Ash drifted from the heavens, veiling the ruins of the forest in a pale, silent shroud.
Valaerius moved through the wreckage with careful steps, boots crunching over charred roots and stone. The earth still smoked beneath him. The trees were gone, their skeletons twisted into ink-black monuments.
Behind him, Seraphyne walked in silence.
Not limping. Not weakened. Composed.
The divine radiance that had once flared around her now burned low but not diminished, just controlled. The air shimmered faintly with every step she took, as though the world hadn't fully reconciled with her presence.
If she was exhausted, she gave no indication.
Valaerius didn't ask how she was. He simply observed.
The way the creature had named her — with reverence, with hatred , had told him more than she ever had. She was no mere guardian. No loyal warrior with a long past.
He recalled something the creature had called her.
Oathbreaker. Betrayer of the Truce.
She was something else entirely.
And now, Valaerius wanted to know what.
They reached the edge of the ruined forest, where ancient stone bones jutted from the earth,remnants of a structure swallowed by time. Not a house. Not a shrine. Something older. The way the stones curved, the way the wind didn't touch the center.
Seraphyne laid her palm against one arch. Faint sigils sparked to life under her skin, forming a shimmering golden ward that arced around them like a half-forgotten spell.
Then she stepped beneath it and stood watch.
Valaerius entered last, not speaking. He rested against the far wall, arms crossed, scanning the horizon.
The eye in the sky remained.
Watching.
Waiting.
Night fell quickly, as if the heavens had grown tired of pretending.
There were no stars. Only the second eye in the sky, still watching.
Valaerius sat against the ruin wall, arms crossed, posture relaxed but alert. The seal on his chest, beneath his shirt, pulsed faintly with less pain, and more awareness.
Like a lion shifting in its sleep.
He focused inward. The marks on his arms weren't throbbing anymore. But they were no longer passive either.
They were listening.
And then, a whisper.
"Come."
Valaerius wasn't startled . He tilted his head, calculating.
It wasn't a voice in the air. It was pressure in the marrow of his bones.
"You were not meant to sleep so long."
He closed his eyes.
The ruin vanished.
He stood now on a battlefield where time itself had ruptured.
The sky above bled impossible colors,crimson streaked with gold and shadow. Winds whispered names in languages not spoken since the first war. The ground trembled beneath him, scattered with broken relics that dissolved the longer he looked.
At the heart of it stood two figures.
The first radiated light, warm and sorrowful. She was tall, cloaked in robes of shifting gold, her presence carrying the stillness of eternity. Her armor shimmered with living runes, and her long hair flowed like strands of starlight. The air bent to her both from fear and reverence.
The other stood in her shadow, a figure cloaked in darkness, tall and broad-shouldered, his form surrounded by coils of smoke and embers. Not monstrous, but immense. His eyes burned with restrained fury, and his hands curled at his sides as though every breath was a battle to stay still. His presence didn't demand obedience — it demanded recognition. Grief carved into shape.
Between them, an infant boy.
Wrapped in cloth that shifted between gold and black, the child lay perfectly still. He did not cry. He simply watched — unnaturally silent, unnaturally aware.
The woman moved first.
She knelt and brushed her fingers across the child's brow, leaning in to press a kiss to its forehead. Her touch shimmered with unbearable grace.
Then she placed her palm over the child's chest.
A ring of celestial flame bloomed beneath her hand was a seal vast and intricate, layered with runes that spiraled and folded into themselves. It burned with golden light threaded with ash-gray, and the moment it settled, the child's chest glowed and was etched with living symbols.
Divine law. A cage built of love.
The man remained still.
Then, slowly, painfully, he stepped forward and knelt opposite her.
His hands trembled. Not from weakness, but restraint. His shadow twitched like a beast barely leashed.
He reached out with his clawed fingers impossibly gentle and gripped the child's small hands.
A pulse of darkness flared.
Not malicious. Not violent. Just ancient.
