Then a sound rose above the clamor, a voice raw with desperation.

“Kael!”

His mother’s cry.

Elira forced her way into the chamber while the guards were distracted, hair disheveled, eyes wild. Two guards stumbled after her, shouting, but she slipped past them, throwing herself toward her son. “Release him! He’s only a child!”

The Judge’s staff slammed again. “Outcast filth! Remove her!”

But Elira didn’t falter. She reached Kael, clutching at his arm, tears streaking her soot-stained cheeks. “Kael, hold on. We will not let them take you. Do you hear me? We will not let them!”

Behind her came another figure, Kael’s father, Daren. He too had broken past the guards amid the chaos, his branded wrist raised high, the mark of his exile visible for all to see.

“You’ll not take my son!” he bellowed. His voice thundered through the hall like a hammer striking an anvil.

The chamber froze for a heartbeat. Outcasts did not speak so boldly in the presence of a Judge. Outcasts bowed. Outcasts obeyed.

The Judge’s face twisted with rage. “Seize them all. The family is condemned.”

Steel rang as soldiers surged forward.

Kael screamed as hands pulled him from his mother’s grasp. He saw her thrown to the ground, a boot pressing against her ribs. He saw his father strike one soldier with a desperate fist, only to be clubbed across the skull by another.

Blood smeared the stones.

The Judge’s voice cut through the chaos like a knife. “Erase the word. Erase it before it spreads!”

But the word would not vanish. The letters still blazed in Kael’s palm, brighter even as the soldiers beat his father into silence. The golden glow spilled across the Judge’s ledger, staining the pages as though defying the ink.

“Take him to the cloisters,” the Judge snapped. “The Dominion will decide his fate. No record shall remain here.”

Kael was dragged backward, kicking, crying out for his parents. He glimpsed his mother’s outstretched hand, his father’s bloodied face, before the door slammed between them.

Darkness swallowed him.

Kael stumbled as the soldiers dragged him deeper into the Smeltspire. The torches thinned, until the world was shadows broken only by the flicker of iron sconces. The stone walls grew damp, lined with moss and rivulets of water that dripped like tears.

In the silence of the passage, the soldiers’ boots echoed like hammers. Kael’s sobs filled the void, raw and desperate. His hand still burned. The word was no longer only on his skin, he could feel it inside him, pulsing with every beat of his heart.

The passage seemed endless.

At last, the passage opened into a chamber unlike any Kael had seen.

It was not vast like the Judge’s hall. It was narrow, circular, with walls of black slate. Chains hung from the ceiling, clinking softly when the drafts stirred. The air smelled of ink and iron, and something sour, something like rot.

Children sat in the corners. Silent. Watching.

Their eyes followed Kael as he was dragged across the chamber. Some were gaunt, pale from lack of sunlight. Others clutched their knees, rocking as if to keep from unraveling. None spoke. None smiled.

The soldiers shoved him to the floor. His knees cracked against stone.

A figure stepped from the shadows. Robes darker than the Judge’s, a hood drawn low. In one hand they carried a vial of black liquid. In the other, a needle of silver.

“Another,” the figure murmured. Their voice was neither man nor woman, thin and sharp as broken glass. “What card?”

One of the soldiers barked, “Hero.”

The hooded figure froze. The vial trembled in their hands. Slowly, they lifted their head, revealing a pale face crisscrossed with ink-stained veins. Their eyes widened, almost hungry.

“Impossible,” they whispered. “Impossible… yet true.”

They crouched before Kael, studying him as though he were a puzzle. “Show me.”

Kael clenched his fist. “No.”

The figure smiled faintly, though their teeth were blackened. “It burns inside you, doesn’t it? The word never sleeps. Open your hand, child. Let me see.”

Kael shook his head.

The figure’s smile faded. They gestured to the soldiers. “Hold him.”

Iron hands gripped Kael’s wrists, forcing his palm open. The card blazed again, brighter than before, as though resisting the shadows of the cloister itself.

HERO.

The children in the corners gasped. The hooded figure hissed, pulling back as though scorched. “So it returns. After four centuries, it returns.”

They turned sharply to the soldiers. “Chain him. The Dominion must be told at once. This is no child. This is a herald.”

Kael thrashed, shouting for his parents, but the chains closed cold around his wrists. The children watched, eyes wide, silent as ever.

And in that silence, Kael realized something dreadful: none of them were meant to leave this place.

And though he did not yet understand it, though terror filled every breath, something deep within him whispered: This is only the beginning.