Kael's world had changed beyond repair.
The silence that followed him through the narrow alleys of Duskvale was heavier than any insult he had ever endured. Once, they mocked him as the cursed boy, the shadow of a disgraced Sealer's bloodline. Now their voices carried only fear. Mothers clutched their children as he passed. Merchants stopped their chatter. Doors slammed shut, as if his presence was the wind of pestilence.
But the silence fed something inside him. Fear was a chain, his grandfather said. Yet Kael was beginning to wonder: perhaps fear was also a key.
---
He began to spend his days at the edge of the forest. Among the gnarled trees and broken roots, Kael felt both hidden and exposed, far from the stares of the villagers but closer to something else—the whisper of the shadows.
He would kneel on the mossy ground, pressing his palms against the earth, closing his eyes. He could feel the faint pulse of the seal in his Essence Core, as if a second heart beat within him. Slowly, carefully, he tried to tug at it.
At first, nothing. Then a ripple. His shadow would quiver, like smoke disturbed by wind. Thin strands of blackness flickered at his fingertips, then dissolved. Each attempt left him weaker. Headaches pounded in his skull, his nose bled, his limbs shook with fatigue. More than once, Kael collapsed in the forest and lay there until dusk, listening to the whisper of crows above him.
But he did not stop. Failure was another chain. And Kael had spent his whole life in chains.
---
The villagers saw his absences, and their fear deepened. In the evenings, elders gathered in a forgotten hut near the square. A single oil lamp cast their faces in trembling light.
Torven, whose voice carried weight in every council, spoke first. "Every day he goes into the forest. Do you not see what he's doing? The boy plays with shadows."
The butcher Veyran slammed a fist onto the table, his voice harsh. "My son still wakes screaming in the night! That cursed boy poisoned him. His shadow is no longer human. If we allow him to remain here, he'll bring ruin to us all."
Aras, the oldest among them, hunched with age but sharp of mind, lifted his gaze. "Perhaps he is cursed. But remember our history. The Sealers once protected these lands. Kings sought their help. If the boy can master the darkness…"
"Master it?" Torven spat. "You cannot master rot. You cut it out before it spreads."
Silence followed. Each man weighed fear against memory, anger against caution. And in that silence, Kael's fate trembled like a blade over an anvil.
---
At home, his grandfather watched him with sorrow. He had seen Kael leave at dawn, return at dusk, pale and trembling but with a strange fire in his eyes. One evening, the old man finally spoke.
"Our bloodline was once revered, Kael. Sealers were the shield between mankind and the Jinn. Kings bent knee to us. But pride ruined them. They believed they could use the Jinn's power for themselves. They forgot that every seal is a chain that binds both ways. And so, one by one, they fell. That is why our family carries this curse. That is why they hate us."
Kael listened, every word sinking like a stone. He had never heard his grandfather speak so openly of the past.
"Then am I doomed?" Kael asked, his voice low. "Am I fated to become like them?"
The old man closed his eyes. "If you surrender to the shadows, yes. But if you can hold them—if you can bind them instead of embracing them—perhaps you can wash the stain from our name."
Kael's heart pounded. For the first time, he felt a purpose larger than himself. Not just survival. Not just fear. Redemption.
But in the quiet of his mind, the whisper rose, mocking, amused.
"You don't seek redemption. You seek power. Be honest with yourself, child."
Kael's lips tightened. Perhaps the Jinn was right.
---
The villagers whispered too. At the well, women spoke in hushed tones.
"I saw his shadow move on its own," one murmured.
"So did I," another whispered, shuddering. "And when I looked in the water, his reflection… it wasn't his. Something else smiled at me."
Their words spread like cracks in glass. Soon the whole village carried the same thought: Kael was no longer one of them. He was something else. Something marked.
---
One night, Kael's attempts in the forest reached further than before. He knelt, pressing his hands to the earth, eyes squeezed shut. The pulse in his chest grew louder, harder. His shadow rippled violently, spilling across the ground. This time, chains burst forth—black, spectral, writhing like serpents.
Kael gasped. He had done it. He had called them.
But then the chains turned on him. They coiled around his arms, binding his wrists, tightening against his throat. Kael clawed at them, panic rising. His heart thundered, his vision dimmed.
"Stop!" he screamed. But the shadows did not obey.
Only when he let out a desperate cry from the core of his being did the chains dissolve, melting back into the ground. Kael collapsed, coughing, blood on his lips, his body trembling.
In the void that night, the Karabasan laughed.
"Do you see now? These are not your chains. They are mine. If you want to wield them, you must embrace me. Otherwise, they will always bind you as much as they bind others."
Tears stung Kael's eyes as he lay in the dark, but his heart whispered its own answer.
"I will grow stronger. No matter the cost."
---
Meanwhile, the world beyond the village stirred in whispers of its own. Travelers spoke of wars far away, of Jinn roaming the night in broken towns, of kingdoms that once relied on Sealers now struggling without them. Duskvale was only a speck on the map, but it was not untouched by history.
And as Kael walked his lonely path, hidden in forests and shadows, the weight of that history pressed closer.
The boy of Duskvale was no longer merely cursed.
He was becoming something else.
And the world would one day learn his name.