Chapter 1 The Spark Beneath the Skin

The city never really slept.

It just changed colors.

By day, New Arcana was a tangle of smog and steel mages in suits, witches haggling spells on street corners, ley-line steam rising from every grate. But at night, it turned into something hungrier. The air hummed with magic and desperation. Every breath tasted like rust and ozone.

That’s when I worked best. When no one looked too close.

The club’s basement smelled like burnt sage and cheap gin. Purple lights pulsed across sweating bodies, and the DJ a half-demon with horns filed smooth mixed tracks laced with sonic enchantments. Each beat rattled my bones. I hated it here, but the mark I was tracking loved noise.

Her name was Veris Quinn. Spell-runner. Occult broker. Small-time fence for bigger devils. My employer, a necromancer with too much money and too little patience, wanted something she’d stolen — a glass shard etched with runes older than sunlight.

They called it the True Flame.

And I was supposed to steal it back.

I pushed through the crowd, my coat brushing against glowing sigils tattooed across sweating arms. Magic was a disease in this city. Beautiful, contagious, incurable. I kept my gloves on tight. The last thing I needed was another surge of energy crawling up my veins.

Veris sat in a corner booth surrounded by her entourage human, fae, and something in between. She wore a crimson dress and confidence like armor. When she laughed, the lights seemed to dim for her.

Typical witch trick.

I slid into the shadows behind a broken pillar, my heart syncing with the bass. My fingers found the hilt of the dagger strapped to my thigh dragonsteel, dull on purpose. You didn’t want to kill in this part of town unless you were begging for a curse.

Instead, I planned to talk.

And maybe steal.

When the beat dropped, I moved. Quick, silent, like smoke.

Veris didn’t notice me until I was in her reflection the shimmer of her wine glass catching my shadow. Her laughter died.

“Kaia Vale,” she said, smiling without warmth. “Didn’t think you still worked the streets. Thought you went respectable.”

“Respectable doesn’t pay rent,” I said. “You have something that doesn’t belong to you.”

Her eyes glittered violet. “Everything I own was stolen. What makes this different?”

“The fact that it’s worth killing for.”

She raised a brow. “And you’re here to kill me?”

“No. But the person paying me might.”

The tension between us thickened, the air crackling faintly. She leaned back, amused. “You’ve got some nerve showing up unarmed.”

I smiled, flicked my wrist, and let the runic dagger slide into view its dull edge gleaming under the light. “Unarmed is a matter of perspective.”

That was when the lights flickered.

Just once. Then again.

The bass dropped into silence.

And the crowd froze mid-motion every dancer, every drunk, every flicker of neon light suspended in the air. Only Veris and I were still moving. My pulse spiked.

She whispered, “Oh no…”

The room rippled.

A glyph massive, intricate, alive burned into the ceiling. Lines of light carved themselves into the walls. A summoning circle, inverted. Someone had just locked the club inside a spell.

Magic shimmered, hot and wrong.

“Who the hell” I started, but Veris didn’t answer. She was staring at her glass, which had begun to melt in her hand.

A voice filled the room. Male, low, and echoing from nowhere.

“You were warned, Veris Quinn. The Flame does not belong to thieves.”

She screamed or tried to but her voice cracked into a sob as her skin began to smoke. Light burst from her chest, spreading fast. The rune carved into her neck ignited like wildfire.

I lunged forward, but she was already gone vaporized in a pulse of golden fire that singed my coat and hurled me backward into a wall.

Then silence.

Ash fell like snow.

Only a charred silhouette remained where she’d been sitting.

My ears rang. My pulse thundered. Somewhere in the haze, a small object glimmered among the ashes.

The shard.

I staggered forward, coughing, eyes watering. My gloves smoked as I reached for it. The glass pulsed — faint, alive, whispering.

The moment my skin brushed its surface, something inside me cracked open.

A sound deep, ancient roared in my skull. The air bent. Power surged through my bones like molten lightning. My knees buckled.

Flames crawled up my arms.

I bit down a scream as pain seared through my veins, every nerve on fire. The shard dissolved into my skin, branding me with a symbol that burned like molten metal a dragon’s eye.

Then came the voice.

“At last,” it said, in a language older than death.

“You found me.”

The world twisted.

When I woke, the club was gone.

Or rather what was left of it. The ceiling had collapsed. Charred bodies lay in piles of soot. The walls were melted glass. Firefighters shouted in the distance, but the flames here burned without smoke unnatural. Arcane.

I dragged myself to my feet, dizzy. The symbol on my palm still glowed faintly, pulsing with my heartbeat.

A cold wind cut through the wreckage. A figure stepped through the smoke. Long coat. Polished boots. The kind of posture that screamed law enforcement or worse.

“Kaia Vale,” the man said, voice calm and too smooth. “You’ve made quite a mess.”

I recognized him immediately.

Detective Riven Korr. Obsidian Order enforcement. Mage hunter.

And once, a friend.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I rasped.

“Neither should you.” He looked around, eyes narrowing at the scorched bodies. “Did you do this?”

“Do I look capable of this?”

He studied me for a long time. “You look alive. That’s enough.”

I tried to move past him, but he blocked me. His hand reached for my wrist then froze when he saw the mark glowing beneath the glove.

“What is that?” he demanded.

I jerked away. “You don’t want to know.”

“Kaia”

“Back off.”

The air around me shifted, pressure building, the mark flaring brighter. Riven stepped back, hand on his weapon a rune-etched firearm humming with containment wards.

“Something’s inside you,” he said quietly. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

I almost did. Almost lied. But the voice in my head spoke first smooth, cold, undeniably real.

“Tell him nothing. He is theirs.”

I froze. “Whose?”

“The ones who caged me. Who caged us.”

Riven’s gaze sharpened. “Who are you talking to?”

I swallowed hard. “No one.”

The mark pulsed again, and for a moment, the world around me flickered flames, wings, shadow. A dragon’s silhouette rose behind my reflection in a shard of glass. Then gone.

Riven’s tone hardened. “Come with me, Kaia. The Order can help.”

“The Order’s the reason my mother’s dead,” I said. My voice cracked anger and something darker bleeding through. “I’m not walking into their cage.”

He sighed, lowering the weapon. “Then you’d better run. They’re already on their way.”

Sirens wailed in the distance. Blue enchantment lights shimmered through the smoke.

I turned and bolted.

The streets outside were chaos crowds, drones, flashing sigils, the metallic taste of fear. I weaved through alleys, lungs burning, coat torn and boots slick with ash. The voice in my head hummed restless, like a heartbeat that wasn’t mine.

“They will hunt you now,” it whispered. “But they cannot touch you. Not while I am awake.”

“Who are you?” I hissed under my breath.

“You know my name.”

I didn’t. But when I closed my eyes, I saw it carved in light across the back of my mind.

Eryndor.

The Dragon of the Ninth Flame. The one who burned the old world to cinders.

And somehow… he was inside me.

By dawn, I reached my apartment a half-collapsed building in the Ash District, where magic went to die. I locked the door, dropped my coat, and slumped against the wall.

My hands trembled. The mark had faded to a dull ember, but I could still feel it like a second heartbeat under my skin.

On the counter, a cracked mirror reflected my face. My eyes, once dark brown, now glowed faintly gold.

“Your blood remembers,” Eryndor murmured. “The fire never truly dies.”

I wanted to scream. Instead, I laughed sharp, broken, empty.

“I’m not your vessel.”

“You already are.”

Outside, thunder rumbled not weather, but magic. The city’s wards trembled.

Somewhere far away, someone whispered my name. And the hunt began.