Black fire laced with red and violet danced across his palms, branding the child's wrists and fingers. Symbols far older than language burned into the skin, jagged, angular, raw. Where her seal whispered silence, his roared defiance.
Power meant to awaken. Someday.
Two marks now , one on the chest, structured and divine. The others, on the hands , feral and forbidden.
He looked up at her, the golden one and for a moment, neither of them spoke. They simply grieved.
Then, with a cry that tore open the horizon, the demon ripped reality apart.
A jagged rift opened in the air — swirling with shadow and the sound of distant screams.
She turned away.
And he stepped through, the child clutched to his chest golden seal glowing softly, hands still burning with chaos.
Darkness swallowed them whole.
Valerius slowly opened his eyes.
Silence.
Not around him, within.
Like the final moment before a dam gives.
His hand had sunk into the stone beneath him. The rock sizzled where his palm touched it, scorched black.
He stared at the smoke rising from his skin, then slowly flexed his fingers.
His breath was steady. His heart wasn't racing. But something inside him had shifted.
The vision hadn't felt like a dream. It was a memory. His memory
It had felt like truth, etched into his bones long before he knew what he was.
The golden seal on his chest still pulsed faintly, not pain, not power — but pressure. A reminder, a lock, a warning.
And now, the marks on his arms glowed, responding in kind. No longer dormant. No longer hiding.
They remembered him.
And he was beginning to remember them.
From across the ruin, Seraphyne turned sharply.
She had seen.
The look in his eyes had changed.
Sharper. Older. As if the silence of centuries had been passed into him, not as knowledge, but as a weapon.
Valaerius stood, slow and deliberate. His posture remained calm, but his voice carried steel beneath it.
"You knew," he said.
Her expression was unreadable. "Yes."
"You were there."
"No," she replied. "But I know the truth."
He studied her in silence.
She didn't avert her eyes.
Then, finally, she spoke.
"I once stood among those who kept the balance. I enforced the Truce. I believed in obedience, in law, in purity of purpose."
"When you were born, they called it a violation. A crack in the foundation of the world. Something unclean. Something to be destroyed."
"I was ordered to stand aside."
"Instead... I left."
The words hung in the air, heavy as mountains.
Valaerius didn't interrupt.
"I gave up what I was," she continued. "I left behind a throne that wasn't mine, a purpose I no longer believed in, and descended. Not in punishment, but by choice."
"To hide you. To keep you safe. To raise you."
She stepped forward, the wind lifting strands of her hair as the ward pulsed faintly behind her.
"I defied the order not because I saw a threat, but because I saw you. Not a weapon. Not a curse. A child."
The silence that followed wasn't empty. It was heavy, alive — filled with things unspoken. Valaerius didn't look away.
He took a breath, slow and quiet.
He looked at her, properly.
No walls. No shields. Just him.
"Then let them come," he said. "Because when I rise, they'll know who raised me."
Seraphyne blinked once.
She didn't smile. She never really smiled. But something softened in her face, like a wound remembering it once had warmth.
"You stood alone against the gods for me."
A pause.
"I won't forget that."
Her voice came steady, but her hands trembled at her sides.
"You were never meant to owe me anything."
"I don't," Valaerius said. "But I remember."
She looked away, just for a second, toward the horizon. Toward whatever waited beyond the silence.
"I've done many things in my life," she said softly. "But loving you, was the only one I never doubted."
Valaerius didn't answer. He couldn't. Not without letting something break.
Instead, he stepped closer. Just a few feet between them now. No blades, no commands, no lessons. Just silence.
And then, quietly:
"I'll make it mean something."
Their eyes met.
For a breath, time seemed to still. Not for war. Not for prophecy. But for them. For the two souls who had shared years in exile, in shadows, in defiance of the world.
The wind died. The glow beneath his skin pulsed once, not in warning, but in hunger.
Valaerius turned back toward the dark horizon and, for the first time, allowed a single, quiet truth to settle behind his eyes.
They failed to erase me.