Darkness.
But it wasn't empty — it breathed.
Soft ripples of light drifted through the void, forming faint silhouettes, fragments of something once whole.
Lio opened his eyes slowly.
Or maybe… he remembered how to open them.
> "Where… am I?"
His voice echoed endlessly, swallowed by the silence.
He looked down — his reflection rippled beneath his feet, as if he stood on an invisible sea.
The air shimmered, and out of the light stepped a figure —
a woman draped in threads of gold and silver, her face hidden behind a veil of radiant mist.
> "So, the last fragment awakens."
Lio staggered back. "Who are you? What do you mean 'fragment'?"
The woman tilted her head. "You carry the name Kaelis, but do you even know what it means?"
Her hand brushed the air, and memories — flashes of burning towers, endless skies, a storm made of light — struck through his mind.
Lio fell to his knees, gasping. "Stop—! I don't remember any of that!"
> "And yet, the light remembers you."
The woman's form flickered. Beneath the veil, faint eyes of pure starlight glimmered.
"Your body belongs to the world of mortals… but your essence was forged in the heart of the Source. You were never meant to return."
Lio gritted his teeth. "Then why am I here?"
> "Because you defied the design."
A blinding pulse erupted — and suddenly, he was no longer in the void.
He stood amidst ruins, the same ones he once saw in dreams.
The ground pulsed with energy, veins of light spreading across broken marble.
A massive gate stood ahead — sealed, but breathing faintly like a living heart.
> "The Gate of Origins…" he whispered. "So it's real."
Behind him, the woman's voice softened.
> "You can open it… but doing so will erase everything you love."
Lio turned to face her, his expression steady. "Then I'll find another way."
A pause — then, faint laughter. Sad, distant.
> "You still sound like him."
Before he could ask who him was, the world fractured again —
and he woke up gasping, drenched in cold sweat, inside an abandoned observatory on the edge of Eryndor.
Outside, thunder rolled across a colorless sky.
And far above…
the Gate of Origins began to crack.