He didn't become a god overnight.He didn't even become a student right away.
At first, Rael simply followed.
The man—Caelum—moved like a shadow slipping through forgotten places. No clear destination marked their path, but every step he took was precise, weighted with unseen purpose. They crossed realms erased from memory and maps alike. Cities abandoned by stars, their streets cracked and silent, whispered secrets to the wind. Forests where time twisted in on itself, the air thick with the scent of old decay and forgotten futures. Ruins that spoke in broken tongues, their stones etched with words too old for any living creature to understand.
Rael trailed behind, watching.He listened.He waited.
He asked questions, quietly at first, his voice barely breaking the stillness. Later, louder, desperate for answers.
But Caelum rarely spoke.
Instead, the silence between them grew thick, heavy with meaning.
And in that silence, Rael learned.
They ate rarely.
They slept less.
Nights blurred into days until time itself became meaningless.
But Rael's senses sharpened.
He learned to read the world—not with his eyes, but with something deeper.
He could feel pressure shift in the air long before the wind stirred.He sensed the heartbeat of stone beneath his feet, steady and unyielding.He noticed a flicker of heat behind thoughts—not his own, but something ancient, something powerful.
Power was not something to seize or command.It was a weight you bore.And to bear it, you had to understand its heaviness.
Caelum never raised his voice.His words were few, but his presence was immense.
When he moved, the world moved with him.
One night, they came to a dead city.
Obsidian towers thrust upward, sharp and cold against a sky trapped beneath unmoving clouds. The wind was a memory here, thick and still like ash frozen in time. Above, the stars refused to shine—entombed beneath layers of forgotten sorrow.
In the city's heart stood a statue.
Broken.
Half-buried beneath ash and eroded by endless years.
But Rael recognized it.
A god.One of the twenty.
"Who was he?" Rael asked, his voice cracking.
Caelum did not look at the statue.
"A friend," he said softly."Until he chose to be something else."
Rael's fists clenched, his nails digging into his palms.
The name was unspoken, but heavy in the air—like a wound that would not heal.
Months passed.
Caelum led him deeper into the ruins of forgotten sanctuaries and shattered vaults.
Places where silence pressed down like a living thing—cold, suffocating, relentless.
Each place was a test.
Once, Rael was forced to confront a mirror of himself.
A reflection twisted and darkened.
Stronger. Crueler. Laden with fears he hadn't yet learned to face.
They fought, blow for blow, the world around them fading into shadows and echoes.
Another time, he stood trapped in a looping memory.
Nori's last breath playing on repeat—over and over and over.
A broken song echoing through the corridors of his mind.
Fifty times he watched it.
Fifty times he felt the pain.
Until, finally, he broke the illusion.
Caelum never intervened in these trials.
"Pressure forges the blade," he said once, voice low and steady.
"And you cannot carry my memory until you've buried your own."
One night, Rael woke screaming.
The dream had changed.
Now, he was the one standing over a chained god.
But he didn't know which side he belonged to.
The question burned hotter than any fire, deeper than any wound.
Caelum found him at the edge of a cliff, staring out into the fractured sky.
The stars flickered like dying embers—fragile, fading.
Rael's voice was barely a whisper.
"Why me?"
Caelum's hand found his shoulder, steady and warm.
It was the first time he touched him.
"Because you remember," Caelum said.
Rael searched his face.
"But I don't understand."
"You will," Caelum promised.
The cold wind swept past them.
Carrying the weight of all things unsaid.
Rael swallowed hard, the silence stretching between them like a gulf.
And then Caelum spoke again.
"There is one place left."
"A place where the past waits. Where the gods' lost secrets are buried."
Rael looked up, eyes wide and searching.
"The Vault."
They left the cliff behind.
Journeying through twisting shadows and broken realms.
A path marked not by maps or signs—but by the pull of fate.
Rael's mind raced with questions.
What would they find there?
Could he face what was waiting?
Caelum said nothing.
Only walked.
And Rael followed.