The skies wept blood the day Kael Draven fell.
The very heavens cracked open, and from their wounds spilled scarlet rain that hissed as it touched the scorched earth. Storms circled the broken world like wolves around a dying giant, and thunder clapped in slow, solemn rhythm—war drums for the end of an age.
Below the storm, the land burned.
Fire, unnatural and divine, fell in ribbons from the riven sky, setting forest and fortress alike ablaze. The valley that had once been a bastion of rebellion was now a graveyard. Once, legions had marched here, their armor gleaming beneath mortal banners, led by the man the people called the Throneslayer. Once, they had believed.
Now, they were simply ash.
Kael stood atop a jagged rise of stone and bone—the Crimson Hill, they would call it in the years to come, though none who named it had ever stood upon it. No banners fluttered in the wind. No horns sounded. The black warblade he had carried through a thousand victories was driven deep into the soil at his feet, its edge cracked, its runes dulled. It stood not as a weapon now, but as a monument. A gravestone.
And yet, Kael Draven stood.
Alone.
Around him, the remains of the last battle smoldered. Blackened armor. Splintered pikes. The twisted bodies of warbeasts and the charred husks of men who had followed him beyond reason, beyond hope. Smoke curled upward in lazy spirals, carried on winds thick with ash and grief.
They had come so close.
He had come so close.
He had broken the Divine Accord, the ancient pact that bound mortals to chains forged by divine will. He had shattered the temples of Yrr and torn the wings from the skyborn children of Vessa. The Rivers of Aethe burned still from his march. The sun itself had dimmed when his blade pierced the chest of the God—King of Erun.
He had raised mortal banners over the bodies of gods he once swore his devotion to—after their betrayal.
And yet…
"You were never meant to win."
The voice fell like thunder, smooth, cold and absolute. It echoed not just through the valley, but through Kael's bones.
He turned his gaze skyward. And Ashenhall split.
It was not a portal, nor a gate, but a wound—a rift in the fabric of reality itself. Through it poured golden light, brighter than a thousand dawns, and from that light descended a figure wrapped in radiance.
Aureon.
god of Order. Patron of Thrones. Binder of Fate. Once Kael's master, now his executioner.
His form was terrible in its beauty—tall and graceful, lit with perfect build. Robes of starlight floated as if moved by unseen tides. Upon his brow rested a crown of seven celestial points, and in his hand was the Scepter of Balance, a relic from before the first flame was lit.
His face was calm. Too calm. Like an artist observing a flawed creation.
"Aureon," Kael rasped. His voice was rough, ragged from smoke and blood. But the name was clear.
He wrenched his sword from the ground and held it upright, though the weight nearly bent his knees. His armor was scorched, dented in a dozen places. His body was failing. But his eyes blazed with the same fire that had turned empires to rubble.
"You promised justice," he spat, blood sliding down his chin. "You promised freedom."
Aureon drifted closer, golden feet never touching the ground. "I promised you a role."
His voice had no echo, yet it filled the world.
"You were to be a blade forged in rebellion. A necessary storm to purge the heretics and test the faithful. A means to cleanse the weak from the strong. You played your part well."
Kael barked a laugh, bitter and broken. "A pawn, then. Dressed up in prophecy and fed scraps of hope."
"A pawn who outlived his purpose and now dares to challenge us," Aureon said. "You were never meant to win."
Kael swayed on his feet, but the blade in his hand remained firm.
"Then remember this sword," he said. "Remember it when I return."
Aureon raised a single hand. Light surged—pure, blinding, final.
Kael screamed a curse, a vow, a warcry—but it was swallowed by the fire.
The world turned white.
Somewhere far beyond death...beyond Velgrim....There was nothing.
Not darkness. Not silence. Even those were things.
This was absence.
Time had no dominion here. No moment came after another. There was no forward, no back. Only an endless now that stretched without edge, without purpose.
And in that unbeing... something stirred.
A flicker. A memory. A name.
Kael.
It drifted like ash on invisible winds. Then, a heartbeat.
Distant. Faint. Impossible. But real.
A sound in the silence. A rhythm in the void. Then came a second beat. A third. Each one stronger. Each one clearer.
And then… a voice.
Not Aureon's. Not the gods'. Something older. Wilder.
"Rise, Warlord."
Flames bloomed.
Flames of soulkindle—the deep, inner blaze that burned with sheer purpose. They licked at the edges of the void, carving space where none had been. Carving him.
Kael's body reformed not in flesh, but in will.
The fire lit his bones first—white-hot lines etched through nothing. Then came muscle, core, breath. Not as he had been before. Not yet. But as a vessel. A beginning.
He gasped. Air rushed in. Pain followed. Then fury.
It surged through him like a tide breaking free of a dam. Memories returned in flashes: the roar of battle, the stench of fear, the warmth of blood. The betrayal. The fire. The lie.
The gods.
He remembered everything. Kael opened his eyes. There was no sky. Only darkness above. No ground. Only mist beneath.
But he stood.
Around him swirled a place outside of places—a plane between death and life. A forgotten edge. Spirits moved here, or echoes of them. Some wept. Some screamed. Most drifted without form.
But not Kael.
He walked forward, the void parting before him like breath on glass.
The voice came again. "You were not meant to end."
It was not male, nor female. Not old, nor young. It was every voice he had silenced. Every prayer shouted before dying. Every name etched onto his sword.
He stopped before a shape in the mist.
A mirror. No frame. No stand. Just a surface suspended in nothing.
He looked into it.
And saw not himself, but a boy. Small. Hollow-eyed. Forgotten.
Kael reached out—and the image burned away.
Behind it, his own reflection returned. Not as he was now—but as he would be.
Eyes alight with fire. Muscles honed like forged steel.
A blade in hand—not the broken warblade of before, but something new. Sleek. Deadly. Alive.
The image shimmered, then faded.
"You have been remade," the voice said. "Not by divine will. By mortal wrath. Remember that."
Kael nodded once.
And stepped forward into the flame.
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And in the mountain village, beneath a forgotten sky...
A boy's dead body twitched alive. His lungs drew air in slowly, steady.
But his heart thundered. Not with its usual rhythm, but with that of another soul.
Kael Draven lived again. And the gods would tremble.