Six years old when he entered the Royal Archive, Kael Thorne knew at once that the truth lay here under marble, myth, and carefully crafted lies.
The Archive was holy.
A city in a city, constructed from starry iron and everlasting glass. Corridors curled inward in themselves like reflected dimensions. Gravity warped around wisdom. Walls glimmered with deception to mislead the undeserving. And yet, Kael strode as if the maze had spread its arms for him.
Because it had.
The laws spoke to him now.
They knew him.
He had tried to keep it quiet his awakening, his understanding but power was hard to hide. His soul wasn't just absorbing Essentia anymore; it was commanding it. And if he wasn't careful, someone would notice.
He didn't fear them noticing.
He needed them to… just not yet.
"You're not supposed to be here," said a voice from behind a column of floating tomes.
It was calm. Flat. Feminine.
Kael turned.
A woman came into sight, no more than twenty years old. She was attired not in the white robes of a court scholar but in a midnight-blue librarian dress, a discreet sigil embroidered into her collar: a serpent devouring its own tail.
Her eyes were the hue of used ink. And they did not blink.
"Neither are you," Kael replied, carefully rolling the ancient scroll he'd been studying. It was a record of pre-cultivation ritual techniques—centuries old and full of redacted sections.
"I work here," she said simply.
"You're not listed in the court registry," Kael shot back. "I memorized all 432 names of the Archive's sanctioned staff before coming here."
That made her blink.
Just once.
"…Interesting."
"I thought so."
The silence stretched.
Then, she walked forward and reached for the scroll.
Kael didn't flinch, but his hand didn't move.
Their fingers touched the parchment at the same time.
He felt it instantly.
A current of Essentia, subtle, controlled, but undeniably vast, ran through her veins. She was a cultivator. A high-level one. Far too high to be guarding dusty scrolls in a forgotten wing.
"You're not a librarian," he said.
"And you're not a normal child," she replied.
Then, she smiled. Not a warm smile. Not even a polite one.
Just… acknowledgment.
"I'm Seris Vellara," she said, "and I've been waiting for you."
They sat in a sealed chamber of the Forbidden Annex—one of the countless rooms Kael had read about but never thought he'd see.
Seris placed a book between them. It was bound in living leather that pulsed faintly, as though breathing.
Kael raised a brow. "Demonhide? "
"Phoenix graft," she amended. "The cover was destroyed in the Inquisition."
She nudged it in his direction.
Kael unfurled it cautiously—and felt his whole chest constrict.
His equations. His sigils. His sketches, half-burned and commented upon in strange handwriting.
"My journal," he breathed.
"Close enough," Seris replied. "It's a replica. The original is sequestered under the Temple of Law, guarded by the Seer's Circle."
Kael drew a symbol with his index fingertip. He recalled the night he inscribed it, crouched under the rubble of a monastery, writing by candlelight with frostbitten hands.
He gazed up at Seris. "How did you obtain this?"
"I stole it," Seris replied unabashedly. "Or rather, I recovered it before it was expunged. I was once a scribe to High Seer Eldros."
Kael clenched his jaw.
Seris leaned forward.
"You don't get it, Kael. They didn't just bury your work. They used it to build the Empire's entire new cultivation system. Every branded spell, every ascension ritual—it all originated from this. From you."
"And yet," Kael replied icily, "they still burned me alive."
"No," Seris replied, voice gentle. "They ensured you burned alone."
The words cut deeper than he anticipated.
Kael shut the book.
"And why are you showing this to me now?"
Seris watched him. "Enforce because I've read everything that you ever wrote, and I think you weren't only before your time. You were correct."
Kael inclined his head.
"You want me to complete what I began?"
"No," she replied. "I want you to shatter the heavens."
The weeks came by in silence and darkness.
By day, Kael was the golden prince going to court lessons, rehearsing ceremonial sword forms, smiling at his brother, and bowing to his father, the Emperor.
By night, he came back to the Forbidden Annex.
There, Seris instructed him in things no child should learn.
Ritualistic fusion. Soul stabilization. Forbidden glyph weaving. How to control Essentia with thought rather than incantation. How to perceive through illusions woven by divine decree.
"How are you not dead?" she asked him one evening.
Seris smiled weakly. "I lost fear of death a long time ago."
She never shared her true identity with him. But Kael knew.
Her aura was not from any recognized cultivation technique.
She was something… else.
One evening, as they practiced redirecting unstable law shards into artificial Essentia cores, Seris turned to him with a look of sadness.
"Kael," she said. "I have something to tell you."
He froze.
"Your birth… It wasn't random."
His gaze grew cold.
Seris dug into her robes and produced a crystal shard, glowing dimly with golden runes.
"This is a Lawbrand Seed. Only the gods can make them. It's how they… implant obedience into their Chosen."
Kael's blood went cold.
"You think they put this in you?"
"I believe," she said slowly, "they attempted to command something they did not comprehend. You were never their Chosen, Kael. You were their test subject."
Kael stood, his heart racing.
Fury swirled like an animal in his heart.
"So they branded me with the heavens," he breathed, "not because I deserved it… but because they feared me."
"They do it again."
Kael averted his face, gazing out into the emptiness beyond the windowpane. Lightning danced across the horizon.
"They should be."
That night, he stood at the edge of the Spire Gardens, overlooking the vast empire he was supposed to one day serve.
He whispered into the wind.
"I remember everything now. Every formula. Every failure. Every betrayal."
His fists clenched, glowing faintly with swirling runes.
"I'm not here to be their puppet."
The sky thundered in response.
Kael's eyes burned silver.
"I'm here to rewrite the heavens."