The battlefield burned with the light of dying prayers.
Elias knelt in the ashes, his trembling hands pressed against the chest of a dying soldier. His healing light flickered—gold at first, then pale, then gone. The man's eyes glazed over before Elias could even whisper another spell.
Around him, the holy banners of Azura fluttered weakly in the poisoned wind. The sky had turned crimson, stained by fire and the cries of the fallen.
"Saint Elias!" a voice called from behind. It was Lyra, his sister-in-faith, sprinting through the smoke. "We have to retreat—the enemy has broken the barrier!"
Elias looked up just as the ground split open behind her. From the rift rose the towering form of General Gorok, the enemy commander, wreathed in shadowflame. His sword was a jagged mass of black steel, his eyes glowing red like dying stars.
"Retreat?" Gorok's voice rumbled. "Where will you run, little lambs of light?"
Before Elias could stand, Gorok swung. Lyra's body jerked mid-step. The world slowed. Her blood fell like liquid fire onto the gray earth.
Elias screamed.
Silence followed the scream—not peace, but a suffocating stillness that pressed against Elias's chest. The warmth of his healing light bled from his veins, replaced by something cold and hollow.
Lyra's body fell limp at his feet, her eyes wide and empty, her lips still parted as if she were about to whisper his name. Elias stared at her, waiting for her breath—one more heartbeat, one more miracle. None came.
The golden sigil on his hand—once a radiant emblem of mercy—darkened to black.
Gorok laughed, the sound grinding like metal against bone.
"So this is the saint they called a miracle? A trembling boy praying to a silent sky."
The commander raised his sword again, the cursed energy writhing along its edge like serpents of shadow. "Watch closely, healer. Watch how I unmake your gods."
Elias didn't move. He couldn't. His body was frozen—not by fear, but by the unbearable truth that his power, the gift he had devoted his life to, had failed.
Then something snapped.
The ground cracked beneath him as a surge of corrupted light erupted from his palms—not gold, not holy—but a deep, bleeding blue. The sigil on his hand blazed with new life, though it burned instead of healed.
Gorok staggered backward, shielding his eyes.
"What—what is this?"
Elias stood slowly, the wind swirling around him, pulling the ashes into spirals. His once-white robes now hung charred and tattered, his eyes reflecting the same electric-blue sparks that now crackled across his skin.
"This…" his voice was calm—too calm. "This is your medicine."
He raised his hand. The air froze.
Gorok's sword arm stiffened mid-swing. His body trembled as frost spread across his armor. The movement slowed… and stopped.
Gorok's scream caught in his throat as his body solidified, his expression frozen in an eternal moment of horror—a living statue of ice and shadow.
Elias—no, Kael—stepped forward and placed a single finger on Gorok's chest. The frozen commander shattered into countless fragments that scattered into the wind like dark glass.
For a long moment, Kael stood still. The world was silent again. Only the whisper of ash, and the faint shimmer of a single white lily struggling to grow beside the ruin.
He knelt beside it.
His hand hovered over the flower, trembling. The blue sparks faded for just a second—revealing a faint trace of gold beneath the darkness.
He smiled—just barely—and whispered,
"I'm sorry, Lyra."
Then he rose, the light extinguished once more, and walked into the smoke-filled horizon.
The legend of Kael, the Shadow-Stitcher, had begun.