The Ash-Blood Prince

Seven blades were forged at the dawn of the First Age.Six are lost.One has begun to wake. Korrak survived the slaughter of the Ash Lords. The Skarnblood line was thought extinct when the Varethis Imperium burned their halls and left their kin to rot in volcanic ash. But the Ash Lords carried a rare gift in their veins: the ability to host Aether, the primordial residue of creation itself, without immediate corruption. Now Korrak walks the southern wastes with a broken Vaelor blade at his side and a finite reservoir of bound Aether in his blood. Aether is not spellcraft. It is not divine blessing. It does not answer prayers. It burns. When Korrak enters the city of Veyra, he finds a girl caged above a ritual altar, marked for sacrifice by the cult known as the Black Skull. A system message flares before his eyes: Ritual Event Detected.Primary Objective: Break the Sacrifice.Time Constraint: Until Sunset. He was hired anonymously.He suspects a test.He does not care. To save the girl, Korrak must spend the very force that keeps him alive. Every surge of Aether enhances his strength and perception, but drains his reservoir. Overuse risks death. Structured sorcery resists him. Steel bites him like any other man. And the Black Skull is not merely a cult of chanting priests. They bargain with fire-beasts in the north.They carve sigils that warp the flow of power.Their High Priest does not fear the Ash-Blood. As Korrak levels through blood and survival, rumors spread of the Ash-Blood Reaver, a warrior who paints his face with the ash of his slaughtered kin and brings reckoning to tyrants. But the Imperium believes the Skarn line is dead. If they learn the truth, they will finish what they began. And the seven blades of Vaelor are stirring.