Chapter 1: The Unwanted Inheritance

Chapter 1: The Unwanted Inheritance

The air in Kaelen Vance’s cramped flat tasted of ozone and compromise. It was a single room at the top of a crumbling Victorian walk-up, the kind of place where the rent was just low enough to make you forget the persistent damp and the ghosts in the plumbing. For Kael, it was a sanctuary. His bed was a mattress shoved into one corner, his kitchen a hot plate and a kettle, but the heart of the room was the heavy oak workbench bolted to the far wall.

Under the focused beam of a desk lamp, his hands moved with a surgeon’s precision. Lean and quick, they guided a fine-pointed silver stylus across a disc of polished obsidian. Scratches, nearly invisible to the naked eye, formed a complex geometric lattice. Each line had to be perfect, each intersection exact. A low hum vibrated from the stone, a whisper of contained energy. Aether, the lifeblood of his craft.

This was Drucraft, though he didn't know the proper name for it. To him, it was just ‘carving.’ A way to survive.

“Almost there, Nyx,” he murmured, not taking his eyes off his work.

A sleek black cat with eyes like chips of emerald blinked slowly from her perch on a stack of books. She let out a soft ‘mrrrow’ of encouragement.

This commission—a sigil of minor preservation for a nervous collector of rare stamps—would cover next month’s rent and a week’s worth of instant noodles. It was delicate, intricate work, the kind that made his temples throb but paid better than the dead-end temp jobs that usually filled his days. As he etched the final connecting line, the entire pattern flared with a soft, turquoise light before fading, sinking into the black stone. The hum ceased. Done.

He leaned back, the tension easing from his shoulders. His gaze fell on the simple, unadorned iron ring on his right hand. His father’s ring. The only thing he had left of him. He twisted it absently, a familiar, grounding habit.

That’s when he felt it. A prickle at the back of his neck. The faint warding sigil he’d scratched into his doorframe, a simple alarm designed to buzz if anything with a magical signature crossed it, had just… dissolved. Not broken. Erased.

Kael shot to his feet, grabbing the heaviest tool on his bench—a solid steel mallet. Nyx hissed, her fur standing on end. The air grew thick and heavy, the scent of ozone replaced by the clean, sharp smell of an impending storm.

Standing by the door, as if she had materialized from the shadows and the London rain, was a woman.

She was tall and poised, her silver-blonde hair pulled back into a severe bun that allowed no stray strands. She wore a tailored dark business suit that seemed to absorb the dim light of his flat, hinting at something more durable than fabric beneath. A faint, shimmering veil of energy, like heat haze on a summer road, rippled around her, shedding raindrops that sizzled and evaporated before they could touch her. Her blue eyes, cold and appraising, swept over the room, dismissing the squalor before finally landing on him.

“Kaelen Vance?” Her voice was crisp, aristocratic, and utterly out of place amongst his peeling wallpaper.

“Who’s asking?” Kael tightened his grip on the mallet. His heart hammered against his ribs. This was no client. This was power. The kind he’d spent his entire life avoiding.

“My name is Isolde Vance,” she said, and the shared surname hit him like a physical blow. “I represent House Ashford.”

He’d heard whispers of the Houses. The old families, the magical aristocracy who treated the city like their personal chessboard, their power hidden behind corporate fronts and layers of influence. They were bogeymen, legends for the desperate and the superstitious. And one of them was in his flat.

“Never heard of them,” he lied, his voice tight. “You have the wrong person. Now get out.”

Isolde took a step forward, her movements fluid and impossibly silent. “We don’t have time for this charade. Your father, Alistair, did an admirable job of hiding you in the mundane world, but his concealment sigils have finally degraded. We’ve been searching for you for a very long time, Kaelen Ashford.”

The world tilted. Ashford. The name echoed in a place in his memory he couldn’t quite reach. A phantom limb of a past he never knew he had. “My father was a watchmaker. My name is Vance. You’re insane.”

