In a hidden chamber beneath the ruined citadel of Varneth—a place long erased from maps and memory—an ancient mechanism stirred for the first time in over two hundred years. Dust fell like snow from the vaulted ceiling, disturbed by gears grinding slowly to life, their metallic groan echoing through the stone corridors like a dying god's breath.
This chamber, known only to a handful of vanished scholars, was the last remnant of the Council of Equinox, a forgotten order that once stood as neutral keepers of balance between the Four Great Bloodlines. Though the council had disbanded generations ago, their final act had not been to fade—but to hide.
A crystalline orb flickered at the center of the chamber, embedded in a lattice of old-world machinery and magical conduits. Its surface, once dull and cracked, now pulsed with iridescent light, its heartbeat syncing with the unnatural tremors racing through the land.
The Seal is weakening.
Elder Kareth's last journal, sealed in a stone coffer below the mechanism, contained a prophecy few believed. "When the four pillars stir and the forgotten fifth awakens, the sky shall weep, the winds shall cry, the sea shall whisper, and the mountains shall grieve. A storm not born of nature, nor of man, will rise. The lost child will return, bearing the burden of chaos and choice."
No one alive remembered Kareth, nor the Fifth Pillar to which he had devoted his life's work. For centuries, the Four Houses had reigned unchallenged, and the idea of a fifth force was dismissed as heresy or mad ravings. But deep in the chamber, hidden among crumbling tomes and preserved scrolls, lay the truth—the origin of the boy whose power now disrupted the very fabric of the realm.
This Fifth Pillar, Vedralion, had never been a House of might, but a House of memory, knowledge, and silence. Its magic didn't shape elements, but bent the rules of reality—space, time, and mind. Fearing its limitless potential, the other Houses had united in secret to dismantle Vedralion and erase its bloodline from history.
But they had failed to destroy it completely.
A single child, marked by an unbroken rune that shimmered with prismatic light, had survived.
And now, the Rune was calling.