Music Suggestion:
🎵 "Arise" by E.S. Posthumus
(For the ancient heartbeat now waking inside Kyrell—wild, sacred, and utterly beyond human comprehension.)
---
The trees watched him.
Branches curved not outward, but toward him. Roots lifted slightly from the earth where he passed, as if tasting his movement—no longer just a boy, but a creature being reclaimed.
Kyrell walked as if led by a compass made of silence.
He didn't know where he was going—only that every step pulled something up from beneath his skin. A thread of heat. A rhythm in his blood.
He came to a shallow lake. Moonlight sat perfectly still on the surface.
He knelt at the edge. Touched the water.
And the reflection that looked back—
Was not his own.
---
Hair longer. Eyes glowing with a hue he didn't recognize. A symbol burned beneath his collarbone—a sigil that had not been there before.
The forest held its breath.
The reflection blinked.
And then spoke.
"I am what they feared," it said in Kyrell's voice, deeper, layered.
"I am what they sealed."
Kyrell recoiled. But the voice wasn't done.
"You should've died in the womb. But he found you. He chose you. And now we return."
"Who…?" Kyrell gasped.
The reflection shifted—became Lucian's face.
But not as he was now.
As he'd been in the ruins. Crowned. Eternal.
The image blurred.
"You carry my song," it said.
Then it vanished.
---
Far away, Lucian stood on the high balcony of the Watchtower.
His hands were still trembling from the summoning. Renak had tried to reason with him. The guards watched him like a god gone rabid.
But Lucian was no longer asking permission.
He felt it—Kyrell had changed.
He turned to the council chamber still echoing with Thalos's silence.
None of the elders dared speak now.
Lucian walked back inside, his black coat trailing behind like a shadow unbound.
"You wanted proof," he said, voice sharp as obsidian. "Now you'll feel it."
They would either follow his lead…
Or be the first to bleed for defying it.
---
Somewhere, in the deeper woods, Mara stood beside a broken tree.
Her lip was bleeding. Her hand trembled as she dropped the knife she had just used to wound her palm.
The ritual had worked—though not as she planned.
She had asked for a vision of Lucian's love.
Instead, she had seen Kyrell's past.
The boy was not just beautiful. He was divine.
And he would undo them all.
Mara let out a scream so raw the birds scattered.
Then she turned—and walked toward the mountain.
She needed help. Someone who hated Lucian as much as she did now.
---