Adusa’s Path. Marked by Trial.
This post updates as new fragments of Adusa’s past — and his path — are revealed.
Chapter One - The Scar of Scale
They said no one escapes the Scalecult alive.
But Adusa wasn’t trying to escape. He was trying to save Aya.
He walked into the ritual chamber with nothing but desperation — and walked out alone, cursed by draconic Dread, his bones reshaped by flame, his heart scorched by the grotesque thing Aya had become.
Now, the power that broke him calls him back.
Not as a man.
As a mark.
“I look at these hands and I think of how they once held you.
Now all they can do is bring death.”
— Adusa
Adusa Awaits.
Chapter Two — Aya’s Last Words
Before the cult. Before the flame. Before the curse — there was just the two of them.
Adusa and Aya.
Bound by love. Torn by fate.
He swore he’d never let them take her.
He swore they’d escape together.
But the Scalecult doesn’t make promises.
It makes sacrifices.
He tried.
He failed.
And he lives with that failure carved into his bones.
“You promised you'd never let them take me.”
— Aya
Chapter Three — Chant of the Cult
The Scalecult doesn’t pray. It chants.
Its words aren’t spoken — they’re offered. Repeated. Inhaled like smoke.
Not to be understood, but to be obeyed.
“Blood for scale. Flesh for flame. Love… for the Dread.”
This was the first chant Adusa ever heard.
He was young, hidden behind a brazier, listening through the stone walls of the initiation chamber. He hadn’t yet taken the brand. He still believed in escape.
Aya sat just beyond the veil, eyes wide, still untouched.
The voices didn’t sound like the cultists he knew.
They sounded… hollow. Ancient. As if something was speaking through them.
He remembers how the air bent.
How the flame rippled sideways.
How the words didn’t end when the mouths stopped moving.
He didn’t sleep that night.
He hasn’t slept soundly since.
The chant is not a ritual.
It is a summons.
And Adusa knows: the cult was never calling to the Dread.
It was calling down the Dread.
Chapter Four — The Scalecult Trial
No one joins the Scalecult by accident.
They come seeking something—power, absolution, transcendence.
But the Trial demands more than belief. It demands blood.
Adusa never believed.
He entered the Trial to disrupt it.
He thought he could fake the rite.
Buy time. Get Aya out.
But the Trial isn’t just a ceremony. It’s a transformation.
The cult doesn’t brand the faithful. It rewrites them — from the inside out.
Scales for skin. Ash for breath. Dread pulsing through every vein.
Aya passed the Trial.
Adusa failed.
And in that failure, he was marked all the same.
Not as a dragon ascendant — but as a cursed remnant. A walking scar. A survivor.
The Trial was never about elevation.
It was about surrender.
And Aya surrendered first.
Chapter Five — Marked for Return
It’s not over.
Adusa walks still — not as a man, but as a mark.
Scarred by ritual. Cursed by Dread. Bound to a fate he never chose.
But the world remembers him.
Each trial he completed. Each enemy he faced.
They burn like signal fires, calling him back through smoke and memory.
He does not come for glory.
He comes because the flame summons him.
And when this new version of himself appears, it won’t just be a reward.
It will be a consequence — the shape of a survivor forged in bone, bound by loss, and chosen by fate.
The Scalecult thought they had broken him.
But you? You might be the one to bring him back.
Will you carry the mark — or be left in the ashes?
Adusa Awaits. The Scorching Trial Begins August 4