In his final moments, Kael felt only cold.
Not the cold of wind or snow, but the suffocating chill of a sinking submarine, groaning beneath crushing depths. The sirens had fallen silent. The steel walls buckled inward with a sound like the groan of a dying beast. No screams remained. No last words.
Only the vast, suffocating quiet of death.
Kael closed his eyes. A soldier's death, he thought. He would fade into the abyss… and that would be the end.
But death… was not the end.
=====
He awoke, not in the sea, but wrapped in warmth.
Softness cradled him—silks and down with the faint scent of lavender and something sweeter, something like spirit blossom.
Voices drifted around him, soft and blurred, like a half-forgotten dream. His body felt wrong. Too small. Too soft.
He tried to move—his limbs refused.
He tried to speak—only a faint whimper came.
And then arms wrapped around him, lifting him gently into an embrace warmer than anything he'd ever known.
"Oh, my sweet boy…" a woman whispered, her voice trembling with joy and exhaustion.
Kael's vision cleared for a moment.
A woman gazed down at him—young, radiant, with flowing raven hair and soft, violet eyes shimmering with unshed tears. She cradled him close, her smile both fierce and tender.
"Welcome to this world… Kael."
Lady Selene Nightshade. His mother.
=======
"He's strong."
The man's voice was deep, edged with something hard to name—pride and wonder, perhaps.
Kael felt himself lifted again.
The man before him stood tall, his face sharp and regal. Violet eyes like his mother's, but colder. Hair black as ink streaked faintly with silver, bound at the nape in a warrior's clasp. A short, neatly trimmed beard framed a strong jaw.
Yet when he looked down at Kael… there was something warm beneath that hard exterior.
"He has my blood," the man said softly, smiling with a warrior's rare gentleness. "And yours, Selene. No child born of us could be weak."
Lord Daelen Nightshade. His father. Duke of the Blackthorn Marches.
Selene chuckled, brushing a hand over Kael's soft hair.
"He'll have your temper… and my stubbornness. A dangerous combination."
Daelen smirked, his eyes never leaving Kael's.
"He'll need it. The world beyond these walls… is crueler than most will ever know."
Selene's smile faded, a shadow of truth passing between them. But she nodded.
"I would shield him from it if I could," she whispered. "But he will walk his own path."
Daelen pressed a hand to her shoulder. His voice dropped low, iron beneath velvet.
"He carries the Nightshade blood. He will carve his own path… or blaze a trail no one has ever walked before."
=======
The chamber fell silent as the soft tap of a cane echoed across the marble floor.
Elder Marius Nightshade, Daelen's uncle and the family's senior cultivator, entered with slow, measured steps. He leaned on a staff carved from midnight oak, his eyes clouded with age but sharp as blades beneath heavy brows.
He studied Kael for a long moment.
"The boy's spirit core…" Marius muttered, stroking his gray beard, "is unlike any I have seen."
Selene's eyes narrowed. "You're certain?"
Marius nodded slowly.
"It is the Allure Physique. Rare. Dangerous. It will draw rare creatures to him—beasts, fae, ancient bloodlines thought gone from this world. Females only. They will seek him… when he comes of age."
Daelen's jaw clenched. "And before then?"
Marius gave a grave shake of his head.
"Pray they do not find him too soon."
The words hung in the air like a sword.
Selene pulled Kael protectively to her chest. Her voice dropped to a fierce whisper.
"He is my son. I will protect him… from the world, from fate, from whatever curse this body brings."
Daelen laid his hand over hers. His voice, soft but unyielding:
"And I will protect you both. No matter what comes."
======
Kael watched them in silence.
He couldn't speak. Couldn't move.
But deep within his heart, something stirred.
Family.
In his past life, he had been a soldier—a tool, a nameless man buried beneath steel and orders. He had died alone in a cold, dark tomb.
Now… he was Kael Nightshade.
And though he did not yet know what destiny awaited him, this moment etched itself into his soul—the strength in his father's gaze, the fierce love in his mother's arms.
He would remember this always.
=======
The Nightshade family was not vast. They were a cadet branch of an ancient royal line—nobles in name, rulers of a small but proud territory in the Blackthorn Marches. A family of swordmasters, spiritualists, and silent watchers of the ancient woods.
Their lands stretched beneath the shadow of the Blackthorn Mountains, in a region where forests whispered of old secrets, and streams glittered faintly with spiritual resonance.
Kael was born beneath the Nightshade Moon, a rare celestial event when the moon turned dusky violet and the stars vanished for a single night. The priests called his birth a blessing. The elders called it a sign.
But the family watched him… wary.
=======
The first two years passed quietly.
Kael grew beneath silken canopies and spirit-infused cradles. His mother sang to him songs filled with soft power. His father held him, showing him the grip of a sword long before he could walk.
They loved him. They protected him. They watched him with hope… and a touch of fear.
Kael listened. And learned. And waited.
At night, the wind outside his nursery whispered of things no one else heard. Beasts called from the shadowed woods.
And sometimes…
Something watched him.
Something with crimson eyes, lingering at the edge of his dreams.
==========
One night, beneath the soft glow of the Nightshade Moon, Kael lay awake in his crib. The scent of blood and roses drifted in through the open window.
His eyes snapped open.
A figure perched among the treetops, half-hidden in shadow.
A child.
No older than four or five. Pale as snow. Hair like dark wine, tangled around long, elegant ears. She wore little more than tattered cloth, her crimson eyes reflecting the moonlight.
A blood elf girl.
She shouldn't have existed. Her kind had been hunted to extinction—or so the world believed.
But there she was. Drawn by something in him.
She watched him with wide eyes—not with hunger or fear, but… recognition.
She whispered something in a language he didn't know… and vanished into the trees.
Kael did not cry. He did not call out.
He simply smiled.
For the first time since his rebirth, the wheels of fate had begun to turn.