The storm whispered ancient names as it battered the cliffside.
The Monastery of the Shrouded Verse, perched like a stone relic over the Sea of Sorrows, had stood for millennia. Its towers were sharp and crooked, its walls painted with the soot of old fires. Few remembered who built it, and fewer still dared speak of the order that once inhabited it. It was said the wind around it did not blow with air, but with memory.
Inside its oldest wing, beneath vaults shaped like open jaws, a boy sat among the dust and cobwebs of time.
Kael.
Fifteen winters old. Hair the color of midnight, unevenly cut with a blunt blade. Eyes like muted firelight—amber-flecked with something too old to be in a child. His clothes were monastic black, frayed from climbing towers and ducking into places he shouldn't have. But his presence… it was like a shadow that didn't match the light.
He should not have been here.
The Forbidden Wing was sealed—bound with glyphs of silence, and a carved door said to contain a prayer that never ends. Yet it had opened for him. Not by force. Not by accident. The door had responded to him. As if recognizing a long-lost friend.
Kael's fingers hovered over the tome that lay on the pedestal before him.
It was unlike any manuscript he'd seen before—and he had seen thousands, growing up under the tutelage of Master Varron. This one was bound in what looked like leather, but shimmered like oil on water. Across its cover was an iron seal shaped like an eye, closed shut, with runes circling its lid.
And it was breathing.
Not with air. Not like lungs. But with pulse—like a second heartbeat in the room, echoing against the cold stone floor.
He should have run. He should have obeyed the voice in his head screaming "Not yet!"
But the silence that surrounded the book welcomed him. And Kael had always felt more at home with the forgotten than the familiar.
He reached out.
The moment his skin touched the seal, a flash of silver light burst outward. The eye snapped open, glowing with a pale blue fire. The wind howled through the vaulted ceiling. Lanterns hanging from long-forgotten chains shattered, casting the room into darkness. Only the book remained illuminated—along with a single line of ancient, floating glyphs:
Epochal Core recognized. Bloodline verified. Access... granted.
Kael's body locked up.
The floor beneath him ignited with sigils, circles within circles—constellations rewritten in sacred geometry. His breath fogged the air, and frost began to climb the walls. Something old stirred inside him, something beneath the skin, like a third eye trying to open in his chest.
And then—the visions came.
He saw…
Golden towers collapsing beneath a black sun.An army of silver-masked warriors slaughtering a city made of crystal.A throne, shrouded in flame and shadow, where no one sat but everyone bled.A man with eyes like Kael's—but older, sadder, burning from within.And beyond them all, a figure veiled in threads of living time, turning slowly to look at him.
"He lives," the voice said. Not loud. Not kind. Not surprised.
Kael screamed.
The tome snapped shut.
The symbols vanished. The cold receded. The storm outside fell into a sudden, unnatural silence—like a breath held too long. Kael collapsed, gasping, his hands burned with rune-like marks that faded quickly.
On the book's cover, the seal was gone. In its place, a title appeared—etched in gold, as if freshly written:
Chronicles of the Veiled Epoch
And Kael understood, somehow, that the book had not revealed knowledge to him.It had simply… remembered.
The doors at the far end of the chamber burst open.
Standing there, framed in stormlight, was Master Varron.
Old, gaunt, and cloaked in storm-gray robes, the man's right eye burned gold with an inner light. His left eye was hidden beneath a warded eyepatch, inscribed with forbidden geometry. His presence carried weight—like iron that had seen too many wars.
His voice echoed down the chamber."You opened that?" he asked, not in rage—but in grief.
Kael stood on shaking legs. "It… spoke to me. It said I was of the bloodline. That I was… chosen."
Varron walked forward slowly. With each step, the air grew heavier. He looked at Kael not like a teacher—but like a soldier seeing a prophecy fulfilled too soon.
"You were not chosen," Varron whispered. "You were hidden."
Kael's eyes widened. "From what?"
Varron stopped in front of the book, staring at it with tired hate. "From yourself. From them. From it."
He tapped the title with one bony finger. "That tome doesn't record history. It remembers when it was written. It is a fragment of the First World. And now... it knows your name."
Kael looked down at his chest—where, beneath his skin, something was glowing. A golden glyph. Faint, like candlelight behind glass. But beating.
Outside, far across the sea, deep in the Black Vault of the Helios Sovereign Empire, a scrying mirror shattered.
In a palace built atop a sky-fallen star, a sleeping king opened eyes that had seen worlds die.
And in a hollow beneath the earth, chained to the bones of a dead god, a devil began to laugh.