Exile to Ashen District

The road to the Ashen District was a wound carved into the earth.

Eryk Thorn walked it alone, each step a dull ache that pulsed up through his heels and settled into his spine. His boots, cracked and unpolished, scuffed against the crumbling stone path, kicking up swirls of gray dust that clung to his robes like a funeral veil. The road curved like a question he didn't want answered, leading him further from everything he'd ever known.

Above him, the sky bore no stars. What had once been a canopy of constellations guiding mages through their studies now sagged with ash and smoke. Even the moon, pale and distant, looked ashamed to witness his descent.

The air tasted of soot. Each breath Eryk took left a trace of bitterness on his tongue, like burnt parchment. In his hand, he clutched the expulsion notice from the Grand Magnus Academy. The parchment had creased and re-creased so many times that the wax seal had split, the flaming tower emblem cracked down the center.

How fitting.

The symbol of his future was too broken like him.

His fingers tightened around the paper. He didn't know what he hated more. The emptiness in his chest or the ache of remembering what used to fill it.

Ahead, the gates of the Ashen District loomed. Rusted iron, twisted and clawed as if grown rather than forged, jutted from the earth. They didn't welcome people. They just warned them like they were scaring them. The structure looked less like a gate and more like a mouth, eager to devour those who dared enter.

A lone guard leaned lazily against the post. His armor looked more like rusted tin than steel, streaked with grime and dented in places that hinted at real battle or sheer neglect. He didn't even bother to straighten when Eryk approached.

"Name?"

"E-Eryk Thorn." He swallowed. Not because he was scared, but because he told his surname. The one that Kael Thorn was proud for.

The quill scraped across the ledger like a bone dragged on stone.

"Reason for entry?"

Eryk hesitated, then forced the word through gritted teeth. "Ex... xile."

The guard finally looked up. His eyes scanned Eryk, lingering on the crest still faintly visible on his ruined robes.

A slow smirk unfurled beneath his helm. "Ah. One of them."

The gate groaned as it opened, the rust grinding like an old man's bones. It creaked just wide enough for Eryk to slip through.

Then slammed shut behind him.

The gate creaked openly.

The Ashen District was not a place.

It was a memory of one. A ruin too stubborn to die.

Buildings leaned against one another like survivors of a long-forgotten siege, their wooden frames blackened and brittle from old fires. The scent of charred timber never truly left the air, clinging to every breath like a curse. Stray embers floated aimlessly through the alleys, not from any flame, but from some residual heat the earth refused to surrender.

People moved in the periphery with silent, sharp-eyed shadows who vanished the moment he met their gaze. They wore patched cloaks and expressions carved from caution.

Eryk's stomach growled, but he ignored it. He had more pressing needs—shelter, perhaps. A wall to sit against. Time to think. But the district offered no sanctuary. Only silence and the steady weight of rot.

He kept walking, ignoring the eyes that followed.

Then a voice cut through the haze.

"Well, well. Look what the crows dragged in!"

Eryk turned, and there he was.

Mael.

Standing at the mouth of a crooked alley, arms folded, his smirk a blade honed by cruelty. His knuckles burned with fire—not the controlled, symmetrical glyphs of learned magic, but a wild, living heat that crackled with hunger.

Eryk's stomach twisted.

"Surprised?" Mael stepped forward. The fire rolled up his arm like an affectionate snake. His eyes glinted like flint. "Word travels fast when the Academy dumps its trash."

Eryk didn't respond. He felt his fingers twitch, searching for a spell that no longer existed in him.

Mael's grin widened. "What's wrong, Hollow Thorn? No clever incantations? No smug little spells to save you?"

A snap of his fingers sent a spark skittering along the ground, which erupted into a line of fire, curling behind Eryk to cut off retreat.

"Oh, right. You can't."

The heat rose, thick and oppressive. Sweat beaded on Eryk's brow.

Mael took another step. "You know, I almost pitied you. Almost. But then I remembered how you strutted through the halls like you belonged. Like you weren't just an empty husk playing pretend."

The fire surged.

Eryk barely got his arms up before the blast struck him.

Pain.

Blinding, brutal pain. The heat seared his skin, burned through his robes. He stumbled backward, crashing into a wall. The stone dug into his spine and forced the breath from his lungs.

Mael's sharp and cold laughter echoed.

Then Eryk's eyes caught another burst of flame. Eryk rolled aside, but fire licked at his sleeves, catching the fabric of his shirt. He slapped at it with his hands blistering.

Mael walked through him slowly, his eyes gleaming. "You should have stayed in your village. Stayed forgotten. But no. You had to crawl into our world. You had to pretend."

Eryk's back hit the wall again. Now, he was trapped. He cpuldn't get out of the place now, Mael was walking toward him.

Mael raised a hand. A sphere of fire spun in his palm, bright and blistering. "Let's see how hollow you really are."

The fireball flew through him like a wrecking ball going pressed from his stand through the wall.

Eryk shut his eyes as hard as he could, fists clenched at his sides, bracing for the end. For pain. For the fire to kiss his skin and melt him down to bones and ash. For death to finally call him what he'd always feared he was. A useless, cursed, broken human.

A jerk.

But the pain didn't come.

Instead, he just felt nothing but silence.

Heavy and thick that it swallowed the world.

His breath trembled in his throat. He didn't feel anything. No heat. No sting. Not even the burn of panic.

