THE FIRST MOVE
1018 Words
I didn’t sleep after the throne took me.
Couldn’t.
Not just because the voices were louder now, or because the bones wouldn’t stop twitching under my skin but because the air felt different.
Heavy. Sharp. Like something was watching me from inside my own body.
I stood alone in the bottom chamber of the Black Tower, heart still racing, ribs sore from the magic that nearly crushed them. The throne had accepted me, yeah. But it didn’t do it kindly. It took its share. Left its mark. Made sure I’d never forget who was really in control.
I was breathing, sure.
But I wasn’t normal anymore.
And that was the point.
When I climbed out of the tower, the world looked brighter but not in a good way. The sky had turned grey, clouds boiling like something was brewing above. I stepped into the open, and the wind nearly knocked me off my feet.
Not because it was strong…
But because it was carrying whispers.
Not mine.
Not the throne’s.
New ones.
Somewhere, not far from here, someone was practicing bone magic.
Sloppy. Loud. Not trained.
Amateur.
That shouldn’t be possible. Bone magic was wiped out when my bloodline fell. Every scroll, every teacher, every bloodline destroyed. Even Rethan said I was the last. The only.
But now?
I felt someone else tapping into the bones.
And they weren’t hiding it.
I followed it.
Didn’t eat. Didn’t rest. Just walked, fast, through the cracked roads of the Wastes. Old skeletons littered the trail war beasts, plague victims, forgotten kings. Every bone I passed bent slightly, like it recognized me.
That used to creep me out.
Now it just felt normal.
---
By midday, I saw the smoke.
A small village burned out, broken, half-buried in dust. Looked like nobody had lived there in years. But something was moving in the center.
I slowed my steps.
Didn’t draw a weapon.
Didn’t need one.
If someone was trying to act like a bone mage, they needed to know what they were playing with.
A group of six stood in a rough circle men and women, dirty clothes, sharp eyes. Mercs, maybe. Rogues. One of them had bones floating around him in a slow spin, like a shield made of teeth and ribs.
He was tall. Maybe twenty-five. Long hair tied back. Arms covered in black ink that looked like fake runes. He was grinning like he’d just figured out how to breathe fire.
I stepped into view.
No noise. No threat.
But the moment they saw me, they knew.
The man’s smile dropped.
He turned to his people. “That him?”
One of the others a redhead with a scar across her lip nodded fast. “It’s the Varic boy.”
They’d been watching me.
Tracking me.
Waiting.
“Didn’t think you’d walk right into us,” the man said, voice cocky again. “Saves us the trouble.”
I looked him over. “You’re using bone magic. Where’d you learn it?”
He smirked. “Didn’t. Just started happening after the Black Tower cracked open. Felt the pull. Heard the voices.”
“You’re not chosen.”
He shrugged. “Don’t need to be. Magic is magic.”
I took a step forward.
He raised a hand. The bones around him spun faster. A piece of spine shot toward me like a spear.
I blinked and it shattered in the air.
The man’s grin fell off his face.
I kept walking.
He threw his whole hand forward, trying to crush me with a wave of bone shards but they dropped before they reached me, bones falling to the ground like dust.
I raised my arm.
Bones around me began to rise slow at first, then faster. A crown of ribs. A wall of skulls. A spine that twisted in the air like a whip.
“You’re not ready,” I said.
“Then teach me!” he yelled, eyes wide now. “Join us! You don’t have to do this alone!”
“There is no us.”
I let the bones strike.
I didn’t even aim them. I just thought it and the magic obeyed.
His shield cracked. His knees buckled. The earth opened under him and swallowed him whole. Not enough to kill him. Just enough to make him understand.
The others ran.
Didn’t even look back.
I didn’t chase them.
They weren’t the problem.
He was.
I walked to the hole where the fake mage was groaning, barely conscious, half-buried in dirt.
“You think magic is a game,” I said.
He coughed. Blood on his lips. “I just wanted power…”
“You’re playing with the bones of kings,” I whispered. “And they don’t like being used.”
He looked up at me, eyes wide with fear now. “What are you?”
I crouched beside him.
“I’m what happens when the throne wakes up.”
I left him alive.
Not out of mercy but because fear spreads faster than fire. And I needed the world to start trembling.
That night, I stopped by a dead riverbed to rest. I could still feel the sky watching me. Still hear the Bone King’s voice humming in the back of my head.
“You did well,” it said.
I didn’t respond.
He wasn’t my guide.
He was a warning.
I sat by the edge of the cracked dirt and stared at my reflection in a shallow pool left behind from the last rain.
My eyes were darker now.
Not just tired different.
The kind of different that doesn’t fade.
The throne had changed me.
Maybe not fully. Not yet.
But the more I used the magic, the more it felt right.
Like I was finally becoming the thing I was always supposed to be.
The clans would feel this soon.
The council members. The warlords. The fake kings on fake thrones. The ones who ordered the bounty on my head. The ones who thought killing a bloodline would end the story.
They were wrong.
This story just turned the page.
- Writer
