When Kael awoke, he was not in a world.
He was between them.
The air here shimmered like broken glass — fragments of skies, oceans, and stars drifting past each other without order or direction. Every breath he took tasted of ash and memory. Every heartbeat echoed across a thousand planes at once.
For a moment, he thought he was alone. Then the silence began to move.
Shapes emerged from the light — silhouettes too ancient to belong to flesh. They were not bodies but echoes, each shaped by a different truth of creation. One burned with the shimmer of molten gold; another rippled like smoke frozen in glass.
There were six of them in all. The remnants of Seeds that had survived the first convergence.
They were the Council of Silence.
One stepped forward, its form twisting between a woman's and a serpent's, voice like water flowing backward.
"Child of the Fractured Seed," it whispered. "You should not be awake."
Kael steadied himself. His body was heavier now — not from gravity, but from the weight of countless realities pulling at him. The Seed within his soul pulsed in response, threads of light spreading faintly across his veins.
"I didn't ask to wake," he said, voice low. "But the world is dying. You feel it too."
At that, the Council stirred.
"We feel everything," another replied — a being shaped from shadow and lightning. "Every collapse. Every rebirth. You are accelerating what should not yet begin."
Kael clenched his hand, and the space around his fingers cracked like glass.
"I'm trying to hold it together."
"By breaking it faster?"
The words struck like thunder. Fragments of forgotten stars spun through the air, drawn by the echo of the argument.
Kael took a step closer. Beneath his feet, the void rippled, forming a faint image — the reflection of his home world. The rivers, the forests, Lyraen's valley. All trembling at the edges, dissolving into light.
"I've seen what happens if we keep waiting," he said. "The Seeds keep growing — consuming each other, world by world. You call it balance. I call it extinction."
The golden figure tilted its head, eyes burning like twin suns.
"And what do you propose, Traveler?"
Kael's hand rose. A small orb of light appeared above his palm — pulsing, living, connected to something far beyond himself. The Seed.
"I'll unify them. Not by domination — but by synthesis."
The council recoiled.
"Impossible," hissed the shadowed one. "The Seeds cannot merge. Each embodies contradiction. Flame rejects Void. Storm devours Earth. Life consumes Death."
Kael's voice was quiet, almost human again.
"Then I'll teach them to listen."
For a long moment, nothing stirred. The beings of the Council stared at him — and for the first time, the silence was not empty. It was thoughtful.
Finally, the golden one — the eldest — bowed its head slightly.
"You carry the arrogance of a creator… and the mercy of one who still remembers pain."
A circle of light opened behind it — vast, endless, filled with faint stars.
"Very well, Child of the Fractured Seed. We will not stop you. But if you fail, the multiverse will not end — it will scream."
Kael stepped toward the portal. The Seed within him pulsed once more — faster now, alive, as if it too could sense the path ahead.
"I've already heard it scream," he said softly. "That's why I can't stop."
And then he stepped through the light.
On the other side waited a thousand suns and a single shadow — a world between death and rebirth.
Kael opened his hand.
The Seed expanded like a living constellation, its roots spreading across the void.
Not destruction, he thought. Integration.
But far in the distance, beyond the layers of broken time, something stirred — another Seed, vast and cold, opening its eye for the first time in eons.
And it knew his name.