Chapter One: The World That Should Have Burned
The wind howled over the barren plains of Vaelgard, whispering among the bones of lost empires and statues whose faces had been worn into facelessness. Ash swirled like accursed snow over the shattered stones, and the sky—forever gray—lay heavy with quiet.
Kael Azrion stood amidst the ruins, isolated but not empty.
His body had regained eighteen—a stage of spare muscle and unmarred flesh. But beneath the young form raged something primordial: a soul seared empty, a will tempered in devastation, unblemished by war or treachery. But under the pale flesh and lean muscle lived something old. A soul that had perished in pain and flame. A will tempered in remorse. And an eye—gold-flecked and aglow—seething with power no man was meant to possess.
His right eye, the Miracle Eye, throbbed weakly under his white lashes. It didn't view the world as others did. It saw through it.
Structure. Weakness. Emotion. Lies.
All of it exposed.
He gazed into a broken pool of black rainwater, as the reflection stirred in skewed ripples. His hair—snow white—curled inward slightly at his forehead. His face was chiseled, carved with boyish symmetry once that had turned the heads of palace courtiers.
But the man behind the face was no youth.
"I was innocent," he murmured to the wind. "Kind. Loyal."
His mouth curled into something less than a smile. "That version of me is dead. May he remain that way."
He turned his back to the reflection. The remains of Vaelgard stretched out endlessly before him—once the womb of arcane understanding, now a landscape of bones and charred memory. He recalled reading of this city in the Obsidian Archives: lost in a night, its people annihilated by an unseen force. History named it divine wrath.
Kael knew better. The Eye revealed to him what actually occurred.
He drew back his hand and felt the chill of the toppled obelisk's surface. The world paused for an instant.
Flash.
He saw dark things writhing below golden spires. Rituals done in darkness under blood moons. A rift in the sky—stellar, writhing—spewing forth a creature of flame and nothingness into being. The city did not crumble.
It was offered up.
The image dissipated.
Kael drew his hand away, his breathing calm in spite of the naked reality coursing through his head.
"They knew what they were doing," he grumbled. "They chose damnation. They deserved it."
A noise broke the silence—a low, beastly growl, followed by the scratching of claws on rock.
He spun round. Behind a broken column, a monster oozed into sight. Malformed—above a man in height but crooked, as if twisted at some unnatural angle, with claw-tipped fingers that glowed with dark resin. Its skin clung too tightly over an anatomy that appeared half-melted, half-starved. Crimson veins pulsed beneath its hide like red-hot wire.
Its eyes—two seething pits of famine—fixed on Kael.
It didn't strike.
It faltered.
Kael sensed it at once—the flash of primal reflex. The creature sensed something it did not comprehend. Something it was afraid of. The Miracle Eye provided him with data in dreadful detail:
> Class: Lesser Wretch.
Composition: mutated arcane biomass.
Weak point: sternum fissure (hidden beneath the left shoulder fold).
Mental state: unstable, submissive to greater hive will.
He moved a single step forward.
"You're not the first nightmare I've ever encountered," he replied, his voice low but biting. "And you're definitely not the worst."
The Wretch shrieked.
It attacked.
Kael didn't back down. He sidestepped with inhuman grace, snatching up a piece of stone during its motion and shoving it straight into the creature's bared sternum. It made a screeching—cutting, wet—sound before it collapsed into mist and powder.
No fear.
No second-guessing.
Just ruthless calculation.
He stood frozen for an instant, hand oozing blood from the edge of the shard. The Eye glowed once, closing the wound in seconds.
He leaned his head back, toward the far-off mountains. A gentle pulse hummed in the distance—weak, rhythmic, unnatural.
There were more of them. Not just beasts. Others.
People.
Worse than monsters.
A memory came back. The voice he heard in the void—the one that spoke when he died.
"This is not forgiveness. This is clarity .Not salvation. Not mercy. Just the terrible burden of knowing too much, The Eye will reveal to you the truth. What you do with it… is your own sin."
Kael's fists knotted.
He recalled the men who said he was mad. The nobles who were frightened of his learning. The king who banished him in the guise of honor. They were dead now—dust, as was the Wretch at his feet.
But their shadows remained to reverberate in the world's blood.
He wouldn't squander this second opportunity on mercy.
He wouldn't request trust, or forgiveness.
This time, the world would bow.
Or burn.
---
High above, in the fractured sky, something ancient awakened.
A colossal eye—concealed in space's folds—blinking once.
Watching him.
Waiting.