The gods were never meant to return.
Not because they could not, but because they chose exile an eternal punishment for sins that no mortal ever recorded. And yet now, one of them walked again not toward the world, but backward through time's broken seams.
Ashes in Reverse
The crater in Halvorr, once a peaceful valley of wind-kissed pines, now swirled with reversed entropy. Trees grew backward, unburning into ashes, rising into place before fire consumed them again. The grass ungrew, seeds leapt from the soil into the sky, and corpses breathed before they collapsed.
"Time has snapped," whispered High Mage Sereth, standing at the rim of the anomaly, his staff humming with wild aether.
From the heart of the storm walked a figure robed in shadow and gold.
Each step it took left behind echoes younger versions of itself peeling off and walking into other timelines, flickers of a god replaying its own unraveling.
This was Erovar, the God of Reversal.
And he had come not to rule, but to warn.
Message from a Broken Deity
Rheon stood before Erovar's spiral of selves, his aura blazing with the Dominion's legacy. The two beings locked eyes one man, one god but neither bowed.
Erovar spoke in a voice that sounded like regret cracking glass:
"The Dominion awakens, not because it should but because something greater has begun to forget itself."
"Who?" Rheon demanded.
"The World."
Reality itself Domara, the sleeping sentience behind existence was forgetting its own structure, its threads fraying from old pacts and truths shattered by mortal ambition.
"You remember too much," Erovar said. "And so the world must now balance itself."
"By what?" Rheon growled. "Unmaking us?"
Erovar didn't answer. He simply reversed a moment his own words unspoken, his steps retreating into a rift made of untime.
And he was gone.
The Council Fractures
Back in the capital, the Council of Thorns keepers of arcane balance fractured over what to do with the Dominion's reemergence.
"The boy is a herald," spat Archmage Caltris. "He must be destroyed before the gods use him to retake the Realm."
"He is not a boy," countered Lady Virelle. "He is the Echo Sovereign the one destined to remember what no one else dares."
Whispers of Rheon's true title now ran like blood through the world's veins.
Echo Sovereign.
Bearer of Names Forgotten.
Breaker of the Black Concord.
Even the council's spies had started defecting not out of loyalty, but fear of being forgotten themselves.
Kael's Vision
As the world shook, Kael stood atop the ruins of his childhood home, drawn into a vision sent by the Shard of Recollection.
He saw a thousand versions of Rheon warrior, tyrant, savior, god. He saw himself too: killing Rheon in some lives, dying for him in others.
And in one vision, he saw them both kneeling before a throne of mirrors, bound by golden chains, as a voice whispered:
"To remember is to be devoured."
Kael woke with tears in his eyes and with a name he did not remember ever learning.
"The Pale Mother…"
The First Unraveling
In the frozen east, near the ancient glacier of Durnthaal, the sun stopped rising.
Not hid ceased.
The light simply forgot how to exist there.
Creatures of pure shadow emerged, not summoned, but revealed as if they'd always been part of the world and had merely been overlooked.
They whispered in rhyme, each syllable causing light to flicker:
"One who remembers
One who defies
One who returns
And all shall die."
And among them walked a woman in white robes, her face featureless.
But she spoke Rheon's name with terrifying clarity.
"He must not cross the Vein of Sky."
"Or else the world will forget the gods ever left."
The Vein of Sky
The stars had always been distant cold fires etched into the heavens. But now, as Rheon stood on the plateau known in myth as the Vein of Sky, the stars listened.
They pulsed in rhythmic intervals, not with light, but with memory.
Each pulse whispered a forgotten event. Battles never fought. Kingdoms that never fell. Lovers who had never met. Worlds that had never been born.
A Scar in the Firmament
The Vein was not a place, but a wound a tear where the firmament had been stitched too many times by reckless gods and desperate mages.
Floating stones hovered in impossible patterns across the air, inscribed with ancient runes that pulsed like a heartbeat. At the center stood a monolith of glass, cracked and humming with anti-time.
Rheon placed his palm against it.
"You must not."
The voice came from behind.
Kael had followed torn between fury and loyalty, his eyes ringed with the mark of dream-walkers.
"You don't understand," Kael whispered. "This place isn't just a gateway it's a mirror. If you open it, you don't just walk through... you rewrite yourself."
"That's the point," Rheon said. "I need to know what was taken."
The Pale Mother Arrives
The air turned silver.
Reality folded inward as the Pale Mother stepped through the breach between what was and what refused to be. Her faceless visage tilted as if examining a curiosity no mouth, yet somehow she smiled.
She didn't speak.
Instead, the Vein of Sky bled.
Storms roared across unseen dimensions, and the stars began to dim as if ashamed to witness what came next.
Kael drew his blade, the Shardblade of Eltarn, forged to strike gods.
"She's not here to stop us," Rheon muttered, realization dawning. "She's here to... watch."
"Then what is she waiting for?" Kael asked.
"For me to break."
Rheon's Gamble
Rheon stepped fully into the Vein. His skin blistered as time itself tried to reject him memories flashed before his eyes, lives he'd never lived, versions of himself consumed by madness, murdered by friends, or corrupted into gods.
But he pressed forward.
The glass monolith cracked further and then shattered.
A scream echoed across every corner of the world. But it was not pain.
It was recognition.
The Return of the False King
Far across the continent, the prison beneath Elderhold ruptured. A voice clawed its way out from stone and flame:
"He remembers.
And now I shall walk again."
The False King, whose name had been struck from the tapestry of time, stirred for the first time in ten thousand years.
His followers dreaming zealots and cursed immortals awoke from their deathless slumber.
The Dominion would face its greatest trial yet not from the gods, not from the world...
But from the forgotten king who never should have been.