Kael stood in the wreckage of the altar. Silence clung to the air, thick and suffocating, broken only by the crackle of fractured magic fading into nothingness. He didn't speak. He didn't move. The heat of the Abyss still burned inside him, not like fire—but like memory. A scar written into the bones of his soul.
His body ached. Not from wounds. From change.
Black lines shimmered across his skin—runes etched not by ink, but by the touch of something older than time. They pulsed faintly, syncing with his heartbeat. Void Fang hung loosely in his hand, its edge flickering with embers of shadow.
Kael drew a breath, expecting air. He got something colder, heavier. The Abyss lingered in every corner of his being. It had not left. It had not set him free. It had joined him.
He walked slowly from the shattered altar, boots crunching across broken stone. Each step echoed too loudly. As if the space itself remembered what he had done—and refused to forget.
His thoughts were scattered. Faces flickered in his mind: Myrin, Sura, the old Master of Chains. The girl he failed in the garden of Hollowpeak. The boy he had been before all this started. Each memory felt distant. Like echoes across water. He wasn't sure they were his anymore.
He wasn't sure he was Kael anymore.
A deep tremor ran through the cavern, and Kael looked back. The figure from the altar was gone. Not dead. Not living. Just... gone. As if it had never existed. As if the Abyss had reclaimed its secret.
A small voice in Kael's head whispered something he didn't want to hear:
You took its place.
He pushed the thought down.
He had what he came for. Power. Enough to burn cities. Enough to tear down the Order. Enough to change the world.
So why did he feel like he had lost something?
Kael clenched his fist. Shadows licked up his arm in response, eager. Hungry. Void Fang pulsed, connected now not just to his hand—but to his blood. His will.
Outside the ruins, a passage opened in the stone—one that hadn't been there before. A path carved by his awakening. Kael stepped toward it, his breath steady now, though the weight on his shoulders felt heavier than ever.
He didn't look back.
Whatever came next, it would be built on ashes.
And he would walk forward, not as Kael the student. Not even Kael the warrior.
But Kael—the Abyssborn.