Darkness.
Not the kind that comes with sleep or shadows under trees — but the kind that precedes creation, that devours sound, that suffocates memory. A silence that didn't come from peace, but from the death of countless voices.
In that void, seated atop an obsidian throne carved from crystalized voidstone, was a man.
He looked human — and yet, far from it.
His long black hair flowed like drifting smoke, untouched by wind. His eyes glowed faint silver, but within them swirled countless stars — like a galaxy trapped behind a mortal gaze. And behind him… a phantom star spun slowly, black as pitch, rimmed in violet flame. It pulsed in silence, echoing the heartbeat of a forgotten world.
He leaned forward.
His fingers tapped the armrest of the throne — a small, steady rhythm. Not of boredom… but of thought. Of remembrance.
> "So much time has passed…"
He raised his head, gazing at the endless void above, where the remnants of a shattered moon floated like jagged teeth. The stars avoided him. The world no longer remembered his name, only the shadow it left behind.
But he remembered everything.
The scream of his mother as she died clutching his hand.
The light fading from his sister's eyes as she was dragged away.
The chains that bound his ankles.
The masks that judged him.
The whispers in the forest.
The beast that did not kill him.
The tomb that called to him.
The throne that now bore his weight.
> "Back then… I was just a boy."
He closed his eyes.
And in that instant — the void trembled. Stars flickered. And the darkness, which once crowned him king, began to remember the boy named Kael — the one the world had tried to forget.
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