The wind outside the monastery had stilled.
It was the kind of silence that did not belong to nature—it belonged to endings. To tombs. To prophecies too tired to scream.
Kael followed Master Varron through the dim, winding halls of the upper cloister. Neither spoke. The echoes of their steps were the only sound, save for the occasional distant groan of the stone foundation, as though the very monastery resented what had just occurred.
They stopped before an iron door Kael had never noticed in all his years there. No wards. No inscriptions. It looked… ordinary. Which made it dangerous.
Varron placed a hand on the door. "You were never supposed to find that book," he said without looking at Kael. "Not until you were ready."
"I don't feel ready," Kael admitted. "But it found me."
Varron grunted, and the door opened without a sound.
The Room of Masks
Kael stepped into the room—and froze.
On every wall, hundreds of masks stared back at him. Some were wood, others stone, ivory, bronze. Each was carved with exquisite detail: faces of kings, beasts, spirits, and strangers. Some had expressions of rage. Others smiled with cruelty. And a few… wept.
"Every guardian of the Epoch has worn one," Varron said quietly, lighting a single lantern in the center of the chamber. "We protect history by hiding it."
He stepped forward, reaching up to the eyepatch he had worn for as long as Kael could remember. With deliberate care, Varron removed it.
Beneath it was not an empty socket.
Kael gasped.
The eye beneath the patch was a swirling silver orb, etched with microscopic glyphs that moved like insects. It was no human eye. It was a Relic—a piece of magic from the First World, older than language, older than memory.
"I took this eye from a dead god," Varron said. "And I have been waiting for you since."
Kael's voice trembled. "You knew who I was?"
"I knew what you could be," Varron said. "There is a difference."
He gestured toward a table in the center of the room. On it sat a map unlike any Kael had ever seen—not of lands, but of timelines. Histories that overlapped, branched, collapsed into voids. Certain areas were labeled with names that didn't exist in any book: The Silence War. The Crimson Dream. The Devouring of the Ninth Sky.
"The world you know is a lie built on the ashes of eight civilizations," Varron said. "Each erased by the same force: the return of the Veiled Epoch."
Kael stared at the swirling map, heart thundering. "And the tome?"
"It is not a book," Varron repeated. "It is a lock. You are its key. Together, you are a weapon—or a warning."
The First Truth
Varron turned and picked a mask from the wall. It was simple: iron, shaped like a calm face, with no mouth.
"I wore this when I burned the Temple of Stars," Varron said, almost nostalgically. "They were trying to bring the cycle back too early. You can't kill a god before its shadow returns."
Kael stepped back. "What… what are you?"
Varron gave a dry laugh. "I'm a teacher, boy. One of the last. And you—are going to learn how to hide the truth even from yourself."
Kael's fingers trembled. "Why me? Why am I the key?"
Varron looked at him for a long, long time.
Then: "Because your soul is not whole. You carry the shard of an ancient will. The Epochal Core was once a crown, worn by a god who tried to rewrite destiny itself. When he failed, the world shattered. And his soul—his 'core'—scattered."
He paused.
"One piece buried itself in you."
Kael turned to the mirror on the far wall. His reflection flickered. For a moment, he did not see his own face—but the figure from his vision, cloaked in flame and stars, crowned with ash.
Then it was gone.
Elsewhere…
In a forgotten corner of the world, far from the sea and stone of Cael'Dun, a girl stood atop a black obelisk overlooking a desert of bones.
Her name was Serenya Mal'Quen, daughter of House Quen—exiled bloodline of the Imperial Throne.
She held a dagger carved from the tooth of a draconic god, and her eyes glowed with the same golden glyph that now beat in Kael's chest.
"The heir awakens," she said, tasting the words. "Let the hunting begin."
Behind her, an army of crimson-eyed assassins knelt as one.