The fire in the hearth burned low, casting flickering shadows on stone walls carved by forgotten kings. Outside, Venus slept uneasily beneath banners of a new age. Inside the palace, silence stretched like a blade.
Kaelen—no, Vaelric—stood still in the quiet chambers, staring at a map scattered with small tokens of war. The ring on his finger glinted in the firelight. He turned it once, absently.
His hands no longer shook.
This had always been the plan.
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Flashback – The Throne Room of Old
He was seventeen the first time he saw the ring in full daylight.
It sat on velvet cloth atop a pedestal in the throne room—more artifact than jewel, coiled like something alive. Red as garnet. Veins of gold beneath the surface.
King Tharion stood beside it, older than his years, the weight of silence thick in his eyes.
"You know what that is," he said.
Vaelric didn't answer. He only stepped closer.
"It's no weapon," Tharion continued. "It's a gate. Soul for soul. Body for body. But only if the balance is right. Only if you find a match with the opposite spark."
"Fire for ice," Vaelric murmured. "Like prophecy."
His father shook his head. "There are no prophecies. Only ruin disguised as choice."
"Then why haven't you used it?"
Tharion's gaze darkened. "Because it costs more than it gives. Every king who held it feared what they'd become on the other side. A lie. A shadow."
Vaelric's voice was cold. "Or a god."
The king turned away. "Or a coward hiding in stolen flesh."
Vaelric said nothing then.
He wouldn't until years later, when his father lay dying.
Flashback – The Deathbed
The room stank of sickness. Heavy herbs hung in the air. King Tharion, barely more than a skeleton beneath his furs, looked up at the son who hadn't visited in weeks.
"I know what you're planning," the old man rasped.
Vaelric folded his arms. "Then don't waste what little breath you have."
The king coughed. "Don't use it. The ring. It's not what you think."
"It's exactly what I think," Vaelric replied. "You just lacked the will."
"I wanted to die as myself."
Vaelric leaned in. "And I want to never die at all."
Tharion's sunken eyes narrowed. "You'll lose more than your name."
"I'll gain the world," Vaelric said, rising. "I will take two powers and wield them as one. I will become a god—and history will never forget me."
He turned to leave, the cloak dragging behind him.
"You're not a god," his father whispered. "You're what I made when I forgot how to love."
Vaelric paused only a moment.
Then he walked out and never looked back.
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The fire in the lower halls burned blue. A strange, chemical glow—the kind that never flickered. It lit the stone corridors beneath the palace in silence. No footsteps echoed. No guards dared come this far.
Vaelric stood before an ancient iron door—its frame older than the kingdom itself, etched with runes not found in any modern tongue. His ring pulsed once.
The lock clicked.
Inside, six scholars stood waiting. None had come willingly. Their robes were soiled from weeks of imprisonment, eyes sunken, but their minds still sharp. He'd chosen them for that.
"You've read the scrolls?" he asked coldly.
One of them, a silver-bearded man from the Eastern Archives, stepped forward. "We've read what remained. Much was destroyed... or deliberately hidden."
Vaelric crossed the chamber slowly. "But you found something."
"Yes," the scholar said, swallowing. "The ring—your ring—it predates this palace. Perhaps even predates our race. We believe it was forged during the Age of the Bound Flame."
Another scholar, a younger woman with trembling hands, added, "The ring is not a weapon. It's... a key. One that opens the gate between souls. It permits transfer—but only between those who hold opposite elemental sparks."
Vaelric's eyes narrowed. "And the reward?"
The old man hesitated. "Power. If successful... the new vessel can possess both affinities. Fire and ice. Wind and metal. The legends say it was once used by ancient beings—kings who walked as gods."
"But only humans can use it," said another. "It was made for us."
Vaelric smirked. "Then it's mine by right."
The room fell silent.
The younger woman raised a scroll. "There's more. We found myths—fragments—about a time when humans were not as they are now. In the earliest records... they could bear multiple elements at birth. Not just two—sometimes three or more. They ruled not just cities, but entire skies. The gods feared them."
"What happened?" Vaelric asked, his voice soft, dangerous.
