The night tasted of iron and silence.
Kael dreamed he was drowning—not in water, but in molten weight. Each breath seared his lungs with liquid metal. He clawed upward, but his body sank, heavy, into an endless black ocean veined with crimson light. The surface was scattered with mirror shards, each reflecting him.
One Kael crowned in flame.Another shackled in chains.Another hollow-eyed, skin flaking to ash.
Thousands of Kaels breathed in unison.
Above the ocean, a symbol seared across the sky: an eye, slit-pupiled, fractured into seven pieces. It spun, then froze. The shattered gaze fell on him.
A voice unfurled inside his skull. Layered, broken, speaking with a thousand versions of himself.
They are watching.
Kael thrashed against the dream, but the mirrors dragged at his skin, pulling him under. The shards cut as they clung, drawing bloodless wounds.
You were not meant to remember.
The ocean swallowed him whole.
He screamed himself awake.
–––
The room was still. He lay in his narrow bed, chest heaving, throat raw, as if he'd been screaming for hours. Sweat soaked his shirt, clinging to his ribs. The oil lamp guttered on the bedside table, shadows trembling across cracked plaster walls.
But something was wrong.
Kael pressed a shaking hand to his temple. He knew the shape of absence: a hollow, sharp, and aching, like a tooth ripped from his jaw.
"What… what did I forget?" His voice rasped, hoarse and alien.
He reached for it—a face, perhaps, or a name. Warmth. A moment. The harder he grasped, the faster it dissolved. Smoke through fingers. Nausea churned in his gut.
"Not again," he whispered.
Outside, the city stirred. Wheels shrieked along iron rails. Gas lamps guttered in the fog. High above, bells tolled from cathedral spires, their echoes fractured, as if time itself stuttered. Between the chimes, she heard it again—faint, layered:
You were not meant to remember.
His blood froze. The whisper did not belong to him. It was his voice and not his voice, spoken from a thousand mouths.
He stumbled to the washbasin. Cold water shocked his skin, dragging clarity back in stinging jolts. He looked up—and his stomach lurched.
The cracked mirror showed someone else.
The face that stared back was sharper, crueler. A scar split from the temple to the chin. Eyes burned with hunger he didn't recognize.
The reflection smirked.
Kael staggered back, heart hammering. He blinked, and the image rippled into nothing. His own pale face stared back at him, wide-eyed, trembling.
"Fragments," he muttered. The word tasted forbidden.
Aeon Fragments—myths whispered in taverns, curses traded in alleyways. Shards older than gods. Power, but always at a cost. Memory. Sanity. Reality itself.
The Custodians hunted those who touched them. Executioners bearing the sigil of a shattered eye.
The same symbol Kael had just seen in his dream.
He dragged on his worn coat with shaking hands. The room felt too small, shadows pressing in.
–––
The streets of Drosyn were drowned in fog. Gas lamps sputtered, halos clinging sickly to wet stone. Carriages groaned along rusted rails. The air reeked of smoke and salt from the river docks.
Kael kept his head down, though the world itself seemed bent wrong.
A man passed—his face blurred, smudged as if erased.A woman spoke—but her voice lagged behind her lips, words echoing seconds late.A beggar crouched in the gutter, eyes milk-white, whispering to the stones.
"They see you," the beggar crooned, rocking back and forth. "The Custodians see everything."
Kael froze. The beggar cackled, then slumped into silence, as if nothing had happened.
His pulse quickened. Madness—or warning? The dream still pressed on him. The hollow gnawed deeper.
Fog thickened as he passed beneath an iron bridge. The city's clamor muffled, as though the world held its breath.
A figure detached from the shadows.
–––
She stepped forward with unhurried grace.
Her hair shimmered like raven wings, her eyes midnight glass. Gaslight caught her lips, curving with the kind of smile that promised both ruin and rapture.
"You felt it, didn't you?" she said, voice like velvet sheathing a blade.
Kael stiffened. "Who are you?"
"Seliora Veil." She inclined her head slightly, as though the name itself carried weight. "And you, Kael Ardyn, are no longer untouched."
His breath caught. "How do you know my name?"
Her lips curved. She drifted closer, the scent of spiced wine and something darker wrapping around him. Her fingertip traced his collarbone, heat trailing over skin.
"Because I've seen you before," she murmured. "In a hundred timelines. In some, you ruled. In others, you burned."
Kael's throat tightened. "Then you know I want no part of this."
Seliora tilted her head, studying him as a predator might study prey, debating whether to run. "Don't you? You woke hollow. You feel it—the missing piece. Tell me, Kael… doesn't the emptiness terrify you? Doesn't it tempt you?"
His jaw clenched. "I don't believe in fragments."
"Liar." Her whisper slid into him like steel wrapped in silk. "Your blood already does."
He turned away, but her hand caught his jaw, forcing his gaze back.
Her smile was patient, predatory. "I don't give fragments to cowards. I choose those who want. So tell me, Kael Ardyn—what do you want?"
His heart pounded. He should spit in her face. He should walk away.
But the dream coiled back around him: a throne of fire, an army kneeling, chains snapping.
"I want…" His voice cracked.
Her eyes gleamed. "Say it."
"I want to decide," he whispered. "My life. My fate. No one else's hand on my throat."
Her smile sharpened, as if he had passed a test. "Good. That's what I wanted to hear."
–––
She drew a shard of glass from her sleeve. It pulsed violet, faint as a heartbeat, yet resonated in his chest.
But she did not offer it. She let it hover just beyond his reach.
"Fragments are hunger given form," she said softly. "Power bound in a wound. They demand sacrifice."
"I don't—"
"Don't lie." Her breath brushed his ear, hot, intimate. "You already chose when you didn't walk away."
The shard pulsed brighter, tugging at his veins. He felt it pull him nearer.
"Take it," Seliora whispered. "But know this: it will not give without taking. If you reach, you'll lose something you cannot replace. A memory. A piece of yourself. Are you still willing?"
Kael trembled. Every thought screamed to run.
And yet, beneath fear, something darker stirred—ambition, coiled and hungry.
He reached.
The shard flared as his hand closed over it. Violet fire seared his veins.
Visions split his skull.
Himself crowned in silver flame, armies kneeling. He himself was broken, chained, and screaming as his face dissolved.Ten thousand Kaels, splintered across timelines, each path fractured, each life stolen.
And then the wound revealed itself.
His first kiss was gone.
Not her face, not her warmth, not the laughter. Nothing. Only a raw hollow where something precious had lived.
The knowledge struck like a blade. His breath hitched. His hand trembled against his lips.
"No," he rasped. "No, it's—"
But it was gone. Forever.
And yet—
Strength thrummed through him. The world bent at the edges, pliant and fragile, as if waiting for his will. The void screamed inside him, but the rush was intoxicating.
Seliora's lips brushed his ear. Almost tender. "Now you begin."
Kael's pulse thundered with loss and power.
He looked at her. She smiled like the devil herself.
And in that moment, Kael understood.
He would never stop.