The dawn over the cratered ridge came hard and thin, as if the sky itself had been cauterized. Ash dust drifted in pale streamers where the wind found it, the sun was a weak, ashamed coin behind the cloud.Kael moved like someone carrying too much history. Every step was slow, deliberate, as if the earth itself might remember the blow he’d landed and judge him for it. The mark on his chest pulsed faintly beneath torn fabric, a slow, patient heartbeat that never quite matched his own. There were places on his body that still felt like strangers, a burn here, a torn tendon there, the bruise of Veylan’s chains imprinted on his skin like a map of guilt.Selene matched his pace, shoulders braced against the cold. Her blade was wrapped, her face was pale, streaked with dust and dried blood, but her eyes were sharp, the kind of clear that had learned how to make decisions when the world unraveled. She kept glancing over the crater to the smoking remnant of the Fortress of Chains. The place h

For a long time, neither of them moved.The ruins of Arkhal seemed to hold their breath with them.A thin line of smoke curled from Kael’s palm where the sigil had burned itself into his skin. The faint glow beneath it pulsed like a second heartbeat, steady, patient, deliberate. Not wild like before. Controlled. Almost… listening.Selene swallowed hard. “Kael, say something.”He blinked slowly, as if dragging himself back from somewhere deep inside his mind. “I can hear it.”“Hear what?”“The Dominion,” he said. “But quieter. It’s not screaming anymore.”He stood shakily, the motion stiff and deliberate, like a man learning his own limbs again. The air around him shimmered faintly with leftover aura. It didn’t lash out this time, it rippled gently, folding itself against him. The chains overhead no longer glowed, but their faint hum seemed to echo in his chest.Selene stepped back slightly. Not in fear at least, she told herself it wasn’t fear but in instinct. Something about the way

The light swallowed everything.For a heartbeat, Kael saw nothing but white searing, pulsing, endless. The world felt stretched thin, as if every particle of air was being rewritten. Then came the sound, not thunder, not aura, but memory.A thousand overlapping voices, whispering in unison......the throne has fallen......seal the dominion before it consumes the sky......the vessel must never awaken again.Kael staggered backward, clutching his head. The voices weren’t echoes through the air, they were inside him, layered over his heartbeat, clawing through his thoughts like blades made of light.“Kael!” Selene shouted, her voice dim through the noise. “Talk to me!”He tried to answer but the words caught in his throat. Images flashed before his eyes, vast cities of obsidian and gold suspended above oceans of light. Towers that breathed, statues that wept flame, warriors whose eyes glowed like mirrors of creation.And then, the end.The sky cracking open.An empire falling under its

Dawn fell like a sigh across the plains of the Fane of Echoes. The stone spires in the distance stood ragged shadows of what the world once built. Kael and Selene arrived at the edge of a field of broken columns and half sunken statues, the air thick with the taste of old death and fresh growth alike. The soil was warm beneath their boots, humming faintly with aura residuals that still pulsed.Selene swept aside her cloak and let the wind carry the dust off her shoulders. Her eyes narrowed. “This is it,” she said. “This place was built to remember the Ones who couldn’t be trusted. We walk through their echoes.”Kael stood still, his hand pressed to his wrist where the sigil glowed faint silver. “It’s not just remembering,” he whispered. “It’s listening.”She turned to him. “Do you feel it stronger now?”He nodded, the muscles of his jaw working. “I’m not sure if it’s the Fane or me that’s stronger.”They entered the field of ruins. The statues loomed figures in fear, arms raised as th

The moon climbed steadily over the plains of the Fane of Echoes, but it felt distant, the towers and broken spires stretching into the starless sky dimmed its light, as though the world itself refused to reflect back. Kael stepped out of the moss lit cavern, Selene close behind, her cloak flecked with archive dust and faintly illuminated by the silver glow of his aura.He paused and inhaled dry air scented with ancient stone. He still felt the pulse beneath his skin, that faint heartbeat of the Dominion shifting gears. It no longer trembled with panic, it clicked. A mechanism turning. He glanced at Selene.“Records,” he said. “We find them tonight.”She nodded. “Anywhere we rest now… we’re in the open. Ardyn’s teams could be low but they’re coming. We can’t wait until dawn.”They moved with urgency across broken monoliths, shards of once magnificent architecture. Each fragment absorbed Kael’s aura like fallen leaves absorbing rain, humming softly