The silence.Not that of calm nights or peaceful libraries.No.The heavy, suffocating, almost liquid silence of places the world has forgotten.How many days had passed? Months? Years?
Kael no longer knew.
Time had stopped having a shape, a voice, a smell.He lived here, in a deep cell of the Senmora Tower.
Third basement. North wing. A dungeon without light, without windows, without a name.His only companion? His own breathing.
And sometimes, the whisper.
The one he heard in his head. Or in the walls. He wasn't sure anymore.Sitting against the cold stone, arms chained, Kael stared at the shadow.
His eyes, once steel gray, had dulled. But not gone out.
The spark was there, somewhere. Small. Twisted. Alive."They locked me up because they were afraid. Not because I was guilty."
His voice was hoarse, rough. He hadn't spoken in weeks.
He had almost forgotten the taste of his own tongue.He coughed. A drop of blood welled at the corner of his lips."Afraid of what? A boy without a family? Or of what I am?"He lowered his eyes to the floor. There, between two stones, a carved symbol.
An imperfect circle, broken in three places, framed by unknown runes.It wasn't there before.
Or was it?He smiled. For the first time in a long while.The whisper returned. Louder this time.
"You want to get out… Kael. You want to… burn this world."
He closed his eyes."No. I want to rebuild it. But for that… it must die."He stretched out his hand — or what remained of it — toward the symbol.
His fingers glowed with a faint purple light. Not ordinary mana.
Something older. Something hungrier.The stone vibrated.A low rumble was heard.The world… moved.True magic does not manifest like fireworks.
It seeps. It insinuates. It reshapes.A black halo spread around Kael, like a circle of inverted smoke.
The chains began to tremble. Then to crack.
And finally… to disintegrate.His wrists dropped, freed.
Not a gentle release. A violent one.The iron screamed as it died.Kael stood up. Slowly. His bones cracked.
His muscles burned, but his gaze shone again.
A cold gleam. Inhuman. Absolute.He raised his hand. The symbol on the ground began to spin on itself.
Ancient letters escaped it, rising into the air like inverted ash."…I recognize you. Broken throne. Crawling void."
He repeated the words the whisper had sung."I am the eraser. The one who does not bow."A black circle formed before him.A door. To freedom. To chaos. To the Empire.He stepped through.Behind him, the walls collapsed.
The cell no longer existed.
It had been erased. As if it had never been.In a wider corridor, a magical alarm sounded.
Torches flared to life.Two soldiers ran, spears in hand. They shouted, but Kael did not answer.
He barely raised his hand.
A black streak, thin like a crack in reality, shot from his fingers.
The two men were cut in silence.Not bled.
Erased.
Kael stopped at the foot of a spiral staircase.He looked up, toward the absent light.Then he whispered:"I have slept long enough. Now… the world will remember."He climbed the stairs. Not like a fugitive.But like a king marching to his throne.