Earth, Present Day: The Awakening
Kael's eyes opened to posters of bands from another lifetime. The wound in his chest had closed, leaving only a faint scar and the memory of fire. His last magic, spent on healing. His last connection to Eldros, severed.
The air smelled of dust and forgotten time. His desk remained cluttered with engineering textbooks, coffee mug still half full with twelve year old mold. Time had frozen here, waiting. But had twelve years passed here too? The mold in his coffee mug, the dust layered thick on everything, suggested yes. Time hadn't stopped on Earth, it had flowed in perfect parallel with Eldros, second for second, year for year. Whatever force had pulled him between worlds maintained that cruel synchronicity.
He pressed his hand to where the crossbow bolt had found its mark. Nothing. No pain, no blood. Just smooth skin over a heart that felt hollow. The portal had deposited him exactly where he'd vanished, in the room of a twenty-five year old dreamer who'd never imagined kingdoms of brass and steam.
Now thirty-seven, silver threading his hair, he lay on childhood carpet and wondered which world was real.
The Voices Below
Familiar sounds drifted from downstairs. The clink of dishes, the murmur of conversation, the rhythm of home he'd thought lost forever. Voices that had haunted his dreams through twelve years of ruling, twelve years of doubt, twelve years of wondering if he'd ever hear them again.
Mom's laugh, a little rougher now. Dad's cough, deeper than before. Sarah's voice, no longer the teenage sister he remembered, but something mature, motherly.
"Marcus starts seventh grade next week," Sarah was saying. "He's obsessed with coding. Just like Kael used to be."
Marcus. His nephew was twelve. Had lived an entire childhood while Kael built empires and watched them crumble. A boy who existed because life had continued without him, because the world hadn't stopped when he'd fallen through reality.
Kael stood on unsteady legs, crept to the door, pressed his ear to wood that remembered his teenage secrets.
Through the crack, he saw them. His family, aged like wine, gathered around a table that still bore the scratches he'd made with model trains.
Dad sat slower now, reading glasses perched on his nose, gray threading his temples. Mom's auburn hair had gone silver, her movements more deliberate but still graceful. And Sarah, thirty-five now, unmistakably a mother.
"I still think about him," Mom said softly. "Wonder where he went. If he's okay."
Dad reached across the table, covered her hand with his. "He was brilliant. Wherever he is, whatever happened, he found his way."
The words hit like a physical blow. They'd grieved him. Buried an empty casket. Moved forward while keeping space for his memory at every gathering.
The Reunion
The ancient hinge betrayed him with a groan.
Three heads turned.
Mom's coffee mug shattered on the floor.
"Kael?"
His name, spoken like a prayer answered. Like a miracle that hurt to witness.
Silence stretched. Recognition bloomed across faces that had aged in his absence. Then chaos, beautiful chaos, as they crashed into him like a wave breaking against shore.
Arms wrapped around him, voices overlapping in a symphony of disbelief and joy. Mom's hands cupped his face, checking if he was real. Dad gripped his shoulders like he might disappear again. Sarah sobbed into his shirt, twelve years of worry dissolving into relief.
"Where were you?" Mom whispered. "We thought you were dead. We hired investigators, called hospitals. The FBI kept the case open for seven years."
Kael held them, these people who'd never stopped hoping, never stopped setting a place at the table for ghosts. How could he explain another world, another life, kingdoms built and lost?
"I was hurt," he said finally. "Badly hurt. I couldn't remember anything for years."
Not entirely a lie. His heart had been destroyed just hours ago.
"It doesn't matter," Mom whispered. "You're home. You're alive. That's all that matters."
Two children he'd never met hung back. Marcus, twelve and gangly, suspicious of this stranger. Emma, eight and bright eyed, hiding behind Sarah's leg.
"Who is he?" Emma whispered.
"Your uncle," Sarah said, wiping her eyes. "The one we told you about."
Emma stepped closer, tilted her head. "You look sad."
Kael knelt to her level. "Sometimes grown ups have complicated feelings."
Sacred Spaces: The Discovery
The visit to St. Patrick's Cathedral came weeks later, after the questions had started but before the answers could come.
"You always loved Gothic architecture," Mom had said.
Inside the vast stone space, something stirred. Faint as a whisper, but unmistakable. The familiar tingle of power, of possibility. Not the raw force of Blackblood Fields, but something refined by centuries of faith and prayer.
Mana.
Sacred spaces on Earth held accumulated spiritual energy, crystallized into usable force by millennia of worship. Not much. Barely enough to enhance his memory for an hour at a time. But that single hour was everything.
With enhanced memory, he could absorb and retain vast amounts of information with perfect clarity. Every scientific paper, every technical manual, every breakthrough in human knowledge could be burned into his mind with flawless accuracy. What would take ordinary people years to study and remember, he could master in enhanced hours.
He tested the theory. Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris offered deeper pools. Westminster Abbey in London hummed with royal history. The Vatican radiated concentrated devotion. Buddhist temples in Kyoto sang with meditative energy.
But each site left him feeling slightly hollow afterward. As if something vital had been drained away, not just from him, but from the sacred spaces themselves. The cost of power was always higher than it appeared.
Portal magic would require massive amounts, years of collection, decades of patience. But learning? Learning he could do immediately.
The Long Road: Thirteen Years of Learning
"I'm rediscovering my passion for archaeology," he told his family, explaining the first of many trips.
