The sky burned red.
Stone towers cracked and fell like broken bones, their ancient banners torn away by fire and screams. The high walls of Viremont that Keeps proud guardians for generations, crumbled under a storm of steel and treachery.
Kael could not move.
Blood soaked the gravel beneath him. His breath came ragged, shallow, drowning in the scent of ash and betrayal.
He saw them, his house sigil, trampled in the dirt. Bodies of retainers and kin littered the courtyard like discarded prayers. Their faces were empty, their loyalty answered with silence.
He tried to cry out. But his voice was gone, buried beneath pain and smoke.
Then came the cold.
Not the chill of death, but something deeper. It crept from beneath the stones, rising like a forgotten tide. Shadows thickened around him, drawn to his blood, his sorrow.
A presence followed.
Vast. Ancient.
Not kind.
But… familiar.
In the edge of his vision, something formed, not with flesh, but with memory and ruin. A shape cloaked in silence, its face hidden behind a shifting veil. No words came. No light.
Only a hand, extended through the smoke.
"You are dying," the voice said, neither god nor man.
"But if you take my hand… you will rise."
Kael could not answer.
But his fingers moved.
Barely. Slowly.
He reached.
And in that moment, the world vanished.
Darkness enveloped him, swallowing the light, the stone, the blood soaked courtyard.
And then something stirred.
A whisper brushed against him, cold and heavy with sorrow. It echoed in his bones.
"You are not yet dead."
Kael turned, though he had no body here.
But something of him remained.
Pale skin, untouched by sunlight. Wild, black curls clung to his brow, streaked faintly with chestnut—like embers buried in ash. His eyes, deep and storm-dark, burned with the echo of everything he'd lost.
He looked like a boy carved from ruin, silent and still… and not entirely alive.
The void pulsed around him like a living presence. Ahead, a figure took shape—cloaked in shadows that writhed and breathed. One wing, torn and black, hung from its back. Its face was masked, half shrouded in divine armor, half lost in swirling mist.
"Who are you?" Kael asked.
"A name forgotten. A god betrayed. But to you, I am salvation."
Memories surged. Fire. Screams. Steel. His family butchered, his world shattered.
"Why me?"
The figure stepped closer. Where it walked, stars flickered and died. Behind it trailed broken chains.
"Because your soul cried out louder than the silence. Because they feared what you would become."
Kael's heart burned. Not with rage. Not yet. But something colder. A seed buried in ash.
"What do you want from me?"
"Only that you survive. And in time, remember."
The shadow reached out. Its hand touched his chest. And then—
Pain. Blinding, soul-deep. Images flooded in—armies of corrupted knights, a black sun rising, a throne wreathed in screams.
Then darkness closed once more.
The first fragment… answered.