The Veil stirred.
Beyond the weave of stars, beyond the living laws that shaped the mortal planes, a single consciousness opened its eyes. The dark between worlds wasn't empty — it was alive, and it dreamed in silence.
In that silence, the Watcher waited.
Aeons passed in the space between heartbeats. From its vantage, the galaxies themselves were embers drifting in a vast forge. Every spark, every dying star, was a breath drawn by creation.
And then — it felt it.
A fracture. A pulse of forbidden fire.
The Watcher turned its gaze downward, through storms of unlight and rivers of celestial ash, toward the tiny scar of a world called Eirath. The planet hung fragile in the firmament, wrapped in thin layers of time and chance. Yet something burned there now — a new resonance, sharp and bright, like a hammer striking the first note of a song the cosmos had forgotten.
A forge had awakened.
So the cycle begins again…
The Watcher's voice did not travel through air or sound; it existed as vibration across dimensions. Its thoughts rippled through the void, stirring others — distant presences, older than suns, rousing from their long dormancy.
Some answered with curiosity.
Others, with hunger.
The Watcher saw him then — Kael — standing amidst ruins, the forge's light clinging to his skin like molten dawn. Around him, the mortal plane bent, struggling to decide whether he was still part of it. His essence sang in two harmonies: one of flesh and breath, the other of ember and eternity.
A bearer of the Prime Flame, the Watcher mused. But untempered. Unaware.
It reached through the void, testing the boundary between worlds. The Veil thrummed in warning — the seals still held, the ancient laws still binding. The Watcher could not yet touch him. Not directly.
But others could.
The Watcher's gaze drifted to the far edge of the firmament, where dark forms stirred within fractured constellations. These were not gods, nor demons, but echoes — remnants of those who had once carried the same flame Kael now bore. Their voices had been silenced in previous eras, their forges extinguished one by one. And yet… their hunger endured.
He carries the last spark. If he ascends, the cycle ends. If he fails, the forge sleeps forever.
The thought shivered through creation, carried across galaxies like a prayer without a god.
Below, on Eirath, Kael moved. Each step drew faint patterns of gold across the earth — unseen by mortal eyes, but blazing to the Watcher like calligraphy written in light. The path spelled a word, ancient and dangerous.
The Watcher read it.
And paused.
So he remembers… even if he does not know it yet.
From the shadowed edge of the firmament, another presence stirred — vast, coiling, whispering with a voice that split the silence.
"He will burn too soon," it hissed. "Mortals cannot carry the root-fire."
"They never could," the Watcher replied. "But this one was not born mortal."
The silence thickened. Across the upper void, the stars trembled.
"Then the others will come for him."
"Let them," said the Watcher. "Every cycle needs its storm."
The light dimmed across the heavens. For a moment, even the constellations seemed to fade, their patterns erased by something unseen.
The Watcher turned away at last, its many eyes closing in unison. But before the darkness reclaimed it, it cast one last look toward the world below.
Kael had stopped at the foot of the mountains. The dawn burned behind him.
And for a single heartbeat, he looked upward — straight through the layers of sky and into the abyss beyond.
Their gazes met.
The Watcher felt a spark of recognition.
Not fear.
Not awe.
Something older.
He remembers me.
And then, like the closing of a book, the Veil sealed once more.
Silence.
Endless, listening silence.