The God's killer

The Ocean That Remembers

Chapter 20: The Ocean That Remembers

The stars were wrong.

As Kael and his companions emerged from the dying Cradle of Ash, they entered a region of the universe untouched by flame, faith, or fate. This place did not exist on any chart, nor in any song of the gods. It was the Ocean of Time, a vast sea of swirling, prismatic void where currents shimmered like liquid memory and islands of petrified past floated like shattered thoughts.

Even Nysera who had danced along the edges of galaxies seemed unsettled.

“This place should not be,” she whispered, voice heavy with reverence. “It was severed from the timelines during the Great Sundering.”

Vareth stepped forward, his embered form flickering. “Not severed. Hidden. The gods feared what was buried here.”

Kael said nothing. His abyssal gaze was locked ahead, scanning the shifting tides of glowing time-eddies and collapsed echoes of what once was. His white armor, gilded in golden fire, shimmered with distorted reflections. It was as if even the Ocean hesitated to remember him.

Beside him, Lira reached for his hand. Hers was warm. Alive.

“Who are we looking for?” she asked quietly.

Kael answered with a name spoken like a secret blade. “Aelion.”

Vareth paused. “The Chrono-Warden? He still lives?”

“No,” Nysera said, narrowing her galaxy-filled eyes. “He waits.”

In the Deep: Island of the Lost Sin

Guided by Kael’s memory, they sailed across time itself aboard a vessel formed of their own will. It resembled no ship, no starcraft more a construct of divine thought and geometric reality. The currents of the Ocean rippled around it, pushing against their presence like reluctant ghosts.

And at last, it appeared: a single black spire rising from a mass of time-ice and shattered thought. Around it circled frozen visions moments stolen from forgotten civilizations, entire worlds blinking in and out like breaths never taken.

This was the Isle of the First Sin.

Kael stepped off the vessel, boots crunching against crystallized regret. “We’re here.”

The island pulsed beneath them.

The spire cracked.

A voice echoed across the currents of the Ocean.

“You dare return, Unmaker.”

A figure stepped forth, cloaked in threads of time itself. His body was a shifting form constantly phasing between past, present, and future. His eyes were keys to paradoxes. His presence bent causality like heat to metal.

Aelion, the Chrono-Warden.

He studied Kael for a long moment.

“You are... complete,” he said at last. “I had hoped you never would be.”

“I need answers,” Kael said evenly. “The truth. About what the gods did. About what we were.”

Aelion raised his hand and time around Kael stopped.

Vareth’s flame froze mid-flicker.

Lira’s breath halted in her throat.

Even Nysera’s gravity folded into stillness.

Only Kael moved freely.

“You seek the First Sin,” Aelion said. “You were part of it.”

Kael narrowed his eyes. “Show me.”

Aelion’s hand touched Kael’s forehead.

And the world split.

Vision: The Time Before Thrones

Kael stood amidst endless stars, but he was not alone. Around him stood a Circle of Beings, primordial, ageless, immense. They were the first creators, the Forgeborn, the Flamebearers. Together, they had birthed reality from the void.

He remembered their names:

Kael, the Shaper of Soulfire.

Nysera, the Weaver of Gravity.

Vareth, the First Flame.

Aelion, the Chrono-Warden.

And… one more.

The shadowed one.

Xeruun.

He had been like them, once. But he coveted dominion, not balance. And Kael had made a decision.

They had sealed Xeruun.

Not banished but consumed. They buried him in the First Sin, a weapon forged from Kael’s own soul, a prison of infinite suffering.

And when the gods rose from the embers of that act… they twisted the tale. They made Kael the villain. The unmaker. The betrayer.

He had been punished for their fear.

Back in the Present

Kael gasped, collapsing to his knees as time resumed.

Lira rushed to his side.

Aelion stood motionless.

“You sealed Xeruun in a prison made from yourself,” he said. “The gods were born from that act. And they feared what it meant that even the greatest of them could fall.”

Vareth’s flame flared. “If he rises…”

“He is rising,” Nysera finished.

Kael stood slowly. His voice was calm. Cold.

“Then we unseal what we once buried.”

Elsewhere: High Sanctum, What Remains

The gods’ halls were crumbling.

Elarya now knelt before a pool of screaming stars, her face pale with horror.

“We've lost Vaelun.”

“To Kael?” another whispered.

“No,” she said. “To him. The one we buried before time.”

The pool rippled.

And a voice older than language replied.

“You thought your chains eternal.”

“Now you will remember me.”

Back in the Ocean: Departure

Kael, Lira, Nysera, Vareth, and Aelion now stood on the collapsing island, the Ocean of Time churning around them.

Lira touched Kael’s shoulder. “Are you certain?”

He turned to her.

“Yes. The gods tried to erase what we were. Now they’ll learn what we’ve become.”

Above them, the stars shifted.

And one by one, ancient lights reappeared.

The old flames were returning.