The dream did not end.
It transformed.
Zion's consciousness didn't return to the familiar ache of his broken human body. Instead, he awoke in a place where time felt like liquid mercury dripping, pooling, then evaporating into soundless voids. No ground, no sky. Just stars blinking in the darkness like the eyes of forgotten gods.
A soft hum neither male nor female echoed from all sides.
"You died with unfinished wrath in your bones."
Zion opened his mouth, but no sound came. Only breath. Cold breath.
"You were cursed not by fate, but by silence. Now, we offer you a voice."
Shapes began to form. At first, the outlines of the people he had once loved then the ones he had lost. Then the ones who had betrayed him.
A glowing thread unspooled across the blackness, weaving an ancient symbol mid-air;
It pulsed like a heartbeat.
Zion reached out.
The instant his finger touched the glowing thread, memories poured into him like molten fire. Not his own. Thousands. Millions. Of men and monsters. Of kings and beggars. Of gods and demons.
He screamed.
When the light faded, Zion gasped, chest heaving.
He lay inside a cocoon flesh like, warm, and pulsing with veins of golden light. Not earth. Not heaven. Somewhere else. The rebirth was beginning.
"Where, where am I?" he rasped.
A presence answered, not with words, but with an imprint.
The Realm Between Death and Destiny.
Zion looked down at his new hands small, pale, barely developed. A child's hands.
He had been reborn.
Not in his world. Not in his body.
This was a new world entirely. One with laws unknown. A universe where souls didn't just live, but fought to survive.
[Cut to: The Mortal World — Kingdom of Zephyros]
In a temple carved into the cliffs of a sky city, a newborn's cry pierced the howling wind.
The high priestess, cloaked in twilight-colored silk, held the infant in trembling hands.
"His soul" she whispered, "it's burning through the barrier."
The boy's eyes were open impossibly open glowing with amethyst flame. Eyes that had seen too much for a child only seconds old.
"Mark my words," the priestess murmured to the gathered midwives. "This one is not mortal."
[Time Skip: 6 Years Later]
Zion now renamed Kael in this world stood atop the Temple's courtyard roof, staring at the twin moons of Zephyros.
He wasn't like the other children.
They chased stars and drew sigils in the dirt. Kael drew battle formations. They listened to songs. Kael heard echoes of war.
He had not spoken since birth. Not once.
But he remembered everything.
The poison. The betrayal. His former name.
His soul was awake and it hungered.
"Kael!" a voice called. It was Ilya, his assigned guardian from the Order of Crystal Flame.
"You're not supposed to be up here. The moon's pulling too close tonight. It'll trigger the Soul Storm."
Kael didn't flinch. He raised his hand and traced the ancient rune in the air the one he'd seen in his rebirth vision.
The air crackled. The rune glowed.
Ilya's eyes widened. "Where did you learn that?"
Kael turned slowly, his voice finally breaking through six years of silence.
"I didn't learn it. I remembered it."
Far across the realm, deep beneath the Underspire Mountains, a chained creature awoke.
One eye opened.
It whispered a name it hadn't heard in centuries:
"Zion..."