The morning's first breath fell gently over Aethelgard.
Mist hung low, curling about roots older than memory. The grove was hushed but not still—birds whispered in high branches, and faint streaks of gold crept through the canopy. Dew glimmered like a thousand silent stars fallen on leaves and moss. It was a peaceful world, unsullied by the storm that had torn Kairen only hours earlier.
He sat near the crystal's base, the one that had shown him the truth. The air still hummed faintly with its memory, as though the stone itself remembered what it had revealed. His thoughts drifted through fragments of the night—the flash of his father's eyes, the weight of Vanamali's words, the sound of the spell that sealed the cosmos inside a child's fragile heart.
That child was him.
