In the fading twilight of Eldarion, when the sky blushed with hues of violet and gold, the wind began to speak.
It slithered through the high canopies of the Whispering Pines, where leaves trembled like secrets yearning to be told. The scent of dusk—a mingling of moss, distant rain, and the faintest trace of ash—clung to the air like an omen. In that moment between day and night, when the sun hesitated at the horizon and shadows stretched long and lean, a figure moved through the gloom.
Kael.
Cloaked in a mantle of indigo and silver-threaded leather, he moved with the ease of someone who belonged neither wholly to the light nor the dark. His boots made no sound as they pressed into the forest floor, yet birds scattered and the air tensed in his wake. He was a protector of the realm—revered in the courts of kings and whispered about in taverns. To some, a savior. To others, a warning.
Tonight, he felt neither.
Kael's hand hovered over the hilt of his blade—not out of caution, but habit. He wasn't alone. Not truly. The woods watched. The trees, older than memory, seemed to breathe. Each step forward brought a flicker of something... not quite a thought, not quite a feeling. A whisper beneath consciousness. He had dreamed this place.
Not in memory. In something deeper.
He came to the clearing without knowing why. A wide circle of earth, blackened as though burned by ancient fire, lay bare in the middle of the trees. No vegetation dared claim it. At the center stood a stone obelisk, waist-high and smooth as bone. Runes crawled across its surface—glyphs older than the spoken tongue. The moment his eyes met them, something shuddered awake inside him.
He staggered back. The vision came not like a flash, but a storm: fire, screams, a woman with silver eyes chanting in a forgotten tongue. A blade piercing through time itself.
Then—silence.
Kael dropped to one knee, bracing himself. His breath came in ragged gasps.
He had been here before.
But he hadn't.
The forest hushed around him, as if holding its breath. He rose slowly, turning his gaze once more to the stone. A flicker of movement—his own shadow, cast by no light. It stood beside him, mimicking his posture, but there was something wrong in its edges. Too sharp. Too deliberate.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
The shadow did not answer.
It only smiled.
Kael's grip tightened on the hilt at his hip. He knew he should run. Or call for the High Mages. Or at the very least, look away. But he didn't. Couldn't. There was a pull now—a thread winding through the very marrow of him, tugging toward something he couldn't name.
A low hum began to rise, almost imperceptible. The glyphs on the stone pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat. And then, with a crack that split the silence clean in two, a fissure opened across the obelisk. From within, a light poured out—not bright, but deep. A darkness that glowed, drawing the eye and drowning it at once.
Kael stepped back.
The light wrapped around his feet like fog. Cold. Alive.
He had been trained in the sacred arts of defense, in the discipline of will. He had studied under the Iron Monks of Hal-Tor, sparred against the silent warriors of the Sun Court. He had faced beasts born of nightmares and men more cruel than monsters.
But this?
This was different.
The fog coiled higher, brushing his chest, then curling around his throat. He gasped, not from pain, but recognition.
He had seen this light before. In the mirror.
With a final surge of resistance, Kael pulled himself free from the edge of the stone and stumbled backward, heart thundering. The vision broke. The fog vanished. The clearing returned to stillness.
But something within him had changed.
He turned away, stumbling through the trees, breath shallow and mind spinning. The forest seemed darker now, the path unfamiliar. As if the world had shifted subtly, just out of place. The wind no longer whispered. It chanted.
One word. Over and over.
"Kael..."
He broke into a run.
Back in the capital of Vael'Serin, torches burned high on the walls of the palace. Courtiers and nobles danced under chandeliers carved from stardust, speaking of politics, power, and petty wars. In the throne room, the High Council met in secret, voices lowered and anxious.
"Have we told him yet?" asked Lady Nirell, her voice like glass.
"No," said General Daran, grim as stone. "He must not know. Not yet."
"And when he does?"
They all looked to the Archmage.
"When the shadow awakens," she said, "Kael will no longer be Kael."
Far away, in the echoing silence of a forgotten shrine, the stone obelisk pulsed once.
And then again.
And the night stretched its fingers wide.
And Kael once more began to see the swift movement of his sharp shadow and the winds once more chanted his name then he suddenly looks into the thundering sky and saw something is changing rapidly .......