Rain poured across the mountain peaks that night.
The ceremony was over. Heaven had chosen.
And Arhaan… was forgotten.
He sat beneath a half-broken statue of an ancient deity — its face eroded by centuries of storms. The once-bright chains around his wrists now hung dull and cold, like dead metal.
The world was silent except for the soft crackle of thunder far above.
Heaven's Chosen… Kael.
The words repeated in his mind like a curse, each syllable driving deeper into his heart.
It wasn't jealousy.
It was betrayal.
Arhaan had fought, bled, and risked his soul to protect those same disciples who now bowed before Kael as if he were divine.
> "A kind heart has no place in a world ruled by gods."
— His master's final words echoed faintly in his memory.
He looked at his hands — scarred, trembling.
"Then I'll forge my own place," he whispered. "Even if I must carve it from Heaven's walls."
The air around him shifted.
His chains—those same dead, silent things—trembled faintly, their metal whispering with some ancient power buried within.
At that moment, a voice—low, ancient, and unlike Heaven's tone—spoke from the shadows of his mind.
> "You were never meant to kneel."
"Your chains were not made to bind… but to break."
Arhaan's head shot up.
The statue before him glowed faintly, and for an instant, its hollow eyes filled with a cosmic red light.
> "Rise, child of defiance," the voice rumbled. "The gods may cast you aside… but the abyss still watches."
A crimson mark flared on Arhaan's chest — the Mark of the Veiled Abyss — pulsing with forbidden energy. The air cracked and bled light around him.
For the first time, the chains didn't restrain him.
They bent.
And from the depths of the mountain, something stirred — a dark presence, ancient and waiting.
Arhaan stood slowly, eyes glowing faint gold within the crimson haze.
> "If Heaven won't guide me," he said, voice cold as the storm,
"then I'll find strength in what Heaven fears."
Lightning tore across the sky, illuminating the lone figure standing before the shattered idol — half in shadow, half in light.
Thus began his path — not as Heaven's Chosen…
but as Heaven's Mistake.