To learn the truth, one must first survive the lie.
Kael returns to the Academy in silence.
A crystal-bound skyship glides over the obsidian walls of Aurorium, its wings humming with lightbound magic. Below, students from the Seven Disciplines gather in the Great Courtyard — but their usual chatter dies when they see him.
Whispers trail like blades:
"That's him… the one who stood before the Tribunal.""He survived the Forgotten Vault. How?""They say he spoke the name of a dead god."
Kael walks with Lia and Riven at his side, but even they feel the shift — no longer is he an orphan with hidden potential.
He is now a symbol, a warning, a puzzle.
And puzzles are feared.
At the top of the Glass Tower, Master-Inquisitor Solven delivers the news:
"You are to report to a new class. Applied Divine Warfare. Instructor: Rhagor Kynth."
Kael frowns. "That name..."
Solven nods grimly.
"They call him the God-Slayer. Because unlike you… he killed a god. And lived."
Instructor Rhagor Kynth stands at the center of the Blightsteel Arena — a battlefield beneath Aurorium, forged from fallen gods' remnants.
He wears no robe. No sigil. Just rusted armor and a gaze like cracked glass.
"You think power means survival?""You think memory makes you strong?"
He tosses Kael a wooden sword.
"Then remember how to stay alive."
Suddenly, illusions burst forth — Kael is thrown into a mental battlefield, facing versions of himself:
The boy who obeyed the clerics in Velcarion
The killer from the dungeon of black bone
The vessel of Seralyth
Each one fights him with brutal precision. He falls again and again.
Rhagor watches.
"Every part of yourself you don't understand… will try to kill you."
Kael, bloodied and breathless, finally defeats them not with power — but by naming them.
He calls out:
"You are not me. You are my pain. My rage. My past. And I remember you."
The illusions shatter.
Rhagor smiles for the first time.
"Good. Now you're ready for the second lesson.""Learn how to forget."
Elsewhere in the Academy's lower sanctums, a secret gathering forms — students with black bands over their right eyes.
The Veil-Born.An underground faction who believe Kael is a divine error — the first sign of the Second Sundering.
Their leader, a boy cloaked in violet flame, speaks:
"He bears the goddess' mark. If we do not end him, we all vanish with her."
A black coin, etched with the nameless god's sigil, spins in the air.
"Let's test if the Flameborne bleeds."
While Kael trains under Rhagor, Lia investigates the Echo Gate, a sealed chamber said to hold echoes of the pre-Sundering gods.
With the help of Mistress Elien, she uncovers a whisper:
"The Nameless One was not born. He was made — forged from broken truths and devoured names."
They find a mural: Kael, painted centuries before his birth… standing at the heart of the final war.
Lia's hands shake.
"He's not just a vessel. He's the key to either unmaking… or remaking everything."
That night, Kael stands alone atop the Starlit Spire, staring into the skies.
He speaks to no one — but hears Seralyth's voice in his mind.
"You're learning to remember. Now, you must learn what to forget."
And somewhere beneath Aurorium, a dark shrine flickers to life — thirteen eyes blinking in the dark.
The Nameless One has begun to remember him too.