The moment the Soul Scanner hummed to life, reality seemed to shatter around Kai. The device, a relic of St. Kareth's Academy's darkest experiments, pulsed with an otherworldly glow that grew brighter—too bright—until it exploded in a cascade of blinding light and raw energy. Kai's body convulsed violently as flames erupted from his skin, weaving with shadows that clawed at his mind. His scream tore through the chaos, mingling with the sound of reality itself bending, cracking, and pulling him apart. Time folded, space twisted, and the world he knew dissolved into a fracturing nightmare. When the agony finally ceased, Kai opened his eyes—and found himself somewhere else.
Above him stretched a sky painted in bruised shades of deep purple and fading amber, an eternal dusk suspended between day and night. The air was thick and heavy, filled with a silence so profound it seemed to swallow all sound. Beneath his feet, an endless field of crimson grass swayed in slow, haunting waves, its color like fresh blood spilled on forgotten battlefields. The landscape was alien yet unsettlingly familiar—as if this place existed in the fractured edges of memory and dream.
But Kai was not alone.
From the shadows emerged strange, bone-armored figures—Hollowguard, the remnants of an ancient, cursed legion once bound to his command. Their armor cracked and fused with charred bone, their movements jerky and unnatural, as if death itself still gripped their sinew. Their eyes glowed faintly with residual necromantic magic, and they whispered in a tongue that teased Kai's mind, sounding almost like a language he should know. These revenants did not welcome him. They were hunters, stalking the prey who had once been their king.
Panic surged through Kai's veins, and without thought, he summoned fire from his hands. The flames roared to life, but they were wild, untamed—flickering erratically like a storm barely contained. He fought through tangled underbrush and crumbling ruins, every strike triggering flashes of memories buried deep within his soul: a throne room cloaked in shadows and gold, a war council with banners aflame, soldiers kneeling in solemn oath before a blazing crown. These visions were not mere dreams. They were shards of a past life returning, pieces of a fractured identity knitting back together with each battle.
The fire within him burned hotter with each heartbeat, awakening dormant power and forgotten promises. Yet with every victory came a gnawing dread—the knowledge that the more he remembered, the closer he drew to a truth he was not ready to face.
As night fell over the blood-red fields, Kai stumbled to the edge of a ruined temple, its broken pillars reaching toward the bruised sky like fingers pleading for salvation. Exhausted, he collapsed into the cold stone, his chest heaving, the chaotic flames dimming to a flicker. Unseen above, concealed by shadows and ruin, eyes gleamed with cold calculation—General Veyne Sol, the revenant warlord forged from betrayal, watched silently. Bound to the land and his own bitter past, Veyne's presence was a grim reminder: Kai's return was not welcome, and the hunt had only just begun