The wind that carried dawn was cold, but beneath its chill lay something older — a presence stirring in the deep silence of the world. Cled felt it the moment the sky dimmed, as if the stars themselves were drawing breath.
He stood at the base of the fractured plain, the crystal sphere in his palm glowing faintly. Its pulse matched his own heartbeat.
Mairen stood nearby, tightening her cloak. "That chime last night... it wasn't natural. Even the drakes won't fly now."
"It wasn't meant for them," Cled murmured. "It was meant for me."
The sphere flickered once, then cast a vision before them — a sea of storm clouds shaped like a throne. From within the tempest, a silhouette rose: tall, crowned in lightning, chained to the horizon by bands of shadow.
Mairen gasped. "That's impossible. The Shattered King was sealed before the First Age ended!"
Cled's jaw tensed. "And yet his presence moves again."
The crystal cracked slightly in his hand, releasing a faint hum that rippled through the ground. Across the plains, stones began to shift as if something vast stirred beneath the earth. The fracture's glow above them dimmed, replaced by a deep red shimmer.
---
Miles away, in the high sanctum of the Immortal Order, six elders watched the same change through their scrying orbs.
"The pulse has inverted," said the eldest, his voice heavy. "The heir's awakening is breaking the oldest seal. If the Shattered King returns…"
"Then the heavens will bleed once more," finished another.
Their gazes turned toward the west — toward Cled. None spoke the thought they shared: that the boy beneath the fractured sky was no longer a pawn of fate. He was its center.
---
Back on the plains, the trembling stopped. The light faded. For a moment, only silence. Then, from deep beneath the ground, a fissure tore open — a narrow crack that exhaled mist as black as night. The mist curled upward, forming a towering shape that seemed both solid and spectral.
A voice thundered through the air, ancient and mournful:
> "You carry the echo of the sky I broke… Why do you awaken me, child of the bound heavens?"
Cled didn't flinch. "I didn't call you. The fracture did."
The figure's eyes opened — two molten orbs of red light. "The fracture is my scar. Every sky that rises owes its birth to my fall."
The mist coalesced into the image of a man wearing a crown split down the middle — one half bright as silver, the other black as coal. His voice softened, filled with a sorrow that seemed endless. "I was the first to love the heavens too much… and for that, I shattered them."
Mairen stepped forward, trembling. "You're saying the sky itself—"
"—was broken by my grief," he finished.
Cled's aura flared. "If you truly were once king of the heavens, then why return now?"
The Shattered King's gaze burned through him. "Because you have remembered enough to finish what I began."
Before Cled could speak, the air exploded with energy. The ground rippled outward, and he was thrown back, his spirit-core flaring painfully.
Through the dust, the king's form began to fade, his words echoing like a curse.
> "Seek the Vault of Heaven… and you will find me waiting… whole once more."
Then the mist collapsed, leaving behind only the broken crystal, now dead and gray.
Mairen rushed to Cled's side. "Cled! Say something!"
He groaned, blood at the corner of his lips, but his eyes glowed faintly — half gold, half blue. "He's not just memory… he's a remnant."
She frowned. "You mean—"
"He's alive."
---
That night, Cled could not sleep. He sat before a small fire, feeling the fracture's hum echo in the distance. The stars above shifted subtly, forming that same throne-shaped constellation. The Shattered King was reforming somewhere out there.
He whispered to the wind, "If fate demands I end you again… then so be it."
The wind answered with silence.
But somewhere far away, a deep laugh rolled across the night — soft, broken, and terribly human.