The world outside the hospital room looked the same—sunlight reflecting off the glass towers of the city, cars crawling along highways—but Kael could feel the fracture beneath it all. Reality was thinner here, fraying at the edges, and the mark on his chest pulsed in rhythm with something far beyond his comprehension. He got up, ignoring the nurse's panicked protests, and walked to the window.
It wasn't the city that caught his attention. It was the sky. A rift, small at first, flickering with a silvery-blue light, then widening, tearing the clouds like paper. And in the rift, he saw shapes… impossible geometries, cities suspended in air, stars that burned in impossible patterns. He blinked. They were gone.
But the whispers didn't stop. They grew louder, forming a coherent voice that only he could hear:"Kael Draven… the Nexus chooses. You are its revenant… and its anomaly. The Null approaches."
He staggered back from the window. "What… what are you?" he whispered to the empty room.
"A guide. A warning. A key."
The words echoed in his mind, vibrating through every nerve. Kael realized then that his return from death was not a miracle—it was an awakening. And awakening demanded action. Somewhere, across dimensions he had never known existed, a war had already begun. And he was at the center of it.
He grabbed a mirror from the bedside table. The reflection staring back at him wasn't entirely human. The eyes glimmered with something impossible, something predatory. Kael Draven had returned from the void… but he had not returned the same.
And somewhere, in the distance, the first ripple of the Null Order began to move.