The Weight of What RemainsThe Citadel was quieter than it should have been. Too quiet.Even the usual hum of the conduits seemed to recoil, like the air itself sensed something wrong.Kael moved through the dim corridor with purpose. His boots struck the marble with clipped precision, yet every sound felt muffled, swallowed by the silence that bled from the central chamber. He knew that quiet — the kind that didn’t belong to emptiness but to aftermath.He turned the corner and stopped.Adrian was on the floor.For a heartbeat, Kael’s mind went blank. Then training took over — he crossed the space in three long strides and dropped beside him, fingers immediately checking pulse, breath, temperature. Still alive. Shallow, but alive.“Adrian…” Kael’s voice came out low, the word half a command, half a plea.The younger man didn’t stir. His body trembled faintly, like something had torn through him and hadn’t fully left. Sweat clung to his brow, and a faint luminescence — impossible,

Kael — “The Architect’s Shadow”Night inside the Citadel was an illusion.The structure never truly slept; it only dimmed its lights and lowered its hum, as though pretending to rest. The corridors still pulsed faintly with energy — veins of quiet data running beneath the metal skin.Kael moved through it soundlessly.Every step measured. Every glance calculated.He’d left Adrian under supervision in the med-chamber. The physicians had wanted to run more scans, to probe the neural feedback that kept flickering across his readings. But Kael had silenced them with a look. He didn’t need a report to know what haunted Adrian’s mind.Selene.Or whatever fragment of her still lived.He paused before the sealed archway at the Citadel’s lower level — the Vaulted Archives. Its metallic frame glowed faintly at his presence, the embedded recognition system tracing his profile in pale blue light. Access here was restricted to Commanders, but even among them, few came willingly. The data stored

The Breaking PointThe night bled red over Veyne.Smoke billowed from the lower quarters, climbing the sky like the memory of something ancient reawakening. Sparks clung to the wind. From the high citadel walls, Kael could see the streets below twisting with movement — soldiers, citizens, shadows — all fleeing or fighting or frozen in the wrong kind of awe.The city itself seemed alive, trembling under a force it couldn’t contain.Kael’s boots scraped against the stones as he half-ran, half-stumbled through the corridor, his breath a steady rasp. His clothes were torn, his hands slick with blood — his or someone else’s, he didn’t know anymore. The alarms kept tolling, the iron bells shattering the rhythm of the night.Every corner he turned brought new ruin. Broken glass. The echo of shouting. A child’s cry swallowed by the roar of collapsing timber.And through it all, that sound — a low, distant hum that vibrated through the bones of the city. It wasn't a fire. It wasn't a storm.

The Awakening – SynopsisThe night around Adrian breaks like glass.He wakes to the taste of ash in his mouth and the smell of rain-soaked stone. The Citadel’s infirmary is almost dark—only the faint blue glow of the containment runes gives the room shape. Every breath he takes feels like it’s borrowed.Kael’s voice is the first thing he hears, a low murmur from somewhere nearby. He’s pacing, restless, his silhouette cutting through the flickering light. The way he stops every few steps—head tilted, hand tightening around his sword hilt—tells Adrian more than words ever could. Something isn’t right.Then the hum begins.At first it’s faint, like a chord half-remembered from a dream. But it builds, spiraling around the edges of Adrian’s mind. His vision doubles. The walls waver. The runes flare and dim again, reacting to something inside him, not outside.Kael notices. “Adrian?” he asks, moving closer. “Stay with me.”But Adrian’s eyes aren’t on him—they’re fixed on the far corner of t

The Seizure of Power — Selene’s Echo AscendantThe Citadel trembles. Not with noise, but with resonance—an invisible hum that builds from its foundations upward, like a thousand hearts learning to beat in sync with something alien.Selene’s echo moves through the corridors like light through a prism, refracted and multiplied.Every ward, every sigil, every whispered spell that has ever been uttered within these walls becomes a strand she can pull. And she pulls gently—too gently for the sentinels to notice—until the architecture itself begins to obey her will.The Citadel’s protective barriers, meant to repel intrusion, now respond like nerves touched by a forgotten hand.The Awakening of the WardsIt starts small. A corridor breathes—a ripple passing through its stone skin. The wardlights along the ceiling shift hue, from sterile white to something warmer, golden, almost alive.Then the sigils begin to move.Lines once fixed in place writhe like molten metal, rearranging themselves