"No one knows," the silver-bearded man answered. "They vanished. Some say they ascended. Others say they were bound—imprisoned by their own ambition."
One of the scholars whispered, "Perhaps the ring is a remnant of that era. A piece of a door that should never be opened."
Vaelric laughed.
Low at first—then louder. The sound echoed harshly in the chamber. "My father feared it. So did the kings before him. Cowards. All of them. They sat on their thrones and clung to weakness. I was right the whole time!"
He stepped forward, ring glowing faintly. "But I—I see it clearly now. The truth. This world was never meant for limits. It was broken by fear. Shackled."
A pause. His eyes gleamed.
"To possess more than one element... is to unshackle the soul. That is the secret. That is the key to becoming more."
The scholars looked at each other, unsure whether to fear or admire him.
"You should have come sooner," the woman said quietly. "You might've changed the world."
Vaelric's smile faded. "I intend to."
Then, with a wave of his hand, the door shut behind him.
The room flashed once—bright red.
By the time it faded, the chamber was silent.
Only the scrolls remained.
The wind beyond the palace whispered through high stone arches, brushing against old banners like the fingers of forgotten ghosts.
Vaelric stood alone in the lower archives, dust clinging to his sleeves, the candlelight catching in the red gem of his ring. Before him, maps lay open—not of the present, but of the past. His hand hovered over one, tapping softly where a name had once been carved: Kaelen.
He had not found the boy by accident.
He had been searching for years.
Not for a soldier. Not a noble. But a vessel. Someone who bore the opposite flame. Someone strong enough to house both the frost of Kaelen's blood and the inferno buried in his own. And when Kaelen's name began to echo through rebel reports, something in Vaelric stirred.
The boy had been born in a ruined village. Raised beneath banners of oppression. Quick with a blade, quicker with his heart. He was loved, too deeply perhaps. By his comrades. By the people.
And by her.
Vaelric's fingers curled.
Elira.
He had seen her too. The healer with quiet magic and sharper instincts than most generals. She and Kaelen had been inseparable. The kind of bond Vaelric had never understood. Or rather, had always known how to destroy.
The shadows had been instructed to leave them alive but hurting. Homes were burned. Food stores raided. Hope dangled just enough to keep them moving forward. Every strike was calculated. Every cruelty, rehearsed. Pain was the crucible in which heroes were made—and Vaelric needed Kaelen to become the people's flame.
So he fed the rebellion with silence. With missteps. With just enough slack in the leash.
He watched Kaelen rise—watched him fight through fire and frost, every loss carved into his bones. He let him find friendship, unity, and the illusion of victory. And when the city gates finally fell, when the crowd screamed for justice, Vaelric met his execution with calm.
Because that was the plan.
Because that was the moment.
Flashback – The Journey Together
They had laughed once, Kaelen and his party, around a campfire deep in the mountain woods. Ashwin, the stubborn archer, had been arguing with Talia over whose cooking was more likely to poison them.
"You boil meat," she said, exasperated.
Kaelen smirked. "Pretty sure what you made last week tried to climb out of my plate."
The laughter was real. Loud.
Elira's hand had brushed Kaelen's under the stars.
"Don't die before we win," she had whispered.
"I won't," Kaelen promised.
And Vaelric knew then—knew that the moment he stepped into Kaelen's skin, her gaze would pierce straight through it. That look of hers—it saw too much.
She would be the first.
The first to suspect. The first to die.
The Present – Beneath It All
He turned from the maps now, walking deeper into the dark of the stone halls. Along the walls, he had carved symbols long forgotten—markers only he understood. Small caches had been hidden for years. Weapons. Gold. Knowledge. Treasures the rebellion never found because they were never meant to.
He paused before a sealed door, his hand tracing the grooves.
A shrine to the future.
A vault for the god he intended to become.
The fire and ice in his veins writhed again, burning cold and freezing hot. His breath stilled. But he endured it. Because he had chosen this path. Because the pain was nothing compared to what lay ahead.
He whispered to himself, voice low and quiet:
"Heroes win wars. But legends... rewrite the world."
And with a final glance back at the long corridor he had built with blood and silence, he disappeared into the dark, the ring pulsing faintly against his skin.