The wind moved like breath between gravestones.
Kieran sat beneath the shattered archway of the old chapel, where ivy clung like dying memories and moonlight spilled through the broken ceiling like a silent witness. His body still trembled from the transformation… and the fear it had invoked—not in him, but in a Constellation.
He remembered nothing after the moment the red light flared from the cracked symbol on his shoulder. His left arm had been gone—and then it wasn't. His hair longer, his body cloaked in black armor etched in symbols he couldn't read.
But what disturbed him most was the calm.
The fight hadn't felt like survival. It had felt right.
And now, this man—this stranger—stood only feet away, his presence heavy enough to slow time. His eyes were shadowed, as if they'd seen too much. His robe whispered in the breeze, worn from age but not weakness.
Kieran forced himself to speak.
"Was it him?"
The man didn't turn.
"Was it Sylas Veyron? My grandfather… did he do that to me?"
Still, no answer. Only the sound of leaves brushing across stone.
"Please," Kieran's voice cracked. "I felt something take over. I couldn't control it. The power—it wasn't mine. Was it his?"
The man finally turned. His expression unreadable. Then he spoke—not to explain, but to warn.
"There are powers that do not ask for permission. They awaken, whether you're ready or not."
Kieran stood, fists clenched.
"That doesn't answer anything."
The man stepped forward slowly, his aura pressing down like the weight of oceans.
"Answers are not owed," he said. "You seek truth like a child seeks fire—without knowing it can burn. You asked if your grandfather did this. I ask you—"
He paused.
"—does it matter if he did?"
Kieran recoiled slightly. That question struck deeper than he expected.
"I need to know who I'm becoming," he said, voice low.
The man's gaze was distant, as if peering through time.
"Then look at the enemy who fled from you. A Constellation. Fled."
He walked past Kieran, toward the chapel's exit.
"That creature saw something in you… something that once tore the sky in half."
Kieran swallowed hard.
"So I am like him."
The man stopped.
"You are not Sylas Veyron. Not yet."
"Then what am I?"
The stranger faced him, finally. In that moment, the moonlight revealed faint marks on the man's skin—scars in the shape of runes.
"You are the echo of a god… and the choice to become one or not."
He took a few steps into the forest.
"Train. Fight. Fall. Rise. The truth will not run from you—but it will test you."
Kieran shouted after him.
"Wait! Who are you?!"
The man didn't answer.
But just before he vanished into the trees, he left one final message.
"Ask again… when your heart is silent."
Then he was gone.
Alone Again
Kieran dropped to his knees.
Everything—the transformation, the Constellation, the man's words—felt like pieces of a puzzle he didn't have the edges for. What scared him most wasn't the power… it was how natural it had felt.
And for the first time in years, he didn't know whether to fear himself—or believe in what he was becoming.
Beneath the fractured moonlight, Kieran whispered into the night:
"If you're out there, grandfather… watching… then tell me."
"What am I supposed to be?"
No voice replied.
Only the wind. Only the shadows.