Kael didn't sleep after the Nullmask.
The image of the cliff, the field of corpses, and the masked figure stepping backward into silence gnawed at the back of his mind like a splinter of glass caught between ribs. He didn't know the figure's name, didn't know if it was friend or foe or some cursed echo of himself—but he knew the guilt. Knew it bone-deep.
It was the kind of memory that didn't surface cleanly. It dragged the past through him like it had claws.
The sky outside shifted to ash-colored daylight by the time he climbed onto the rooftop of the clinic. Portland was quieter in the morning, but not peaceful. The city breathed differently than others. Too many hidden spiritual wounds left behind by the Fade War. Too many block-by-block cult fragments and failed exorcisms swept under bureaucratic rugs.
Kael sat on the edge of the roof, flame mark pulsing faintly beneath his collarbone. He could feel it now—just under his skin—like the flame itself had a heartbeat.
"I felt it too."
Rin's voice came from behind him, soft but sharp, the kind of voice that cut clean without drawing blood.
He didn't turn. "The memory?"
"No. The truth beneath it." She joined him without waiting for permission. "That wasn't a guilt dream. It was an echo. You didn't just see that moment. You remembered it."
"I let something… important die," Kael murmured. "A person."
"You've let many important things die. And not all of them were wrong to kill."
"Thanks for the comfort."
Rin gave the faintest shrug. "I wasn't comforting you."
They sat in silence for a while. The wind smelled of wet stone and electrical wires. Below them, the clinic hummed with distant generator power and spirit filtration systems.
After a minute, she said, "You're close."
Kael looked at her. "To what?"
"Crossing."
He didn't respond.
"You're standing at the edge of Initiate," she said, quieter now. "And you haven't stepped because some part of you knows what happens once you do."
"It gets harder," Kael said.
"No," she said. "It gets real."
Kael's fingers tightened over his knee. "Do you think I'm not ready?"
"I think you're still afraid of what you used to be. And until you stop treating your past life like a curse instead of a warning, you'll keep stalling."
He stood.
Rin didn't stop him.
"Then maybe I need to see it for myself," he said.
She tilted her head. "See what?"
"What it means to burn again."
He didn't wait for her answer.
----------------
He trained for eight hours straight.
Selene found him in one of the abandoned subway tunnels under the city—a place the team had once cleared of low-tier Echoes but left alone afterward. The perfect training ground: open, quiet, and sealed from outside spiritual signatures.
Kael moved like something that hadn't breathed properly in weeks.
Sweat poured from his body, evaporating into faint flickers of steam as his inner flame pushed deeper. He conjured two burning sigils midair, split them with a reversal slash, then pivoted into a dash-step that barely scraped the edge of mastery. His form was off—too wild on the follow-through—but the intent behind it was growing sharper.
Selene leaned on the railing above, watching as he nearly tripped himself trying to execute a memory-form with a blade technique he hadn't mastered in either life.
"You're going to tear your spine in half if you keep twisting like that," she called.
Kael wiped his brow. "Noted."
"You need to stop trying to force the flame to move like it used to."
"I'm not—"
"Yes, you are. I can feel it from here."
She descended the steps, her hair tied back, her silver-threaded coat half-zipped. She wasn't armed. Not visibly. Selene never needed to be. Her presence was weapon enough.
"You're using forms from your past without knowing the consequences in this life," she said. "You're lucky your core hasn't ruptured."
"I can't afford to wait for every answer to come naturally," Kael said. "We're running out of time. The more I remember, the clearer it becomes—there are pieces of me scattered across this world. And the longer we sit on them—"
"—the more the enemy collects."
Kael turned. "You believe that?"
"I don't have to," Selene said. "Rin does. Zeke does. And you… you've never doubted it."
He looked down at his hands.
The flame mark on his chest burned faintly now—not in pain, but pressure. Like a doorway slowly creaking open behind his ribs.
Selene stepped closer. "So stop trying to fight like a Sovereign."
Kael looked up, eyes narrowed.
"Fight like Kael."
----------------
He meditated for four hours that night. Stillness didn't come easily. His body was wired to movement, his soul to pressure. But eventually, the noise receded.
And in the silence, something cracked.
Not a fracture.
A realization.
The flame was not a weapon he had to reclaim—it was a memory he had to redefine.
He wasn't Azuran anymore.
Azuran died on a cliff, above a field of corpses.
Kael was something else.
And if he was going to become stronger, he had to stop reaching backward.
He had to move forward.
The moment that thought solidified in his mind, his core shifted.
The air around him tightened. A pulse radiated from his chest, subtle but steady, like the first tremor of an avalanche.
The clinic lights flickered.
Downstairs, Zeke's monitors pinged three times.
"Kael just surged," he muttered, grabbing his tablet. "Resonance spike. Shifting waveform. Oh hell, he's—"
Rin opened her eyes in the far meditation chamber and smiled faintly.
"He's crossing."
----------------
Kael opened his eyes.
The world looked sharper.
The lines of the walls, the lights in the ceiling, the grain of the floorboards—they all felt different.
Not brighter. Not louder.
Just… present.
As if he was finally sitting in the world instead of dragging behind it.
He stood.
The flame mark had changed. Its spiral had deepened, shifting from a closed ring to an open curve, the signal of an Initiate's awakening. Not full mastery. But progress.
He'd done it.
He had taken the first step into the Initiate Realm.
And it felt—
His comm bead chimed.
Zeke's voice buzzed through, urgent.
"We've got a situation."
"Of course we do," Kael muttered, grabbing his coat.
"Package just landed at the drop site. Tagged with Sovereign signature markers and an old blood seal. Origin: Moonveil ruins."
Kael's eyes narrowed.
"Any idea who sent it?"
"Not yet," Zeke said. "But the note's written in your handwriting."
----------------
By the time Kael reached the command floor, the others were already in position. Rin stood with arms crossed, brows slightly furrowed. Zeke hovered beside a protective field where a black-metal case sat in suspended lock. Selene was off to the side, her bolt-rig reassembled and fully armed.
Kael stepped into the field.
The signature pulsing from the case wasn't just familiar—it was impossible.
Because it was a seal he'd designed himself.
In his past life.
No one should've had access to it.
No one.
He pressed his hand to the outer lock.
The seal pulsed once.
The case hissed open.
Inside, wrapped in faded silk, was a short-blade marked with six notches along the spine—and a folded slip of paper tucked beneath it.
Kael opened the note.
Four words stared back at him:
"The Mirror still waits."
He stared.
Rin stepped closer. "What is it?"
Kael didn't answer right away.
Because he had seen that blade before.
He had watched it pierce a Sovereign's throat.
His own.