The black sky above the broken citadel rippled like a wound struggling to close. Stormfire lashed through the heavens, split by the shriek of unnatural winds. Kael stood in the heart of the throne chamber, eyes fixed on the spectral flames wreathing the hollow crown floating in the air before him.It pulsed. Once. Twice. A third time—like it knew his name.Blood smeared his jaw. The wound across his chest refused to close, pulsing with cursed heat, the aftermath of striking down Lord Veythar’s final form. But Kael wasn’t breathing heavily anymore. He had passed exhaustion. He had passed rage.He stood with the stillness of a blade forged too long in flame.Behind him, the walls burned. Not with ordinary fire—but the dying breath of the world’s last seal. The Whispering Throne had collapsed. The ancient defenses once bound to the palace had failed. Every oath etched into stone, every relic buried beneath the marble, every godless vow—shattered.All that remained now was the choice.And

The winds had stilled. The ash in the sky no longer drifted. It hung motionless like a shroud nailed over the heavens.Kael stood alone at the threshold of the Cradle of Kings.The gates were black stone. Monoliths carved with the faces of the ancient rulers of Veyr. Each face wept. Not tears. Blood. And the blood shimmered with soulfire as it dripped onto the obsidian floor.He felt none of the voices now. No whispers. No rage. No howling fury. The curse inside him was silent. Too silent.Something worse had taken hold.Kael placed a hand on the gate. The moment his skin touched the stone, the faces convulsed. Screams echoed—not from within the halls—but from the stone itself. Each mouth opened, vomiting fire and shadows that crawled across the gate.And then… silence again.The gate swung open.Not by his hand.Not by any power he could feel.It opened because the throne was empty.And it wanted him.Kael stepped through.The Cradle was nothing like the ruins outside. It was whole.

The sky cracked like glass.Kael didn’t flinch.He stood at the edge of the ruin, boots firm in blood-soaked ash, cloak torn from the battle through the Hollow Depths. Every breath he took now tasted of burnt steel and old magic, but he was still breathing. That was more than could be said for the three wardens behind him—throats slit, hearts gutted, heads turned toward the open black gate that should have never opened.He had opened it.Not because he wanted to. But because he had to.“You’re late,” a voice rasped from the dark.Kael tilted his head slightly.From the shattered arch, she emerged barefoot, wrapped in robes woven from whispering shadows. Her eyes burned the way stars do when they fall too close to Earth—violent, radiant, and cursed.“You’re supposed to be dead,” he replied.She smirked. “So are you.”Their stares locked. Not a flicker of emotion passed between them. The ancient rite was about to begin, and they both knew it. The only question was who would survive it.

The silence after the storm was always worse than the noise itself. Kael stood in the wreckage of the broken cathedral, its obsidian arches snapped like ribs around a corpse. Wind howled through the gaps, pulling ash into whirling spirals. Blood pooled at his feet, thick and dark, whispering of gods that no longer answered.He wiped the edge of his blade against his torn sleeve. The steel hummed, still hot from the last kill. Around him, corpses lay scattered in brutal heaps. The loyal. The mad. The blessed. All the same in death.From behind the shattered altar, Aravenna rose slowly. Her hair was tangled with blood, but her eyes burned with purpose.“It’s over,” she said. “We’ve torn down their last sanctuary.”Kael did not speak. He turned his gaze toward the northern sky, where the final gate shimmered faintly. It hovered like a wound stitched to the heavens, a trembling tear of light and old chains.Aravenna followed his eyes. “You feel it too.”“They’re gathering,” Kael said. “Al

The wind was wrong.It moved like a living thing, circling Aravenna as she stood on the scorched altar ground. The sky above held no clouds, no stars, only a deep violet void, cracked faintly with red like molten scars. All around her, the ruins of the Hall of the First shivered with a power that hadn’t existed moments ago.She wiped her eyes, fingers shaking.He had begun.A sound split the silence—no thunder, no roar, but a low, deep pulse. Like a heartbeat too massive to belong to anything mortal. The ground throbbed beneath her boots. From the broken crater where Kael had vanished, fire began to rise.Not flame.Power.It had no color, only motion. Like liquid light and shadow, curling upward from the center, reshaping air, burning reality itself.Then he stepped out.Kael.But not the Kael she had known.This one wore no armor, no crown, no markings of god or war or death. His bare chest bore glowing lines that pulsed with each breath. His right arm shimmered with molten sigils,