When dawn finally crept over the wasteland, it brought no warmth — only the pale echo of light that could not touch the dead. The air stank of burnt flesh and fading prayers. Kael walked through the ruins alone, his cloak torn, his shadow longer than his body. Every step stirred the ash of those he could not save… or could not let go.
Behind him, the whispers had grown quiet — not gone, only waiting.
Ahead, the land trembled with a pulse he could feel in his veins — something ancient, restless, and calling his name from beyond the veil.
The path to the Shardborn frontier began here. And in its hollow winds, the souls murmured the same word over and over, like a warning wrapped in devotion —
"Devourer."
The frontier stretched before Kael — a wasteland of glass and bone where the horizon shimmered with fractured light. Once, it had been a city of gods. Now, it was nothing but a graveyard of reflections. Each shard of crystal caught a memory — laughter, screams, the echoes of a time before the fall.
Kael stepped carefully. The ground beneath his boots cracked, singing a sound like distant bells. The fragments seemed alive, watching him, whispering in tongues he had never learned but somehow understood.
"Souls," he murmured, his voice almost lost in the wind. "Even the ground remembers."
The air here was heavy — not with death, but with the aftertaste of it. The boundary between the living and the lost blurred in the shimmering dust. In every reflection, Kael caught glimpses of himself — the eyes too sharp, the expression too still.
He reached the center of the ruins — where a monolith of black stone stood half-buried in glass. Its surface pulsed faintly, as if a heart beat beneath it.
When he touched it, pain shot through his arm — not from the wound, but from within. The souls he had devoured screamed in unison, and for the first time, he understood what they were afraid of.
The stone wasn't dead. It was calling.
And it knew his name.
"Kael… Devourer of the Forgotten…"
The voice wasn't from the world. It was inside his skull — deep, ancient, resonant. It spoke like the rumble of the earth itself. Kael fell to one knee, clutching his head as the whispers became screams, then merged into a single echo:
"Return what you've taken… or take what remains."
A storm of light erupted around him — shards of memory, faces he didn't remember living, and a shadow walking among them. It looked like him… but older, darker, crowned in fire.
He stared at the figure through the maelstrom.
The reflection smiled.
The storm thickened until the horizon disappeared. Light fractured around him, breaking into countless faces — all Kael's, all whispering, all wrong.
Some smiled.
Some screamed.
One stepped forward.
The mirrored figure moved as he did, but slower, deliberate, as if savoring the motion. Its skin was pale silver; veins of black fire coursed beneath it. When it spoke, its voice carried both Kael's tone and the echo of every soul he had consumed.
> "You thought power was salvation," it said. "But power remembers its source."
Kael gritted his teeth. "And what are you? Another ghost? Another curse?"
The reflection laughed softly. "No. I am what you tried to bury — the hunger that wears your name."
The shards around them trembled, slicing through the air like glass petals. Each one drew blood when it touched Kael, yet the wounds burned with light instead of pain. He tried to step back, but his boots sank into the shimmering dust. The ground itself was feeding on his hesitation.
"You are losing yourself," the reflection whispered. "One soul at a time."
Kael drew his blade — the same one that had drunk both blood and spirit alike — and pointed it at the reflection. The weapon's edge quivered, as if unsure whom to obey.
He took a breath.
"Then I'll lose everything before I kneel."
He lunged. The reflection met his strike, steel against glass. The sound rang like a scream ripped from the world's throat. Every collision birthed new images — memories of Mira, the ruins, the firelit nights — all flashing, then shattering.
The reflection fought like memory itself, unpredictable and endless. Every time Kael struck it down, another version of himself rose from the shards, grinning, bleeding, laughing.
He roared, spinning the blade in a wide arc. The monolith cracked behind them, spilling black light. The reflection stumbled — and for an instant, Kael saw fear flicker across its hollow face.
He drove the sword forward, piercing its chest.
The reflection gasped — and so did he. Blood dripped from both bodies, mingling, indistinguishable.
The reflection smiled faintly.
"You cannot kill what makes you."
Then it dissolved, melting into the dust and into him.
Kael fell to his knees, chest heaving. The monolith's pulse slowed until only silence remained. Yet in the reflection of the broken shards around him, he saw his own eyes — glowing faintly red.
He whispered, almost to himself,
"So this is the cost."
The wind carried no answer. Only the endless whisper of the dead.
The silence stretched too long. Kael rose unsteadily, every breath tasting of iron and ash. He turned toward the horizon, meaning to leave, but something shifted behind him — a soft crunch of steps on shattered glass.
He spun, blade raised.
A figure stood amidst the dust — cloaked in pale blue, face hidden beneath a cracked mask shaped like a bird's skull. It tilted its head slightly, observing him with eyes that glimmered faintly from the shadows.
"You lived," the figure said. The voice was neither male nor female — distant, almost reverent. "Few ever return from the mirror."
Kael didn't lower his weapon. "Who are you?"
The figure approached slowly, each step leaving trails of frost on the glass. "A Watcher. A recorder of those who trespass the Shardborn Frontier. You carry many souls, Devourer… and one more than you should."
Kael narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"
The Watcher raised a gloved hand, pointing toward his chest. "The mirror didn't vanish. It merged. You bear its hunger now."
The realization sank coldly into him. The faint hum in his blood — that restless pulse — wasn't fading. It was growing.
"Then tell your gods," Kael said, voice low, "they should've left me dead."
The Watcher chuckled softly. "The gods no longer watch this place, Kael. Only the mirrors do."
It stepped aside, revealing a faint path through the ruin — a trail of dimly glowing fragments leading deeper into the wasteland.
"Follow the light," the Watcher said. "Or be consumed by what you've become."
Before Kael could reply, the figure vanished — scattering into dust and feathers.
He stood alone once more. The horizon trembled with heat and reflected ghosts. The wind carried a faint whisper — Mira's voice, fragile, fleeting:
"Kael… don't forget who you were."
He closed his eyes. The sword pulsed faintly in his grip, as if agreeing or warning.
When he opened them again, the glow in his irises burned brighter.
He began walking.
Toward the light.
Toward the next sin.