Aurel woke with a sharp gasp.
The fire beside him had burned low, its embers pulsing weakly, as if afraid of him. For a moment, he couldn't tell where the dream ended and the world began. The Throne. The Arbiter. The warning.
Then he saw the bloodstains again.
Kael was gone.
Not vanished.
Gone.
Aurel rose unsteadily and moved toward the altar. That was when he felt it—something tugging at the power inside him. Not resistance. Not pain.
A memory.
His fingers brushed the cracked stone where Kael had collapsed.
And the world shifted.
He was back in the sanctum—but not as he remembered it.
Kael stood before the altar, alive, breathing hard, his hands shaking as he carved the transference seal into his own chest.
"No—" Aurel whispered, trying to move.
But this wasn't his memory.
This was Kael's.
A shadow stood behind Kael, just beyond the torchlight. Its presence was wrong—blurred, unstable, as if reality refused to fully accept it.
"You don't have to understand it," the shadow murmured.
"You only have to finish it."
Kael hesitated.
"I thought… the seal required willing intent," he said.
The shadow's voice softened.
"It does. And you are willing. You want to save him."
A pause.
Then Kael asked the question that made Aurel's chest tighten.
"…Why does the sigil feel different?"
The shadow stepped closer.
"Because the world has changed," it replied calmly.
"And so must the rules."
Aurel tore his hand away from the altar.
The vision shattered.
He staggered back, breath ragged, heart pounding—not with grief this time, but with something colder.
Dread.
The Seal of Transference burned faintly beneath his skin.
It was complete.
Too complete.
Kael had been willing.
But he had not been fully informed.
They buried him at dawn.
Aurel said nothing as the earth covered the body. His silence unsettled even those who feared him. Lyria watched him closely, sensing the shift.
When the others left, she spoke quietly.
"You're shaking."
Aurel didn't look at her.
"He trusted me," he said. "And someone used that."
"Who?"
Aurel finally raised his eyes.
"I don't know," he said.
"But they knew ancient law well enough to bend it."
The wind stirred.
Far away, something ancient took notice.
That night, as Aurel stood alone, the power within him pulsed—not violently, not eagerly.
Patiently.
And for the first time since his awakening, a terrifying thought settled into his mind:
What if this power didn't choose him…
What if it was placed inside him on purpose?
The sky above cracked with distant thunder.
Not a warning.
A reminder.