The sky above Dreadhold wept crimson.
Kael awoke with a sharp breath, the remnants of a dream still clinging to his skin like cold sweat. He hadn't heard words. Not exactly. Only echoes—foreign memories bleeding into his own. A battlefield he didn't recognize. Screams in a language no one spoke anymore. Hands—his own—drenched in blood not his own.
He rose in silence, his body weaker by the day, yet the air warped around him with raw, untamed power. The corridors of the Black Citadel felt like a crypt, and as he walked them, torches dimmed in his presence. Servants bowed in fearful silence. No one dared speak.
Only Valdran met him without flinching.
The old warrior found Kael by the inner ramparts, eyes cast over the frost-covered courtyard. Snow fell lightly, but it didn't touch the Dread King's skin.
"You haven't slept," Valdran said.
"I do sleep," Kael replied hollowly. "That's the problem."
Valdran was quiet for a while, then muttered, "Every king fears betrayal... but I think you fear yourself more than any blade."
Kael didn't deny it.
Far across the sea, Lyra stepped into the royal library of her homeland.
Obsidian armor clung to her form like shadow-forged steel. The crest of Dreadhold gleamed dark on her chest—Kael's banner. The guards had tried to stop her at the gate, but Luna's growl and Eclipse's twin blades made their case without bloodshed.
Now, within the forbidden archives beneath the palace, Lyra's eyes scanned brittle scrolls and crumbling tomes. Her heart beat heavy.
She read of the god of ruin—sealed before the rise of nations. A god whose name had been stolen to bind him in silence. The Eye was his remnant. His reach. His promise.
"The Eye sees not the present… but the soul. And if it knows yours, it can rewrite what you are."
Her hands trembled. This was worse than she feared. Kael wasn't just in danger of falling. He could be unmade. Turned into something else.
Someone else.
Back in Velharys, the Heroes sat divided.
In a sunlit temple far from the shadow of the Dreadlands, their voices clashed.
"Kael isn't human," muttered the storm-eyed warrior, arms crossed. "He doesn't fight like a man. He fights like something unfinished."
Seris Vale stood at the head of the table, arms folded tightly, jaw sharp with disdain. "He is a threat. A sovereign of death parading as a savior. If we don't act soon, he'll plunge the world into ruin."
"But he saved your life," one of the younger heroes whispered.
"That doesn't make him safe," Seris hissed. "We were chosen to protect this world. If Dreadhold becomes a nest for that god's will, it's our duty to purify it."
Murmurs of doubt followed. Some of them remembered Kael's eyes—not cruel, but aching. Others, like Seris, saw only a mask over something monstrous.
In Dreadhold, the ground cracked.
Deep beneath the fortress, in a chamber long forgotten, something ancient stirred. The cursed seal weakened. A breathless whisper echoed from the stones—half-laughter, half-invocation.
Kael fell to his knees in his chambers, gasping. His skin burned.
A mark, inverted and twisted like a shattered mirror of the Eye, spread down his left arm. He clawed at it in agony. Blood spilled. Voices screamed in his head—his mother's, his father's, and one he didn't recognize but couldn't deny.
In the silence that followed, the traitor stepped into the shadows of a ruined temple beneath the city.
There, a priest with hollow eyes and robes soaked in ash offered a low bow.
"The vessel wavers," the traitor whispered.
"And so the god smiles," the priest replied.
Kael woke again—this time soaked in sweat and blood.
His sheets were torn. His arm throbbed.
A servant had vanished in the night. A Thorn had been found bleeding in the courtyard—no memory of how.
Kael stumbled to the mirror.
His reflection smiled back at him.
But he hadn't moved.
Then a voice—cold and infinite—rang in his mind.
"I do not need to take you. I only need you to break. And when you do, I will wear your sorrow like a crown."
Kael's eyes burned red in the glass.