Darkness swallowed Kael whole.
There was no sense of direction—no up or down, no ground or sky. The abyss was not empty space but something denser, heavier, as if he had fallen into the depths of a living thing. The silence was complete, crushing in its totality. Even his own breathing sounded distant, muted, unreal.
Pain returned slowly.
Not all at once, but in fragments.
First came the ache in his limbs, dull and spreading. Then the sharp reminder of broken ribs, strained muscles, joints twisted beyond their limits. Kael groaned softly, the sound vanishing the moment it left his throat.
He tried to move.
His body responded sluggishly, as though it no longer entirely belonged to him. When his fingers scraped against solid stone, relief surged through him despite the pain. At least he was not endlessly falling anymore.
Kael lay still for a long moment, staring into nothing.
I'm alive.
The realization felt strange. Hollow.
He had expected death—expected the abyss to tear him apart or erase him completely. Instead, it had caught him, deposited him here like unwanted refuse tossed aside after judgment.
A bitter laugh escaped his lips.
"So this is mercy," he muttered.
His voice sounded wrong in the darkness, thin and fragile.
He forced himself to sit up.
Agony flared through his spine, drawing a sharp hiss from his teeth, but he did not collapse again. Pain was familiar. Pain was something he could endure. He pressed one trembling hand against his chest, feeling the erratic thud of his heart.
It was still beating.
That alone felt like defiance.
Kael looked around, though his eyes found nothing. The darkness was absolute, swallowing even the faintest hint of light. Yet he could sense the space around him—vast, open, stretching far beyond what sight should have been able to perceive.
The abyss was not empty.
It was waiting.
"You should be dead."
The voice did not echo.
It did not travel through the air.
It formed directly inside his mind, calm and unmistakably present.
Kael stiffened.
Every instinct screamed at him to flee, but his body remained frozen. His breath hitched, then steadied as something colder than fear settled over him.
"I've heard that before," he said hoarsely.
Silence followed.
Then the pressure returned—not physical, but oppressive, as though something enormous had shifted its attention fully onto him.
"You were cast here to be erased," the voice continued. "Yet you endure."
Kael clenched his fists. "Disappointed?"
A pause.
"Curious."
The word sent a chill crawling up his spine.
Kael swallowed. "What are you?"
"I am what listens when the world discards its failures."
The darkness seemed to thicken around him, coiling invisibly, tightening. Kael felt it brush against his senses, not touching flesh but probing deeper, brushing against thoughts, memories, fragments of emotion he had tried to bury.
He resisted instinctively.
The pressure intensified.
"You resist even now," the voice observed. "Most who fall here break long before this moment."
Kael exhaled slowly. "Breaking didn't save me."
Images surged unbidden—his father's turned back, the High Priest's cold decree, the laughter echoing through the Ascension Hall. Rage flared hot and sharp in his chest, cutting through the haze of pain.
"I won't give them the satisfaction," he said quietly.
The abyss stirred.
Hatred responded to something ancient.
"You were sealed," the voice said. "Your blood was not weak. It was restrained."
Kael's eyes widened slightly. "Restrained… by whom?"
"By those who feared what you would become."
The words struck deeper than any insult ever had.
Kael laughed, but there was no humor in it. "That's convenient. Everyone's afraid, and I'm the one thrown into the abyss."
"Fear often disguises itself as law," the voice replied. "And cruelty as necessity."
Kael fell silent.
For the first time since the ceremony, something inside him shifted—not rage, not despair, but understanding. The fragments of his life rearranged themselves in his mind, forming a shape he had never allowed himself to see.
He had never been unwanted because he was weak.
He had been unwanted because he was uncertain.
The realization settled heavily in Kael's chest.
All those years—every examination, every sidelong glance from the elders, every moment his father had watched him in silence—it all took on a different meaning. They had not been waiting for him to fail.
They had been waiting for proof.
Proof that sealing his bloodline had been the correct choice.
Kael clenched his fists, nails biting into his palms. The pain grounded him, sharpened his thoughts. If his blood had truly been weak, they would have discarded him long ago without ceremony. There would have been no patience, no careful observation, no final public judgment.
Fear had demanded caution.
And fear had demanded his removal.
A bitter smile tugged at his lips. "So even my weakness was never real," he murmured.
The abyss did not deny it.
Instead, the darkness pressed closer, heavier now, as if acknowledging a truth long buried. Kael felt the weight of it settle against his resolve, testing not his strength, but his willingness to accept what he had become.
"You understand," the voice said quietly.
Kael lifted his head. His eyes, though surrounded by darkness, burned with a steadiness that had not been there before.
"Then let them keep their certainty," he replied. "I'll keep what they were afraid of."
"Why tell me this?" Kael asked.
"Because you stand at a threshold."
The darkness beneath him rippled, and a faint symbol ignited on the stone—jagged lines forming a circle that pulsed slowly, like a heartbeat out of sync with his own.
"You can fade," the voice said. "Your life will end here, quietly. Forgotten."
Kael stared at the symbol.
"And the other option?"
The pressure surged, heavy enough to make his vision blur.
"You may swear an oath."
Pain flickered through his chest, sharp and anticipatory, as though his body already sensed what was coming.
"An oath to what?" Kael demanded.
"To the shadow that was denied to you," the voice replied.
"To the path forbidden by those who sealed your blood."
"To power born of resolve, sharpened by suffering."
Kael's pulse thundered in his ears.
"And the cost?"
Silence lingered longer this time.
"Each step will strip something from you," the voice said at last. "Mercy. Innocence. The comfort of believing the world is fair."
Kael closed his eyes.
Mercy had not saved him.
Innocence had not protected him.
Fairness had never existed.
When he opened them again, his gaze was steady.
"I was already stripped," he said. "You're just being honest about it."
The symbol beneath him flared.
"Then swear," the voice commanded.
Shadows surged from the darkness, crawling across the stone, winding around Kael's limbs like living smoke. They did not restrain him. They waited.
Kael drew in a slow breath.
"I swear," he said.
The abyss answered.
Pain unlike anything he had ever known tore through his body. Shadows forced their way into his veins, flooding his blood with icy fire. His heart convulsed as something ancient stirred within it, something that recognized the oath and claimed it eagerly.
Kael screamed.
The sound was swallowed instantly.
Dark lines spread beneath his skin, pulsing in time with the symbol on the ground. His consciousness fractured, stretched thin between agony and awareness, until even pain began to lose meaning.
Then, gradually, it changed.
The chaos compressed.
The agony sharpened.
It became something he could endure.
When Kael finally collapsed forward, gasping, the shadows withdrew, sinking beneath his flesh as if they had always belonged there.
Silence returned.
"You have taken the first step," the voice said. "You are now bound to the veil."
Kael lay trembling on the stone, chest heaving.
"What does that make me?" he whispered.
The darkness around him seemed to smile.
"Not dead," it replied. "And no longer harmless."
Kael forced himself to his knees.
Above him, far beyond the abyss, the world that had cast him aside continued on—unaware that something it had tried to erase had begun to awaken.
And this time, it would not be so easily discarded.