The skies above the Emberlight Institute did not darken—but those who had cultivated long enough sensed something… wrong.
A stillness.
A silence beneath the silence.
Lirae Veyne jolted awake in the Seer's Sanctum. Her crystal orb cracked without warning, violet smoke bleeding from within.
"Impossible," she whispered, pressing fingers to her temples. "That thing… it can't be here."
Across the Institute, instructors halted their lectures. The Headmaster looked toward the sky.
The Head of the Seers closed her book.
The protective sigils across the entire campus shivered.
A ripple in the very weave of reality.
⸻
Kael, Interrupted
Kael stood alone in the central courtyard, half-finished formation etched into the stones. The Soulforge Resonance still flickered across his being, attempting to stabilize. His body was not ready. His mind refused to bend. And his spirit… surged ahead.
Then, it came.
A cold not born of temperature but of annihilation.
He turned his gaze to the eastern sky—and saw a ripple, like cracked glass.
The air didn't break.
Reality did.
From the fracture emerged something neither monstrous nor divine. A shadow. Vast and shapeless. It stretched impossibly across space, as if length and dimension held no meaning.
It had no form. It had no eyes.
But it was looking at him.
[Relic Interface Interruption. Warning: Tier Unknown. Threat Level: Cataclysm.]
[Designation: Null Entity. Common Title: Devourer.]
Kael exhaled once.
So… this was what the Triune Lord had feared.
Not gods.
Not mortals.
But them.
The shadow did not attack.
It simply hovered.
Watching.
Kael stepped forward, shoulders squared. "I am not ready yet," he said to the void. "But you came anyway."
And for the first time, the shadow responded.
Not with words.
But with hunger.
It leaned in, warping the sky, twisting light around itself. A thousand voices murmured in silence, vibrating through Kael's skull.
Then—another ripple.
From the west.
A second presence arrived.
This one burning gold.
A spear of flame pierced the heavens, colliding with the shadow. Not with force. But with law.
The sky burned.
The Devourer hissed and withdrew, peeling back into the dimensional fracture it had come through.
Kael fell to one knee. Blood dripped from his eyes, ears, and nose.
He'd faced monsters.
He'd faced gods in dreams.
But this was the first time death itself had looked at him like prey.
⸻
The Golden One
The flame-spear resolved into a form—hovering above the clouds, too far for mortals to make out, but clear to those awakened.
A woman of golden fire, armor etched in ancient dialects, halo of burning symbols rotating behind her.
Eyes fixed only on Kael.
She did not speak.
She bowed her head once.
Then vanished.
Kael lay on the ground, smoke rising from his skin.
The Seers would come. The Institute would panic.
He had only one thought:
"Why did the Devourer look for me… and why did an Immortal save me?"
⸻
The Question That Changed Everything
Later, as night fell again, and the Institute trembled in whispers, Kael returned to his quarters and stared at the relic.
"Why did the Devourer come for me?" he asked it.
The relic hesitated.
[…Answer unavailable.]
[…Memory Block Detected.]
[…Corruption consistent with the War of Immortals.]
[…Attempting unlock.]
There was a pause. Then a flicker of sound.
A voice—familiar, distorted—spoke only one phrase:
"You were never meant to survive that war."
Then static.
Kael sat alone in the dark.
Cold.
But not afraid.
Resolved.
Because now he knew…
There was a reason he had the Triune Legacy.
And there was a reason the Immortals fell.
And he was going to uncover everything.
Even if it killed him.
Even if it ended the world