarrassed."
He heard every word.
He'd heard them for years.
The Unbound. The Hollow Binder. The boy born with no spiritual link to the binding realm. In a city where soul-beast bonding defined your status, Caelum was the walking embodiment of failure. His own father ,a famed Wielder had left when the results confirmed it. His mother… well, she'd faded soon after.
He was twelve then. He was eighteen now.
He should've quit. But something in him refused.
Even when the Sanctum Council gave him a ceremonial spot in this year's Binding Day "as courtesy," he still showed up. Not for their sake. Not to prove anyone wrong. But for himself.
Maybe ,just maybe ,there was something they hadn't seen.
"Next!" a proctor called, eyes glossing over Caelum with a sigh.
Caelum stepped forward. Before him sat the Binding Altar ,a jagged stone infused with ancient runes that channeled the Soulstream. A polished crystal orb hovered inches above the surface, pulsing with ethereal blue light.
"Place your palm on the orb," the robed examiner muttered, already turning to the next student's scroll.
Caelum obeyed.
The crystal dimmed.
Then turned gray.
Nothing happened.
No flare of light. No spectral beast. No hum of energy. Just cold stone and heavy silence.
Snickers rippled through the crowd. One girl covered her mouth with a velvet fan, whispering with dramatic pity, "Oh, how tragic. I almost feel bad almost."
The examiner didn't even look up. "Step aside."
Caelum did.
His hand lingered on the orb for a second longer than it should have. As he walked down the steps, back turned to the murmuring crowd, something in the orb pulsed faintly. Just for a second. A flicker.
But no one noticed.
Not even Caelum.
The rain came just as the Binding Ceremony ended.
It fell gently at first, then turned sharp and cold, as if the sky itself mocked his failure. Caelum walked the muddy path back to the lower outskirts of Veyhelm where broken fences, shattered chimneys, and silence made up the streets.
He lived in a half-collapsed barn beside the city's forgotten edge. No walls. No warmth. Just an old cot and the company of moths.
But that night, he didn't go home.
Instead, he wandered deeper. Past the dried rivers. Past the gate that marked the old territories. Into the Hollows the wildlands where failed experiments, rogue beasts, and cursed ruins festered.
He wasn't running away.
He was looking for something.
Or maybe he was just too angry to care.
He climbed a jagged ridge as the moon bled silver across the misty valley. At its peak stood a crumbling shrine, half-devoured by ivy, its stone doors sealed shut.
He didn't know why he came here.
Only that he had to.
He pressed his hand against the ancient slab. Cold pulsed beneath his palm.
> Thump.
He flinched. That wasn't his heartbeat.
> Thump. Thump.
The slab trembled.
Then split open.
Inside the shrine, the air was suffocating. Runes glowed faintly along the walls, whispering in languages older than men. Caelum stepped cautiously, heart pounding, until he saw it—an egg, suspended in crystal. Pitch black with red cracks pulsing like veins. Beneath it, an ancient inscription: ASHRA.
Then a voice filled the chamber.
> "You came at last, Binder of the Forsaken Thread."
Caelum fell back, eyes wide. The voice wasn't spoken—it echoed in his mind, like a thought that wasn't his.
The egg trembled.
> "For centuries I waited in silence. For a soul vast enough to awaken me. You… are hollow not by defect but by design."
Caelum shook his head. "This… this is a dream."
> "No dream," the voice replied, soft but heavy. "I am Ashra ,the End-Flame. Phoenix of the First Light. Dragon of the Final Sky. My fire sleeps within you, and now I rise."
The crystal shattered.
The room ignited.
Flames danced in a spiral of crimson and gold, and from the inferno emerged a creature unlike any Caelum had ever seen. Feathers made of ember. Scales that shimmered like molten glass. Wings that split the light.
Ashra hovered, towering above him graceful, terrifying, divine.
> "Bind me."
Caelum's mouth went dry. "But… I can't. I have no aura. No bondline. No"
"You have what none of them do," Ashra said. "Your soul was left untouched. Pure. Capable of holding what their corrupted threads cannot. You were unbound… so you could bind the forbidden."
He didn't understand.
He didn't need to.
Instinct moved his hand to his chest.
The air cracked.
A searing mark burned across his skin twisting into a flame-shaped sigil that pulsed with life.
Ashra roared.
The bond formed.
Not with chains.
But with fire and will.
Caelum collapsed.
The shrine cracked around him. The ancient stones trembled as distant roars echoed across the mountains beasts awakening to the return of a long-forbidden power.
Ashra coiled around him, her body glowing with a primal warmth.
"Sleep now, Binder. Tomorrow, the world will mock you again."
"But soon… they will kneel."