Maybe the fire had hit him and he was already dead. Maybe he was too hollow inside to even feel magic anymore.

Eryk cracked open one eye.

And he froze.

The fireball hovered inches from his face, suspended mid-air like a flame trapped in amber. Its edges shimmered, trying to move, but something held it still.

Ffff.

Then it vanished in front of his eyes.

Mael's eyes flew wide, his voice cracking through the quiet like a whip. "What—?"

Eryk lowered his gaze.

His hands glowed—not with flame, but with darkness. Not black, but deeper than black. A pulsing, void-born shimmer bled from his fingers, like ink spilled across the glass. It rippled. Cold. Alive. A heartbeat in negative.

And then, his chest...

The hollow in him, the empty place he'd carried since he was a child screamed. A phantom pain bloomed like a star dying inside him. Not sharp, not physical, but a gnawing ache that gripped his soul and twisted.

Aching. Yearning. Consuming.

Like a thousand knives pressing in. Not to kill, but to fill.

Mael stumbled back, his bravado crumbling. "Wha—what the hell are you?"

Eryk didn't know.

He'd never known.

But the world around him seemed to know about what was happening. The air trembled. The firelight faltered. The district itself seemed to shudder as if reality had caught its breath in fear.

Mael's fire flickered and dimmed slowly. The heat that had once radiated from his palms vanished like steam in the wind. His flame withered like a flower in a dying state.

He tried to speak, but no sound came.

No more heat.

No more light.

Because Eryk was eating it. Drawing it into himself like a black hole dressed in flesh.

He could feel it, the magic. Rushing and crashing through his bones. Flooding through his veins like rain through a broken roof. Pouring straight into the hollow inside him, and for once, it wasn't empty.

Mael dropped to his knees, a choked sob in his throat. "S-Stop—please—"

Eryk didn't move. Couldn't.

He didn't know how.

He didn't know what he was doing. Only that something in him was awake now that he couldn't even tell it to stop.

The last of Mael's fire faded to embers.

And then, to nothing.

The boy sagged forward, his breath ragged, his skin gray with fear and fatigue.

Eryk stared at his own hands. The void-light flickered before it dulled in his eyes. But the weight of it, the sensation of it still llingered in him.

Full.

For the first time in his life, the emptiness didn't ache.

Mael looked up with glassy eyes. His voice was barely a breath. "Monster…"

And Eryk didn't argue.

Maybe he was.

~○~

Eryk heard a voices and shouts coming from the street.

Eryk turned and didn't even think twice to ran.

Down alleys that stank of piss and old fire, past crumbling homes and walls smeared in soot, shadow, and sorrow. His boots hit the stone like thunder in his chest.

His thoughts spun like broken gears.

He had absorbed Mael's magic. Like he actually drained him.

Was that what his hollow was for?

Not an absence but a hunger.

Not a flow but... a weapon?

Does this even mean he's a Spellbreaker.

"Monster..."

He didn't know which label carved deeper into his soul.

Then he heard a sound near him.

A cough—wet, guttural, and dying.

He skidded to a stop.

There, beneath a collapsed overhang of rotted wood and tile,a girl laid on the cold street floor. Thin as winter. Filthy as the ground. Blood leaked from a gash along her ribs, soaking the shredded cloth she pressed against it.

Their eyes locked.

Hers were hard and unafraid. The color of burnt copper.

"If you're gonna finish me off," she rasped, "do it quick."

Eryk blinked. "You're... hurt.")"

She coughed with a crimson flecking her lips. "No shit."

Her voice was jagged, like glass trying to sound brave.

Eryk stepped forward through her.

She eyed his uniform with venom. "Academy. Of course it's you lot."

"I'm not—"

"Save it," she spat. "I know who you are."

That made him stop cold.

Her smile was sharp and bitter. "Everyone knows. The Hollow Thorn. The failure. The Academy's shame."

But his father, Kael Thorn, didn't know it yet.

He didn't flinch. Not after Mael. Those words had lost their teeth.

"What's your name?" he asked softly.

She hesitated. Maybe no one had asked her that in years.

"Sera."

He knelt beside her. "Let me help."

"With what? Gonna charm the wound shut with that pretty empty hand of yours?"

"No. But I know someone who might."

Sera narrowed her eyes around suspiciously. "Why would you care?"

Eryk didn't answer. He simply held out his hand.

Sera stared at it like it was a trap.

Then slowly, with trembling fingers, she took it.

~○~

They found shelter in a place that looked like it had died twice already.

A half-collapsed tavern, swallowed by time and soot.

The sign above the door read:

The Hollowed Hearth.

Fitting.

Inside, the air reeked of old ale, wet ash, and stories no one wanted to tell. Eyes turned toward them. Some were curious, some were cruel. Their faces ghosted with recognition, suspicion, maybe even hate.

A woman stepped out from behind the bar. She was built like a stone wall, scars winding down her arms like fire's memory. Her eyes took them in—first Sera, then Eryk.

She exhaled through her nose. "Again, Sera?"

Sera gave a ragged sigh. "Missed you too, Narliya."

The woman looked at Eryk, unimpressed.

"And who's this?"

Sera muttered, "A stray?"

Eryk said, "A problem."

Narliya raised an eyebrow, arms crossing over a chest like armor.

"Well then," she said with a wry smile.

"You'll fit right in."