The light that poured from the fracture was not sunlight. It was the light of memory — the kind that remembered the birth of storms and the first breath of the world. Cled stood beneath it, his robes whipping in the gale, eyes half-closed as the pulse of that impossible sky reached through him like fingers of fire.
He could feel it now — the fracture was not calling to the world.
It was calling to him.
A thousand whispers bled through the air, each one carrying fragments of forgotten languages. Some called him by name. Others by titles he had never heard: Sky's Bound Heir… Keeper of the Immortal Thread… the One Who Returned. The storm of sound pressed into his skull until his breath trembled, but he did not step back. He knew fear was useless against what was already inside him.
The ground beneath him cracked, glowing faintly with the same blue veins that lit the sky. It was as if the fracture above was seeping through the world below — like mirror and reflection had traded places.
Cled pressed his palm to the earth. His spirit sense reached downward, far beyond the stone and soil, into the endless silence of the planet's heart. What he touched there was not life — but it was awake.
---
Far in the distance, on the rim of the fractured plain, Mairen watched him with a look that mixed awe and dread. The winds refused to touch her; even the dust bowed away. She had seen Cled defy fate before — but this was different. There was something in him now that had begun to remember things no mortal should.
She whispered to herself, "He's hearing the ancient sky again…"
Her guardian beast, a silver-feathered drake, lowered its head nervously. "The fracture's pulse has not called anyone in centuries. If it recognizes him, the seals might—"
"I know," Mairen cut in, voice tight. "That's what frightens me."
---
Above, the fracture widened just a little — a thin line stretching across the heavens like a wound trying to reopen. The wind turned cold, and every living thing in miles felt the world hold its breath.
Cled raised his head. His golden eyes shimmered with the reflection of that light. "You want to speak," he murmured softly, "then speak."
And the sky answered.
A sound deeper than thunder rolled through the valley, yet no cloud moved. The voice did not come from the air, but from within every particle around him. It was a resonance, a harmony that his bones understood though his mind could not.
> "The cycle trembles… The heir of the bound sky awakens…"
Cled clenched his jaw. The voice was vast, layered, infinite. Every word it spoke felt like it had been waiting millennia for someone to listen.
He stepped forward, and each step sent ripples through the glowing ground. Around him, the air thickened, shimmering with unseen shapes — fragments of constellations, half-formed sigils, and faces made of light and dust. They whispered in overlapping echoes, reaching toward him.
He didn't flinch. He only asked one question — the question that had burned in him since the fracture first appeared.
"What am I to this sky?"
For a moment, silence.
Then, the voice replied — not in words this time, but through visions.
---
He saw a world older than mountains, where beings of light walked in the open sky. He saw a great tower rising from the heart of a sea of clouds — a structure forged not of stone, but of will and memory. Upon that tower stood figures wearing masks of starlight, their eyes burning with power that could shatter heavens. And at their center stood a man — his face blurred, but his aura unmistakable.
Cled felt his heart seize. That aura was his own.
The vision blurred, flickered — then split apart into shards of radiance that flew into his chest. His knees buckled as power surged through his veins, rewriting him in ways he couldn't name. For a heartbeat, he saw everything: the weave of stars, the paths of forgotten immortals, the cycle that bound life and death.
Then it all vanished, leaving only a deep hum in his soul.
---
He gasped and fell to one knee. The light dimmed. His body trembled under the strain, but his eyes… his eyes glowed faintly blue now — the color of the fracture itself.
Mairen rushed forward, her boots skidding on the cracked earth. "Cled! You're bleeding energy— stop channeling it before it consumes your core!"
But he didn't answer. He was staring upward, lips parted in something between awe and terror. "It showed me… everything."
"What did you see?"
He turned toward her, and his voice was soft, but it carried like thunder. "The truth — the fracture isn't a wound. It's a memory. A door left open when the sky tried to forget what it once was."
Mairen froze. "A memory? Then whoever — or whatever — left it open…"
"Is still watching," he finished.
---
That night, the world didn't rest. Across distant lands, sages felt the tremor in their meditations. Beasts howled without reason. The constellations flickered out of alignment for three breaths and returned, as if something had blinked in the heavens.
Far beyond the mountains, in a citadel of white stone, a group of robed immortals gathered before an orb that glowed with the same light as the fracture. One of them whispered, "The Sky Heir's pulse has reawakened. The seal cannot hold forever."
Another turned to her, his voice like cracking ice. "Then the old war is not over. The moment he remembers who he was… the Immortal Cycle will begin again."
---
Back beneath the fracture, dawn began to creep across the plains. Cled sat silently at the edge of the shattered altar, his hands wrapped around a crystal sphere that pulsed faintly — a fragment that had fallen from the sky during the vision. It felt warm, alive, like a heartbeat.
Mairen sat beside him, quiet for once. The wind was gentle now, almost reverent.
After a long time, she asked, "Will you go back to the mountain?"
He shook his head slowly. "No. The fracture won't let me. It's tied to me now. It wants to be heard — and whatever it's calling, it's not done yet."
"Then what will you do?"
Cled's gaze lifted toward the horizon. The faint blue shimmer of the fracture painted his face with celestial light. "Find the others who still remember. If the sky kept its memories hidden, then there are those who helped it forget."
---
Somewhere deep within the glowing crystal, a faint echo stirred — a whisper not from the fracture, but from something beyond it.
> "Awaken the Vault of Heaven… before the Shattered King returns…"
The crystal dimmed, and Cled's grip tightened. His heartbeat echoed the words like a drum.
Mairen noticed the change in his expression and frowned. "What is it now?"
He stood slowly, his cloak trailing in the dust. "A name," he said. "A warning… and a beginning."
---
The fracture shimmered one last time, and a gust swept through the valley — not of air, but of presence. The air thrummed like a giant heart, and the stars seemed to realign themselves for a moment, forming an unfamiliar constellation above him.
Cled's eyes glowed brighter, reflecting the pattern in the heavens.
"Then it begins," he murmured.
The sky answered — not with thunder this time, but with a single, resonant chime, pure and deep, like a bell that had waited seventeen lifetimes to ring again.
And from beyond that sound, something answered back.