The world had changed.
But peace, like silence after thunder, was never truly still.
Above the plains of Virellas, dawn bled across the sky but no birds sang. The sun rose, dimmer than it had ever been, as though uncertain whether it should rise at all. Below, where lush meadows once rippled with wind, now sprawled fields of obsidian wildflowers blooming in patterns that mimicked constellations lost to time.
They were not native.
They had not grown.
They had... appeared.
And not only here.
Across the Realms across all worlds touched by the Spiral's unbinding new phenomena began to emerge. Structures where there had been wilderness. Languages whispered in the minds of the unborn. Memories bleeding backward through bloodlines. Entire cities waking to find their streets reshaped, history rewritten in elegant, fractal spirals.
The Heart of Unmaking had not simply ended the war.
It had rewritten the very blueprint of creation.
High atop the floating temple of Vahryn, once a shattered ruin lost to the aether, now reborn in gleaming mythstone, Zeirion Althar stood in stillness. His cloak no longer bore the insignia of conquest, but a sigil freshly forged a spiral crossed with a single blooming branch.
He was no longer merely Sovereign.
He was Custodian now. Architect of renewal.
But his eyes held stormlight, restless as ever.
Behind him, Aralya descended the terrace steps barefoot, wrapped in an argent robe that shimmered like starlight filtered through tears.
"You haven't moved," she said, softly.
"The sun…" he murmured, "...hesitates."
She joined him, following his gaze.
It was true.
The sun hovered lower than it should. Too long, too still. And the shadows it cast were… imperfect. Slanted at wrong angles, pointing not east nor west, but somewhere else. The sky itself felt uncertain.
Zeirion's voice was distant, yet sharp. "The Spiral was never meant to be touched. And yet I did. And now the fabric does not know how to settle."
Aralya touched his arm gently. "You didn't break the world. You freed it from a prison it didn't remember."
"And in that freedom," he said, "a new chain may grow."
A bell tolled.
Not one of war but of arrival.
From the lower levels of Vahryn, a runner approached, cloaked in violet flame a Herald of the Everlight Concord. Their face shimmered with shifting glyphs, their voice an echo of ten speakers speaking at once.
"Sovereign. A pilgrim arrives from the Depths Between. Alone. Claiming... ancestry to you."
Zeirion turned slowly.
"Impossible."
Aralya's eyes narrowed. "There's no blood left of your line."
The Herald shook their head. "Not of your past line, my lord. She says... she was born in a timeline that no longer exists. One unmade when the Spiral broke."
Zeirion's pulse stopped for half a beat.
He felt it the whisper again. The same presence he'd sensed within the Heart but could never name.
"A child of the Spiral," he said.
Aralya's hand clenched, ever so slightly.
"And she brings a warning," the Herald continued. "Of the one who sleeps behind the last veil. The Weaver in the Rootless Void. The one not bound by time, fate, or creation. She calls him... the Unborn Sovereign."
Zeirion turned toward the sky again.
And this time, it did not shine.
It watched.