That night, sleep took Kael like a tide—not a gentle descent, but a pull beneath the surface. One blink, and the fire's warm flicker faded. The next, he stood in silence above the world.
He hovered high over a vast chamber carved into the heart of creation itself. No roof, no sky—only constellations suspended in eternal dusk above a polished obsidian floor. Pillars of starlight stretched into the heavens, holding up nothing and everything. The air buzzed with unseen power, thick with the weight of judgment and eternity.
Below him, the Council had assembled.
He saw them all.
Odin, one eye closed like a storm held at bay, sat hunched forward on a throne shaped from ash-wood and iron. Indra reclined, his thunder-marked skin glowing faintly, fingers drumming a war rhythm against the armrest of his golden seat. Amaterasu radiated quiet fury, her eyes masked in calm but her aura hot and pulsing. At the center stood Ma'at, scales held still in her grasp—each god's voice tilting them by word, weight, or silence.
There were dozens more. Too many to name. Too ancient to look upon fully without bleeding at the edges of one's soul. But Kael saw them all. He floated unseen, untouched, and yet... known.
The chamber shook with divine voices arguing across pantheon lines:
"The child is an anomaly. He should not exist."
"He's not a child anymore."
"He's proof that our barriers have failed."
"Or proof they never served us to begin with."
"If left unchecked—"
"If guided... perhaps he becomes what we could not."
Kael tried to move—tried to speak—but the dream shifted.
Now, he was within someone. He blinked through another's eyes.
A god. Cold and judgmental. Their view was narrowed and stern, fixed on Odin's bent posture.
"Your mortal blood runs deep in this," the god's voice whispered, though Kael couldn't tell if it was aloud or only in the mind.
He tried to pull away, but the dream wrenched him again.
Now he sat in stillness, draped in silks and light, within the form of a goddess—watching as hands clutched at folded robes and a breath was held too long. Regret pulsed through her chest.
"He reminds me of the boy we lost. The way he looks at the sky like it owes him answers."
She did not speak aloud. She would never speak it aloud.
The perspective changed again.
This time Kael stood behind the thrones. No longer within anyone, only near them. A quiet conversation passed between two lesser gods whose names he did not know—one etched with sand, the other clothed in frost.
"They'll never agree," said the sandy one.
"Then they'll pretend they did," the frost god answered.
"And let the shadow deal with the aftermath."
Before Kael could make sense of it, the world darkened.
The divine chamber melted away, swallowed by ink and wind.
He stood now in a place of neither time nor shape. A shoreline of void. A thin horizon glimmered with violet flame.
From it, the figure emerged.
The same presence that had watched from afar during the ruin of the farmhouse. Cloaked in shadow, its form was neither fully divine nor mortal—more suggestion than substance. Its edges pulsed with something Kael couldn't name, its mirrored eyes catching flickers of Kael's past—his mother's prayer beads, his father's frozen breath, the weight of a blade forged in secrecy.
It spoke in a voice that did not echo, but resonated—deep in his bones.
"They've made their decision."
Kael's fists clenched at his sides. His voice trembled, but he spoke anyway.
"They hesitated."
The figure tilted its head slightly—curious, almost amused.
"They did. You live… but not untouched. Not unmarked. Their mercy is forged from division. It is a pause. Not a pardon."
Kael looked up, jaw tight.
"So I'm a compromise."
"You are a question… one they don't yet dare to answer."
Kael's breath hitched. He tried to steel himself, but the dream peeled away the armor he wore in waking life. Beneath the defiance, beneath the power swelling in his blood, he was still the boy who had buried his parents in storm and fire.
"Then why you? Why show me this? What do you want from me?"
The figure stepped closer. Its form shimmered again—just long enough for Kael to catch a glimpse: not a god, not fully, but something that had once been one. A forgotten patron. A witness who had watched too many lifetimes fall into dust.
"Because I remember what it means… to be caught between what you are and what they expect you to become."
It leaned in slightly, and for a moment, Kael saw sorrow etched in the fluid lines of its form.
"I see the storm that survives itself."
A pause. Then softer—gentler than Kael expected:
"And I see a boy grieving... too loudly for the gods to ignore, and too quietly for them to understand."
Kael's throat tightened. His eyes burned, but he didn't look away.
"What do I do now?"
The figure's reply came like a fading wind across water:
"You endure. You learn to shape what they fear… into what you need. And when the time comes—you choose whether to be their weapon… or your own salvation."
It began to fade, like ink dissolving in dawnlight.
"Rest, Kael. What awaits will not let you do so again."
And just before it vanished completely—
"You are not alone. Not entirely."
Then all was silence.
Kael awoke in the haven of Havenwyck, the fire casting gentle light across his face, but his breath shook as he exhaled.
Not from fear.
From recognition.
By the time Kael awoke the giant grandfather clock was striking noon. Kael awoke to find himself no longer slumped in the ancient chair of the sitting room but now he was tucked into a majestic king sized bed that seemed to have been made for a giant. But he had no time to ponder on this for long as his thought process was disturbed by the his stomach's plea for sustenance as it reverberated throughout what he deduced was the master bedroom. As if sensing their visitors plight the doors to the bedroom slowly opened as a silver trolley was wheeled into the room and rested to the right of the bed. As Kael turned to thank his server his eyes widened in a mix of shock and fascination as he discovered that the trolly was unmanned its movements made possible by an intricate mix of runes and Sanskrit that gave the trolly the ability to respond to a guests desire whether it be uttered or thought.