The training chamber was carved directly into the cliff's heart—an ancient vault with walls covered in countless layers of chalk and ash, as if generations of thought had been scrawled, erased, and rewritten a thousand times.
Kael sat in the center, cross-legged, eyes shut, palms resting on a piece of obsidian etched with a single silver symbol: ∇.
Around him, the silence was heavy. The kind of silence that listens.
Varron paced in slow circles, his voice a low whisper echoing through the stone.
"You don't need power, Kael. You already have it. You need discipline. Power without form is noise. Noise cannot cut. You must become a blade."
Kael focused on his breath, just as Varron taught him. Inhale. Count seven. Exhale. Count nine. Anchor the self. Anchor the name.
But the name in his head was no longer just Kael.
Sometimes, when he focused too hard, he heard other names. Forgotten ones. Like echoes beneath a frozen lake.
"Sigils are not spells," Varron continued. "They are contracts between will and reality. Each one is a word, and when woven in the correct tongue, they become a language that the world obeys."
He pointed to the silver symbol under Kael's palms.
"This is the root-sigil of Veil. It does not hide you from the world—it hides the truth of you from yourself."
Kael's eyes flew open. "Why would I need to forget myself?"
Varron stopped pacing.
"Because others are already trying to remember you."
The Artifact
Training continued for hours.
Kael's muscles burned from stillness. His mind itched with unanswered questions. But by nightfall, he had learned to write three sigils from memory—Veil, Anchor, and Silence—each on a strip of warded cloth that Varron claimed could hide a thought from dream-walkers and soul-scribes.
As they cleaned up, Kael noticed a dark cloth covering something on the far wall.
"What's that?" he asked.
Varron hesitated.
Then: "An artifact. Taken from a ruin that predates all maps. It shouldn't react to you… but neither should the tome have opened. So let's find out."
Kael approached. Varron pulled away the cloth.
Beneath it sat a mirror—its surface rippling like mercury, its frame made of black bone carved into screaming faces.
The moment Kael saw it, it saw him back.
The surface went still.
His reflection stepped forward, even though Kael had not moved.
The air turned cold.
Varron shouted, "Don't touch—"
Too late.
Kael's hand brushed the glass.
And the mirror shattered.
Not into shards—but into screams.
A pulse of black energy threw Kael back against the wall. Symbols flared across the floor like fire. The air filled with voices—not in language, but in memory.
The Watcher Awakens
Far beyond the mortal plane, in a tower that floated among the rings of a broken moon, a being stirred.
Its name was lost to time. Its form was ever-shifting—a face of light and shadow. It sat upon a throne of veined crystal, feeding off the echoes of reality itself.
A seer knelt before it, her eyes sewn shut, her mouth full of stars.
"The Core has touched the Obsidian Mirror," she whispered.
The being's voice was like thunder beneath water.
"Then the seals weaken."
It turned its attention to the world below.
"Send the Dreadmarked. The heir must not awaken the Gate."
Back in the Chamber
Kael gasped, sitting up.
The mirror was gone—its pedestal cracked. Around him, Varron knelt in a warding circle, hand bleeding, eyes glowing silver.
"Are you mad?" the old man barked. "That was a soul-bound artifact! You could've unraveled yourself!"
Kael shook, dazed. "I didn't mean to. I just… it knew me."
Varron looked at him, breathing hard.
"No," he whispered. "It recognized you."
He helped Kael to his feet, hands trembling slightly.
"We have to leave the monastery."
Kael blinked. "Why?"
Varron stepped toward the shattered pedestal, his eyes scanning the runes left behind.
"Because the world just felt you. And now… it's looking back."