The rain was light the next morning, barely more than a mist drifting between the slate rooftops of Bellenridge. Rei stood at the edge of the city's central plaza, cloak drawn over his shoulders, watching people bustle past without a care in the world.
He felt... different.
Not just the lingering ache of his injuries or the dull pulse in his chest where his core had flared dangerously close to breaking, but the feeling of being watched. Marked.
The Archons knew him now.
And someone else did too.
You aren't ready yet, but soon you will be.
The words stuck in his thoughts like thorns. Whoever that mysterious figure was—he had not only driven away the Archons, but spoken to Rei like a teacher might to a student.
He needed answers.
The Archives of Bellenridge
The Bellenridge Guild was more than just a tavern and quest board. Hidden beneath its foundation, carved into the bedrock itself, were its archives—a place reserved for records, maps, histories, and old legends. Adventurers rarely bothered with it, but Rei had a different use in mind.
It took some coaxing (and a few silver coins) to get a grumpy archivist named Elric to let him in.
"You looking for a lost ruin, or what?" the man asked.
"Something older. Archons."
That made Elric pause. "Old topic, that one. Usually people ask about dragons or soulforges, not divine exterminators. What's your interest?"
"Curiosity," Rei said.
A lie. But one that got him through the door.
The archives smelled of dust and ink, with towering shelves and lanterns that hummed with faint magic. Rei combed through old tomes, brittle scrolls, and half-rotted journals.
What he found unnerved him.
The Archons weren't a myth. They were known. Feared, respected, even worshiped in some backwater parts of the western continent. Stories described them as divine constructs—guardians placed by the gods to maintain "Balance."
That word repeated over and over.
Balance.
Whenever someone—or something—tipped the scales too far, the Archons appeared. Not to judge. Not to speak.
To erase.
They didn't kill indiscriminately. They targeted specific beings who breached a certain power threshold, often without warning. If they showed mercy, it was only for those who had not yet fully awakened.
Maybe like me...
Rei swallowed hard.
He also found accounts—rare and vague—of people surviving Archon encounters. Always the same theme: someone intervened. Someone cloaked in shadows or veiled in light. Sometimes a swordsman. Sometimes a priest. Sometimes a woman with eyes like mirrors.
You aren't ready yet, but soon you will be.
Who are you?
Rei copied what he could into a leather journal and left the archives with a heavier heart than when he'd entered.
Whispers and Warnings
That night, he met Myra on the tavern balcony.
She was sipping tea, staring out over the darkened rooftops. "You look like a boy who's seen ghosts."
"Maybe I have."
She raised a brow. "Dig up anything useful?"
"More than I wanted. The Archons go after power spikes—anyone who crosses a line. They're not subtle, but they're not mindless either. Someone controls them. Or made them."
"And the one who saved you?"
He hesitated.
"I think they've done it before. They've saved others."
Myra watched him, then nodded. "Then maybe you were supposed to survive. Someone wants you alive. That's rare in this world."
"Or dangerous," he muttered.
They fell silent for a while.
"Kael," Myra said at last, "you're walking a thin line. Whatever is going on… if you lose control again, the Archons won't give you a second chance."
He didn't answer. She wasn't wrong.
But something else was stirring now—something older than the Archons, older than the balance they enforced.
And Rei was part of it.
Threads of the Past
Later that night, Rei sat on his bed when he noticed something glowing on the desk across the room. The artifact he retrieved was there. How it got there he couldn't sayHow. He examined it and traced its surface with a finger—still faintly warm, still pulsing softly.
Then he heard a whisper.
Not aloud.
Inside.
Seek the Crimson Vault. In the spires where gods once bled.
Rei's heart stopped. It wasn't a voice he knew. It wasn't the one who had saved him.
It was... something else.
Something that knew him.
He snapped upright, heart racing, the room suddenly cold.
"Crimson Vault," he repeated.
Another breadcrumb.
Another mystery.
And just like that, his next path appeared—not on the guild board, not from another quest.
But possibly from the very forces that had brought him into this world.