Thunder cracked open the sky above Eldarion.
A great storm rolled over the Whispering Pines, no longer whispering but howling with a force ancient and raw. Trees bent like supplicants beneath the gale. The heavens roared as if echoing some buried memory clawing its way out of time itself.
Kael ran.
His breath came in uneven bursts, heart hammering like a war drum. Branches whipped against his face. The name still rang in the wind—*Kael… Kael…*—chanting as though the forest itself demanded his submission.
Then the sky split.
A jagged bolt of lightning, brilliant and blue-white, lashed down from the heavens and struck the earth.
Or rather, it struck him.
Kael barely had time to scream. The world exploded in a flash of searing white. Every nerve in his body sang with pain, and then—
Nothing.
---
From the highest tower of Vael'Serin, the Archmage of Eldarion stood alone beneath a crescent moon. Her silver robes fluttered in the growing storm, eyes locked on the horizon where the forest met the night.
She had felt it. The surge. The ripple.
The moment the lightning struck, she staggered as if something ancient had tugged at the strands of her own soul.
A whisper reached her, not from the wind, but from the fabric of magic itself.
*He has awakened.*
Her eyes burned with a light that was not her own.
"The night of the Forgotten Hero begins anew," she said softly.
Behind her, torches flared. A dozen mages entered the chamber, cloaks soaked and expressions drawn. They had felt it too. The world had shifted.
"Archmage Lyssara," said the youngest, his voice trembling. "Was it… him?"
She turned, eyes unreadable.
"It was more than Kael," she said. "It was the soul that sleeps inside him. A remnant from the Sundering. A power not meant for this age."
Another mage spoke, older, voice hushed. "Then it has begun again."
Lyssara nodded. "The cycle returns. The hero reborn… and the shadow with him."
---
Kael's body lay still at the base of a gnarled pine, steam rising from his skin. The ground around him had blackened, fused into glass where the lightning kissed the earth. His armor had cracked, his cloak smoldered, but he was alive.
Barely.
His fingers twitched.
A breath dragged into his lungs.
Then, he opened his eyes.
For a moment, they glowed.
Not with light—but with memory.
Visions danced behind his gaze: a sword that shone like dawn, a crown cast aside, a battlefield lost to time. A face—his own—but older, wiser… and consumed by flame.
He gasped.
The storm had passed.
He sat up slowly, limbs aching, mind reeling. The chanting had ceased. The woods fell into a heavy silence, as if stunned by what they had witnessed. Kael looked down at his hands.
They trembled—not from fear, but recognition.
Something had been awakened.
And though Kael had survived countless battles, fought beside kings, and ventured beyond the borders of known realms, this sensation was utterly foreign. A second heartbeat throbbed inside his chest, echoing with the pulse of an ancient rhythm. He touched his chest, feeling the faint hum of something lodged deep within—something old, powerful, and terribly alive.
In his mind's eye, he saw glimpses—flashes of a citadel carved from moonlight, a burning sky, and a woman with raven hair and eyes like frozen stars reaching toward him as he fell through time. The visions weren't dreams. They were echoes.
And they were his.
---
In a chamber beneath the palace, far below the High Council's vaults, a sealed door pulsed once with forgotten runes. Dust fell from its arch as a magic older than memory stirred.
Far across the realm, priests in white robes dropped their relics as visions assailed them. Old songs returned to the tongues of wandering minstrels, unbidden. The stars blinked in unfamiliar constellations.
And across it all, one truth rose like the tide:
**The Forgotten Hero walks again.**
---
Kael stood now, barely. Lightning scars laced his skin in glowing arcs, as if a constellation had been burned into his body. He stumbled forward, not toward home, but deeper into the woods.
Toward the ruins.
Toward the truth.
The wind no longer howled—it murmured, murmured with voices too ancient to understand, and yet Kael heard them clearly. They did not speak in words, but in feeling. They welcomed him back.
As he moved, strange patterns flickered in his mind—memories or perhaps instructions—paths through the forest he didn't remember learning, names he hadn't spoken in years or lifetimes. His feet carried him with confidence even his mind didn't share. The forest responded, parting before him like an old friend.
---
In the tower, Archmage Lyssara turned from the storm.
"Send word to the High Council," she ordered. "Tell them the prophecy stirs."
"And Kael?" asked one of the mages.
She smiled, though there was no joy in it.
"He won't be Kael for long."
She turned her gaze again to the horizon. The clouds had begun to clear, revealing stars that did not belong to this age—constellations hidden since the fall of the First Era. Her fingers tightened around her staff as the reality settled in her bones.
History was no longer a thing of the past.
It walked again, and it bore Kael's name.
And in the heart of the forest, as Kael approached the ancient ruins, a forgotten altar began to glow, as if recognizing the return of something it had long waited for.
The night deepened. The veil between what was and what will be grew thin.
And the story of the Forgotten Hero began anew.