A flicker of something—pity, perhaps—crossed her features. “Your father was one of the most brilliant sigil-wrights of his generation. And you are his son. The last direct male heir of the main Ashford line. Your inheritance isn’t this pathetic little room; it’s a legacy of power you can’t begin to comprehend.”

She was offering him a fantasy, a way out of his miserable life. The cynical, street-smart part of him screamed it was a trap. A cruel joke. “I don’t want it.”

“It’s not a choice,” Isolde stated, her tone flat and final. “Our enemies are already aware of your existence. The only reason you are still alive is that we found you first. Without House Ashford’s protection, you will be dead before the week is out.”

Desire and Obstacle. The desire for this to be a lie, for her to leave and let him return to his quiet, anonymous life. The obstacle was the terrifying conviction in her eyes, the sheer weight of her presence that made his cheap wards feel like chalk drawings in the rain.

Before he could form another protest, a violent tremor shook the entire building. Plaster dust rained from the ceiling. Nyx shrieked and dove under the bed.

Isolde’s cold composure fractured, replaced by sharp-edged alarm. “They’re here. Sooner than I expected.” She spun around, her hand glowing with a harsh, blue light as she slapped a complex sigil onto the surface of his door. It flared, a web of energy spreading across the wood.

“Who’s here?” Kael yelled over a rising roar from outside.

“House Valerius!” she snapped, her eyes scanning the room for escape routes. “Our rivals. They don’t want a lost heir returning to strengthen the Ashford line. They want you erased.”

Action. Kael was frozen, the mallet feeling useless in his hand. This was beyond him. He was a craftsman, not a soldier.

The wall to his left exploded inwards.

Brick, plaster, and a wave of searing heat blasted through the room. Kael was thrown off his feet, his head cracking against the leg of his workbench. He saw a flash of crimson energy, jagged and malevolent, lance through the opening where his wall used to be. Isolde met it with a shield of crackling blue light, the impact shaking his very bones.

Through the ringing in his ears, he could hear shouting from below. The air filled with the acrid smell of burnt Aether. Two figures in dark tactical gear, their faces obscured by shimmering distortion fields, vaulted through the newly-made hole in his flat. In their hands, they held wands of polished black metal that pulsed with the same destructive crimson light.

Isolde moved like a viper. She didn't cast, she fought. A sigil flared on the back of her glove, and a whip of pure energy lashed out, catching one of the attackers across the chest and sending him flying back into the night. But the other was already advancing, his wand spitting bolts of fire that chewed through Kael’s meager possessions.

Kael scrambled backward, his mind a whirlwind of terror. His life, his workshop, everything he had built, was being incinerated in seconds. He saw a crimson bolt heading for the bed.

“Nyx!”

He dove, ignoring the searing pain in his shoulder as a stray spark caught his jacket. He scooped the terrified cat from under the mattress just as another blast turned it to ash. Nyx screamed, a thin, pained sound, and he saw blood matting the fur on her side.

Result. His world was destroyed. His only family was hurt.

Isolde grunted in pain. The second attacker had landed a blow. Her blue shield flickered violently. “We have to go! Now!”

Turning Point. There was no going back. No denying her words. The abstract threat of ‘enemies’ was now a real and present inferno consuming his home.

She grabbed his arm in a grip of steel, hauling him towards the shattered window. The five-story drop to the slick alley below was terrifying.

“Trust me!” she commanded, pulling a silver disc from her belt and slamming it against the window frame. A shimmering cascade of silvery energy flowed downwards, forming a translucent, ladder-like path.

Surprise. The sheer, casual power of it was breathtaking. This was real. All of it.

He clutched the bleeding, trembling Nyx to his chest. He gave one last look at his ruined workshop—the scattered tools, the smoldering remains of his life’s work, the broken pieces of his quiet existence.

“Move!” Isolde shoved him onto the energy ladder. It was solid under his feet, yet felt like stepping on moonlight.

As they descended into the rain-swept darkness of the alley, another explosion rocked the building above them, showering them in debris. Kael didn't look back. He just held onto his cat, his mind numb, his quiet life shattered into a million burning pieces. He was Kaelen Ashford. And he was being hunted.