The sky tore open with light.
Not the sun, not fire, but something older: divine radiance, fractured and burning.
It poured like molten glass from the clouds, illuminating the clearing in a searing, unnatural glow. The moon disappeared behind the storm.The trees leaned back in reverence or fear.
And the ancient ones came.
One stepped from a crack in the world itself, its body woven from silence and shadow, a helm of glass resting on no face.
Another emerged, trailing black frost across the mossy ground, eyes like voids gnawed into flesh.
A third floated forward without feet, cloaked in twisting flame and memory, the air around it humming as if it remembered the first song ever sung.
They were not gods. But they had stood beside them.
And Seraphyne faced them alone.
Her wings, though ruined, still shimmered faintly with the dying remnants of celestial light. Each feathered edge glowed with residual flame, a final defiance of mortality. Her blade:a crooked thing of starmetal and bone—was unsheathed, held loosely in her hand.
The clearing trembled.
The moment the first figure moved, Seraphyne struck.
She did not wait. Did not hesitate.
She became a streak of silver and vengeance, blade spinning through air and silence. She met the nearest one mid-step, cutting through its midsection. It split—not blood or bone, but a wave of memory spilling into the air.
Screams from long-dead cities. Prayers never answered. Time folding into dust.
She turned into the next with no pause, catching its frost-laced arm and cleaving upward. It hissed, not in pain, but in recognition.
They knew her.
They remembered the Seraphyne who had once commanded flamestorms and purity, who had stood at the right hand of a goddess before falling, before burning, before choosing mortality for a child not hers.
They remembered.
And they hated her for it.
The third opened its mouth,a gaping maw of spirals and light and released a soundless scream. The ground shattered beneath her feet. Gravity shifted. The air itself grew heavy with unspoken truths.
Seraphyne did not falter.
She bent, twisted, flicked her wrist. Glyphs spiraled out from her fingers, holy sigils repurposed into something broken and brutal. Her blade caught flame again: this time not divine, but borrowed. Stolen.
The clearing became a storm of soundless destruction.
The sky bled light and stars.
The trees bent away from the clearing, leaves evaporating as time unraveled for a breath.
And through it all, Seraphyne stood.
Not to win.
But to give him time.
Valaerius did not feel the wind anymore.
He did not hear the battle. He did not see the trees, or the clearing, or the sky.
He floated.
No,he stood. But there was no ground. No horizon. Only threads.
Endless threads, glowing softly in a dark nothingness. They hung in the air like veins through the void, some pulsing gently, others stretching infinitely outward.
Each one whispered: names, memories, regrets, laughter, screams. Some shimmered like gold dust, others bled like ink into water.
His hands still glowed. The seal had shattered, and from his palms came light.
He stared.
The threads responded.
One brushed against his fingers. A memory flickered in his mind—a child dying in a fire, reaching upward. Another passed near his shoulder—a soldier dropping his sword before a king. He flinched.
Then came the voice.
"You're touching what should not be touched."
It echoed across the space, not harsh or gentle, just.. certain.
Valaerius turned.
There, in the center of the endless dark, stood a throne of obsidian. Chains hung from it like ornaments, some broken, others still twitching as though recently severed.
And seated upon it was a man.
His face was partly shadowed, but Valaerius could see pieces of himself in it. The eyes pitch black just like his left eye. The jaw. The shape of the shoulders.
The figure was boundless. His presence stretched into the void like a mountain reaching into the sky. But when he stood, there was no weight. No threat.
Only presence.
"You've grown," the man said, stepping down from the throne. "Though I suppose this is the first time I've seen you."
Valaerius's throat tightened. "Who are you?"
He knew the answer. He didn't want to.
"A memory," the man said. "An echo, bound to your seal. The part of me that could reach you."
The voice cracked slightly, only once. That fracture held more truth than any title.
Valaerius stepped back. "You're my father."
It wasn't a question.
The man nodded. "Yes. I am what remains of him. What your mother allowed me to leave behind."
There was silence.
The threads around them pulsed faintly, as if listening.
"I don't understand," Valaerius whispered. "Why now? Why only a part of you?"
The man looked down at Valaerius's hands. "Because the world still fears what you are. Even sealed, you were dangerous. Too early, and you would have devoured your own mind."
He reached out. His fingers brushed Valaerius's wrist, where the threadlight coiled.
"Now, the first seal is broken. And with it, the hunger begins."
Valaerius stared at him. "Hunger?"
"To see. To know. To take. To devour."
"You've touched the threads already. Soon, they will whisper. Later, they will scream. And one day, they will beg to be yours."
There was no pride in his voice. No fear either. Just the truth.
Valaerius's voice cracked. "Why me?"
The man's eyes softened.
"Because you were born not of one realm but of two. Because you are not bound by prophecy or pact. Because your birth should have shattered the Truce."
He looked away briefly, as though remembering something sharp.
"And because I loved your mother enough to risk it all."
That hit harder than any vision. Valaerius's chest ached with something he didn't have words for.
The man walked slowly now, tracing his fingers along one of the glowing threads.
"You see them, don't you? These strands?"
Valaerius nodded. "What are they?"
"Destinies. Possibilities. Decisions unmade, regrets unspoken, oaths broken. The soul of the world is stitched together by these."
"And now… you can touch them."
Valaerius looked down at his palms. The light was soft now, but alive.
"I felt them. Some of them—when I brushed them, they…. They showed me things."
The man gave a faint smile. "You've only grazed them. When you understand what it means to devour a thread, you'll stop seeing only memory. You'll begin to reshape reality itself."
"How?"
"We'll get there," his father said. "But slowly. Hunger will call to you. If you feed it carelessly, you'll lose yourself."
He stepped back toward the throne, though he didn't sit.
The air shimmered with quiet tension, threads humming around them.
Valaerius felt the weight of a question pressing against his chest, but before he could speak, the man's voice returned—gentle, steady.
"You've only glimpsed it," he said. "The threads. The hunger."
He raised a hand, palm facing the weave.
"But there's a reason it was sealed."
His gaze, bright with power and sorrow, turned fully to Valaerius.
"And a price for opening it."
The threads trembled. The silence grew deep.
Then the man smiled
Not cold, not warm, but knowing.
"Let me show you."