The years blurred into pilgrimage. Marcus grew from suspicious preteen to brilliant young adult, sometimes catching Kael debugging code in minutes that had stumped him for hours.
"You're getting scary good at this," Marcus said one evening, watching Kael's fingers dance across the keyboard. Behind them, a documentary about Easter Island played on mute. Another research trip that had given him three enhanced hours and perfect recall of every computer science journal he'd encountered.
"I've had time to catch up," Kael replied.
"But you were gone for twelve years. Most of this stuff was invented while you were... wherever you were."
Marcus frowned. "Nobody studies this hard. It's like you have a photographic memory now."
Kael's fingers stilled on the keys. "Some injuries change you in unexpected ways."
The sacred magic he'd absorbed over the years had done more than enhance his memory; it had slowed his aging, preserving his body as surely as it preserved knowledge. By the time he reached fifty, he possessed the physical capability of a man twenty years younger, his magical core strengthened rather than depleted by years of careful mana cultivation. The cost would come later, but for now, power sustained him.
Years became a decade and more. Emma grew from shy child to confident young woman, watching her mysterious uncle who could explain quantum physics during dinner and help her with calculus homework that stumped her parents.
"Uncle Kael," she said one Christmas morning, now nineteen and sharp as her father had been. "Are you ever going to tell us where you really were?"
Kael looked up from the quantum mechanics textbook he'd been reading. "What makes you think I haven't?"
"Because memory loss doesn't give you a PhD level understanding of everything. Because you talk about engineering like you built things, not just studied them. Because sometimes you look at us like you're memorizing our faces."
Smart girl. Too smart for her own good.
"Some questions don't have safe answers," he said finally.
Emma was quiet for a long moment. Then: "Are you planning to leave again?"
The question hit harder than any crossbow bolt ever had.
His parents aged gracefully, understanding that their returned son carried wounds that only learning could heal. They didn't question why he could suddenly explain complex scientific concepts, why he seemed to absorb knowledge like a sponge. They were just grateful to have him back.
But Kael wasn't healing. He was arming himself with the accumulated knowledge of human civilization.
International expansion followed. Rome's ancient basilicas, accumulated centuries of faith. Egypt's pyramids, humming with pharaonic power. Cambodia's Angkor Wat, vast temple complexes soaked in devotion. Peru's Machu Picchu singing with altitude enhanced sacred energy.
Each location provided precious hours of enhanced cognition. Neural networks that could recognize patterns beyond human capability. Machine learning algorithms that evolved and improved themselves. Quantum computing breakthroughs that shattered the limitations of binary logic. Biotechnology advances that could rewrite the very code of life.
Each enhanced session burned knowledge into his mind like etching on steel. His brain became a repository of human achievement, every breakthrough catalogued and cross referenced for future use. When the magic faded, the knowledge remained, perfectly preserved and instantly accessible.
And with each passing year, the rage grew colder. More focused. More dangerous.
Critical Mass: Thirteen Years Later
"Thirteen years," Marcus said at his birthday dinner, now twenty-five himself and designing neural networks that would have seemed like magic in 2010. "That's how long you've been planning this world tour, Uncle Kael."
Kael smiled, cutting cake in a kitchen that felt both familiar and foreign. Around the table sat the people who'd anchored him to humanity for over a decade. Dad, now sixty-eight and still sharp despite the cane. Mom, sixty-five and beautiful despite the years. Sarah, who'd become the family's strength. Marcus with his brilliant mind and suspicious eyes. Emma, twenty-one now, a quantum computing undergraduate who'd inherited the family's gift for seeing through lies.
In his enhanced memory, he carried the equivalent of multiple doctorate level educations. Computer science, bioengineering, quantum physics, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, materials science. All of it perfectly preserved and instantly accessible.
"Some dreams take time to perfect," he said.
"Just stay in touch this time," Mom said, reaching across the table to squeeze his hand. "Please. We're not getting any younger."
"Every step of the way," he promised.
Emma caught his eye across the table. She knew. Had always known. But she'd never said anything, never pushed for answers he couldn't give.
In his childhood bedroom that night, surrounded by memories of two different lives, Kael prepared for his final gamble. Thirteen years of careful mana gathering from sacred sites around the world. Never more than memory enhancement, never enough to draw attention or exhaust the sources completely.
Thirteen years of sacred mana hadn't just filled his reserves; it had transformed him. The accumulated spiritual energy coursed through veins that had learned to channel power without burning out. His body, preserved by over a decade of careful magical cultivation, remained capable of feats that would destroy ordinary men. The portal would drain everything he'd gathered, but his enhanced physiology could survive what would kill others.
But all those drops, saved and concentrated, were finally enough for one massive spell. One portal. One chance to return.
He carried something more dangerous than armies now. He carried the future itself.
Return to Ruin
Kael tore reality open with thirteen years of accumulated power and rage.
The portal yawned before him, showing not the gleaming towers he expected, but the bloodstained balcony where Liora had whispered her betrayal.
For a heartbeat, memory overlaid reality: Brass towers gleaming in evening light, steam rising from a thousand chimneys, the Clockwork Gardens alive with bronze birds taking their hourly flight. His city. His masterpiece. His legacy.
Then the illusion shattered.
Through the rift lay Draven's Reach, but not as he remembered it. The brass towers were green with age, vines creeping up their sides like grasping fingers. Steam no longer rose from the chimneys. The clockwork mechanisms had gone silent. Automatons lay rusted in streets where weeds pushed through cobblestones.