Smoke clung to the skies like regret, heavy and unyielding. The acrid scent of it wormed its way into every breath, thick as wool and just as suffocating. Above the valley, the sun barely pierced through the ashen veil, casting only a bruised amber light on the world below. The village of Aerlan burned without song, without battle cries, without even the illusion of justice. No clash of swords. No rallying horns. Just fire, and silence, and the occasional groan of a collapsing beam.
Aerlan had once been a quiet place—known to few outside the valley and remembered by even fewer. Its people were artisans, shepherds, potters, and mothers. They raised goats, carved flutes from sycamore branches, and painted their homes in bright colors to ward off the long winters. Now, those homes were not sieged but crushed, flattened beneath some distant and careless cruelty. Its people became smoke and cinders, scattered and swept into the blind corners of history where no bard would sing of them.
From the tree line that flanked the northern slope, Caedren watched the end of it. His cloak, of coarse brown linen faded from sun and use, hung still in the hot wind. A long staff leaned against his shoulder—simple in design, worn smooth by travel. His left hand gripped it loosely, while his right was wrapped in old bindings, yellowed and frayed, hiding scars older than most villages. He did not weep. Caedren had seen too many ends to summon tears now. Kingdoms fell like leaves, cities crumbled like sandcastles. He had long since made peace with endings.
And yet something about the stillness of Aerlan's death stirred him in a way he had not expected. Perhaps it was the lack of resistance. No stand had been made here. No desperate last charge. Just fire, and then nothing.
A movement caught his eye—a flicker amidst the ruin. He narrowed his gaze.
A boy, no older than nine winters, crawled from the wreckage of what might have once been a bakery. His clothes were half-burned, hanging in ragged strips from limbs blackened with soot. One leg bent at an unnatural angle, and his left eye was swollen shut, purple and red, a bruise expanding like ink in water. Behind him lay the charred body of a woman—his mother, perhaps—her arm still outstretched as if in futile protection.
"Help me," the boy rasped, voice barely more than a breath, a ghost of sound carried on smoke.
Caedren moved before thought could catch him. He stepped from the shadow of the trees, crossing the blackened earth with deliberate calm. As he passed the scorched post of what was once the village bakery, he crouched low and gathered the boy into his arms. The child trembled—more from exhaustion than fear—and offered no protest as Caedren lifted him.
The staff slid into the sling across Caedren's back, untouched.
"Don't carry me," the boy mumbled. "Just give me a sword."
The words stung more than they should have. Caedren looked down into the boy's swollen face. His own expression remained composed, but his voice came soft, like falling ash.
"A sword won't bring her back."
"But I'll feel something."
There was a pause. Not long, but heavy.
Caedren's eyes, once bright in youth but now dulled to the sheen of cooling steel, met the boy's with the weight of memory.
"And then what will you feel when you kill the next man, and the next, until the fire burns in you instead of them?"
The boy said nothing. His good eye stared at the ground. His lip trembled, then stilled. The wind answered in his silence, sighing through the skeletal remains of Aerlan. It whispered through collapsed rooftops, over scorched beams and broken tools. It carried with it the scent of ruin and the faintest echo of something older—a melody barely remembered. The hum of rebirth, of endings not entirely final.
Caedren adjusted his hold on the boy and continued walking, boots crunching over shattered tiles and brittle remains. He passed wells turned to poison, where the water hissed against falling ash. He passed a cradle, blackened and empty. A doll missing its head. An anvil cracked in two.
Beyond the village, past the ruined fence that marked Aerlan's edge, a hill sloped upward. There, twenty or so figures knelt in the brittle grass. Survivors. Faces hollowed by grief, eyes red-rimmed and dry. Not one of them bore arms. They looked like statues in mourning, shaped by sorrow and ash.
One woman rose to meet him. She was tall and wiry, her skin weathered from sun and wind, with streaks of gray braided into her hair. A scar split her lower lip, giving her voice a slight tremor when she spoke.
"Are you… sent by the king?"
Caedren stopped. The boy in his arms stirred, groaning faintly.
"Which king?" Caedren asked, not unkindly.
The woman blinked, as if the question itself was unexpected. "The one who cares."
Caedren's face did not change, but his silence was louder than any reply.
"There is no such man," he said, finally.
He knelt in the grass, gently laying the boy down among the others. The child clung to his sleeve for a heartbeat before letting go, curling into himself. Caedren stood then, tall and still, the wind lifting his cloak like a banner of dust.
"But I am here," he said. "That will have to do."
The woman stared at him, expression unreadable. Around her, the others watched, wide-eyed and silent.
Then, from the direction of the village—behind them, among the ruins—came a rustling. A figure emerged, staggering from a smoking heap of beams. A bandit. One of the warlord's stragglers, perhaps left behind in the chaos, or hiding like a rat. He was bloodied, a cut splitting his brow and another down his chest, but he held a blade—half-drawn, jagged and dirty.
He stumbled toward the group, a sneer carving across his face.
"You think kindness survives?" he spat, voice hoarse. "You'll all die screaming."
Caedren didn't speak. He didn't reach for his sword—he had none. He moved.
Fast.
His cloak billowed behind him as he crossed the distance in seconds. One motion: the staff slid from his back and cracked against the bandit's wrist, snapping it with a sickening crunch. The blade flew from the man's hand, landing in the grass with a thud. A second motion: the staff's end whipped up in a blur and struck the side of the bandit's temple.
The man dropped like a puppet whose strings had been sliced.
The survivors gasped. A few stepped back. The woman with the gray-streaked braids took a cautious step forward, looking not at the fallen bandit but at Caedren, eyes narrowed in wonder.
"Who are you?" she asked, barely more than a whisper.
Caedren turned to face her, his voice calm and low.
"No one you'll remember."
He turned from the hill, walking away without another word. The wind caught dust and ash behind him, swirling in small devils at his heels. The sky remained dim, clouds of smoke thick as blankets. Yet in that dimness, the setting sun finally broke through—a single ray of copper light catching on his staff, on his cloak, on the silver threading hidden in the frayed bindings around his hand.
Behind him, the boy cried in silence, head bowed. No one moved to hush him.
No one dared.
And far to the south, beyond the jagged teeth of mountains and deserts that devoured entire caravans, across rivers where cities once stood and empires now crumbled, something ancient stirred. A flame, long cold, guttered to life in a tomb forgotten by time. Not summoned by bloodline, not by prophecy, but by choice. A choice made in a dying village by a man without name, without rank, without claim to crown or throne.
Thus began the legend.
Not of a king, for there would be no crown.
Not of a savior, for he would not ask for thanks.
But of a man who walked where others fled.
The one who carried fire but never let it consume him.
The King of the Kingless World.