Kael woke already knowing something was wrong.
The feeling came first, an absence, intimate and raw, like reaching for a scar that should hurt and finding only numbness. His heart accelerated as he searched his mind, grasping at fragments.
There had been a name.
A girl.
Warm light.
Silver hair flowing like liquid moonlight, threaded with veins of soft cyan glow. Wind in her hair. A laugh,real, unguarded, alive.
The memory fractured.
Shattered.
Gone.
Kael sucked in a breath and pressed his palms to his face. The pain wasn't sharp. It wasn't physical. It was worse like discovering that something precious had been removed, not lost. As if the Void had taken payment without asking.
Cold lingered low in his chest.
Outside, the forest waited.
Morning meditation took place by the river.
Black basalt split the water into violent white foam. Mist rose like breath from something enormous and sleeping. Kael knelt on wet stone, spine straight, eyes closed, breathing as Darius had taught him.
Two counts in.
Three counts out.
Anchor the mind.
Cage the Void.
Stillness came.
Then something brushed his awareness.
A fly hovered near his cheek, tiny, alive, irrelevant.
Kael did nothing.
The Void answered.
For less than a heartbeat, reality failed.
Not darkness.
Not energy.
Absence.
A flawless geometric void unfolded around Kael and collapsed instantly.
The fly vanished.
Not burned.
Not crushed.
Not displaced.
Erased.
The river roared louder. Birds screamed and fled the canopy. Kael gasped as the world stitched itself back together.
Darius crossed the distance in two strides and seized Kael's wrist, shattering the meditation. The Void recoiled like a disturbed predator.
"You didn't call it," Darius said.
His voice was controlled.
Too controlled.
Kael stared at the empty air. "I didn't feel it coming."
"You didn't command it," Darius repeated. "It recognized you."
The word curdled in Kael's gut. "That's still control, isn't it?"
Darius released him slowly.
"No," he said. "That's the beginning of succession."
Kael's breath hitched.
Darius scanned the forest, senses stretched thin. "Every time you survive," he continued, "it learns how. And one day it will stop waiting for your permission."
Something ancient shifted inside Kael.
Something listening.
TESSA WYN — WHAT THE SCROLLS REMEMBER
The scrolls were older than fear.
Tessa worked under dim Aether light, hands steady despite the pressure building in her chest. The manuscripts disagreed on culture, era, and language but not structure. Diagrams repeated across civilizations that had never met. Symbols evolved, meaning did not.
Void-born entities did not manifest freely.
They anchored.
Always.
To a living axis.
Each cycle followed the same path, recorded in blood and ash:
Awakening.
Acceleration.
Fracture.
Or sealing.
A phrase appeared again and again, carved by different hands across centuries:
When the Axis awakens, the Guardian must choose.
Tessa leaned back, breath thin.
Guardian.
Her thoughts slid unwillingly to Darius Hallow. His silences. His vigilance. The way he looked at Kael not with hope, but with the calm of someone measuring an ending.
He hadn't trained Kael to save him.
He had trained him to survive long enough.
And worse
Darius had already chosen something.
Tessa sealed the scrolls and hid them away. Not from fear.
From strategy.
If Darius was a key… then forcing the lock too early would doom them all.
IRIA NOX — THE SECOND CONTRACT
The target was ordinary.
No implants. No guards. No legend attached to his name. Just a thin man clutching a datapad he should never have seen.
He begged.
Iria hesitated.
The blade went in crooked.
Blood splashed warm across her knuckles. The man collapsed, choking, eyes wide not with terror, but betrayal.
Someone screamed.
A woman at the end of the alley. Innocent. Witness.
Iria ran.
She made it three blocks before her body revolted. She dropped to her knees, retching until bile burned her throat. Neon lights smeared across her vision.
Veyla watched from the shadows.
"If you hesitate again," she said, voice empty, "you die."
No comfort.
No reassurance.
Only truth.
Iria wiped her mouth and stood.
Something inside her shattered.
Something else hardened into steel.
RAI KURODA — STORMS ARE SEEN FROM AFAR
The lightning spike tore the sky open.
Perfect output. Controlled release. Flawless form.
Across the continent, Dominion analysts froze.
"Flag this," one whispered. "Comparable to Kael Veyrn's early signature."
General Solis Kane smiled.
"Good," he murmured. "Another storm to bleed."
ORION'S FALL
The attack came at dusk.
Alarms screamed as Solis Kane's forces crushed the Citadel's outer gates. Aether fire lit the sky. Soldiers died screaming. some burned to vapor, others torn apart by raw, undisciplined power.
Orion Draeven's army met them head-on.
Dominion troops fired disciplined Aether volleys.
Orion's warriors answered with brutal, close-quarters mastery.
Steel screamed.
Aether abilities against aether abilities.
Men died in pieces.
Solis ignored the slaughter.
He went for the head.
At the heart of the base, two figures met.
Flaming blade vs Lightning blade.
Sunforged Aether collided with chained thunder as their armies burned below.
Orion shoved Rai back with a command that allowed no argument.
"Go," he said. "I will end this."
Rai hesitated then obeyed.
The storm was moving elsewhere.
Rai Kuroda set off to go back to Darius's den.
EVE-03 — OBSERVATION MODE
Eve-03 reached the forest perimeter at dawn.
She parsed Tessa's decoys instantly. Elegant misdirection. Human ingenuity detected.
She eliminated a hunter patrol with minimal expenditure.
Then she paused.
Kael Veyrn stood among the trees.
And Eve observed from a distance. But did not annihilate.
Curiosity logged.
Termination postponed.
Darius felt her.
The machine's presence scraped against his senses like cold iron.
"If she reaches him before he's ready," Darius said, voice tight, "the world loses its last lock."
They moved fast and went back to the Darius's den.
That night, while Kael slept, Darius descended into a hidden chamber, one even Tessa and Kael did not know existed.
He tore something vital from himself.
Primal Aether bled from his veins, spilling across stone and carving ancient symbols that burned gold and refused to fade.
Tessa watched from the shadows.
Horrified.
Understanding.
She left unseen.
Meanwhile, Kael dreamed.
A god spoke in his own voice.
You are not my vessel.
You are where I touch the world.
He woke to movements and alarm.
Rai Kuroda stood at the entrance of the den. Tessa let him in.
Minutes later, Eve-03 arrived too late at the camp Darius made at the forest.
She turned and began tracking them.
FINAL MESSAGE
A message blinked across Tessa's system.
Cipher:
Darius will have to kill him.
He always does.