"The first god did not rise by power. He rose by belief. If you can rewrite belief, you can unmake divinity."—The Lost Testament of Arq'Thaal
Deep in the forbidden vaults beneath Arq'Thaal, Kael finds something etched into the bones of time: a schematic for a weapon not forged in fire or steel—but in meaning.
It is called the Sigil of Nullum.
A symbol that, when completed, causes any god it is branded upon to forget they are divine—to collapse into mortality under the weight of their own remembered origin.
Selari studies the glyphs and warns him:
"This is not a blade. It is an erasure. Once marked, even memory will not remember what was removed."
Kael chooses to proceed.
Not to kill a god.
But to humble them.
To complete the Sigil, Kael must gather three components:
A fragment of a star that never fell.
The voice of a forgotten name.
The belief of a god who no longer believes in themselves.
The first lies in Varnoss, a floating sky ruin suspended above the storm-belt, accessible only once every thirteen years.
Aetheros gives him a sky-ship older than the academy itself. Druska charts the ley-lines. Selari begins enchanting the hull with runes of reversal, and Aren—newly bound to Kael's cause—offers the Gilded Echo, a spell that can retrieve sound from the past.
"If it sang once, we can make it sing again," he says, smiling grimly.
They arrive above the Tempest Belt, where lightning arcs like serpents between the clouds. Varnoss waits above, shrouded in clouds that whisper prophecy and madness.
Inside Varnoss is the Starheart—a fragment of a star that refused the gods' summoning in the First War of the Spheres. Its flame burns backwards in time.
Kael touches it.
Memories flood him—but they are not his. They belong to something older than language. Something that watched the gods be born.
He takes the fragment.
And the sky begins to scream.
Mid-descent, their skyship is attacked—not by sky beasts or gods, but by skyborn assassins from the Veil of the Eleven Winds, an ancient sect loyal to the Divine Concord.
Among them is Kael's cousin, Veyr Vaelorian—exiled, bitter, and bound to a god of storms.
"You stole our legacy, Kael. Now I return the debt, with interest."
The battle rages across floating runes and fragmented islands. Kael nearly falls—but then uses the Starheart, not to burn, but to bend time:
He rewinds a moment.
Just one.
Enough to turn his fall into a counterstrike.
Veyr is defeated, but spared.
"Go back to the Concord," Kael tells him. "Tell them this: I've begun the erasure."
Back in Arq'Thaal, Kael begins the weaving of the Sigil.
He etches the fragment into a memory-steel plate, enchanted by Selari with anti-divine resonance. As it nears completion, the glyph burns itself into the air—and the ruins quake.
Aetheros appears with grim news:
"The Judicator of Silence has moved. A divine envoy walks toward Nocthera with a blade that speaks only once."
But Kael isn't shaken.
He raises the almost-complete Sigil and whispers:
"Let him come. Let him remember why the gods buried the Nameless."