Varkai: Arc I — Ashes of the Shatterworld
> "He was no one. Just another ash-born orphan. But the soul remembers, even when the mind forgets."
---
The village of Venshade was a place forgotten by both gods and monsters—tucked in the jagged cradle of the Scarspire's dead black ridges. Its homes were carved from stone and bonewood, its skies always smudged by ash. No flowers grew here, only pale moss that glowed faintly when Genesis storms rolled in.
On one such day, the air had grown still. Too still.
Children played under the cracked ribs of a long-dead skybeast, tossing pebbles and daring each other to climb higher. Chickens clucked nervously in their pens. The sky pulsed faintly, a bruised gray with coils of red stirring behind the clouds.
In the center of the village, Vrakon sat quietly on a step of the old well. His eyes—pale silver marked with faint spirals in the irises—watched the sky.
He didn't speak much. He didn't cry, even when cut. He bled slowly, like something reluctant to leave his veins. And he never once fell ill, even when a winter plague took seven others.
"Hey, Vrakon," said Kaelen, a lean boy with messy straw-blonde hair. "You just gonna sit there like a ghost all day?"
Vrakon blinked slowly. "The sky's humming."
Kaelen laughed. "That just means we'll have a Pulse storm tonight. Maybe it'll skip us. Elder Jharel said it's drifting north."
"It's not."
A soft voice joined them. "He's right. I dreamed it."
Mirra stood with a woven basket of herbs against her hip, her dark curls half-shadowing her soft green eyes. She wasn't one to speak nonsense—everyone in Venshade knew her dreams were strange.
Kaelen rolled his eyes. "Dreams. The Pulse doesn't care about dreams."
But Vrakon was still staring upward. His voice was low. "Something is coming with it."
---
Later that evening, Elder Jharel stood before the firepit at the village square. His arms were bare despite the cold, scarred with years of defending the village from bonebeasts and worse.
"The Pulse will pass by midnight," he said gruffly. "We stay indoors. No one wanders. If you feel the tremble in your chest—drink the bitterroot brew and sleep."
Murmurs spread among the gathered villagers. Most nodded. Some cast side-eyes toward the orphan boy near the back.
"The ash-born," someone whispered. "He doesn't tremble. Doesn't dream. The Pulse don't touch him right."
Jharel heard it. His eyes flicked toward Vrakon. But he said nothing. Not yet.
---
That night, Vrakon lay alone in the loft of the crumbling storehouse where the orphans slept. Moonlight barely reached the floorboards through the ash-choked sky.
He remembered little of his parents—only flickers. A laugh. A song. The feel of warm hands.
They had turned to stone-glass during the last Pulse storm, statues frozen mid-scream.
He had not.
He never had.
Something stirred inside his chest—a flicker. Not a heartbeat. A spiral.
---
Near midnight, the village trembled.
Not from the storm. But from footsteps.
A figure stepped through the veil of ash at Venshade's edge, cloaked in bone-thread and dragging a rusted staff carved with Fracta runes.
Maro Kren.
He was once a hunter. Now, a rogue Fracta-Wielder. A Pulse-leecher.
Behind him came five more—men and women with hollow eyes, their Genesis marks burned raw into their skin. Each one pulsing with Level 2 energy: Essence Initiates.
They moved fast.
The guards didn't stand a chance.
---
Screams shattered the stillness. Doors broke. Fires rose.
Vrakon woke not with fear, but with a cold clarity.
He rolled off his cot and ducked low as the door burst open. Kaelen's cry rang from outside. Mirra screamed.
"Take the young ones!" barked Maro. "The pure ones! Their Pulse is clean!"
A clawed hand grabbed Vrakon by the neck. He didn't resist. Didn't scream. He just stared into the eyes of the thing holding him.
Maro looked down at him and froze.
"This one..." Maro whispered. "This one's soul… isn't right."
Still, he took him.
---
Hours later, the children were dragged through the bonevine trails toward the ruins of Old Therum—a shattered temple deep in the cursed forest. Vrakon's wrists were bound with null-rope, a material that suppressed Pulse activity.
Maro led the ritual. The children were forced to kneel in a spiral circle.
He began siphoning—forcing their souls to awaken so he could feed.
Kaelen went first.
He screamed as his body convulsed, his soul ripped into flickers.
Maro drained it greedily. "Yes... yes... it rises. I feel it!"
Mirra cried as they dragged her forward.
But before the ritual could begin, Vrakon stepped forward on his own.
"No need to drag me," he said softly.
Maro sneered. "Brave, are you?"
"No. I'm cold."
He knelt. Closed his eyes.
Maro placed his staff against Vrakon's chest.
The circle lit.
And then—
The spiral inside Vrakon pulsed once.
A backlash.
Maro flew backward with a scream, blood pouring from his eyes.
The others staggered.
The bindings around Vrakon shattered.
In the chaos, he grabbed Mirra's arm. "Run."
They ran.
---
They didn't stop until the trees grew strange. Black. Twisting.
The Abyssum Maw.
Bonebeasts howled in the distance. Mirra collapsed, too weak to go further.
Vrakon dragged her into a half-collapsed ruin—a Pulse-Seer shrine. The walls were inscribed with glowing runes.
He touched them.
A vision hit him.
Fire. Endless falling. A spiral sun. And a whisper:
> "Wake up, little echo."
He gasped. The mark on his palm shimmered.
Genesis Pulse. It had answered him.
He was now Level 1: Mortal Spark.
---
But he was still alone.
Still hunted.
And the world of Varkai had only