Kael's breath came shallow, as if the chamber itself was pressing against his lungs. The Warden stood silent beside him, but her presence faded to the edges of his awareness as the Shard's light flickered—then surged again, blazing like a dying star gasping back to life.
The relic on the pedestal shimmered, and for a moment, Kael saw through it—into a mirror not of glass, but of memory.
And memory—if that's what it was—shattered like brittle glass.
Flashes.
Burning skies.
Steel in hand—not his blade, but one that moved with his thoughts, heavier than it should be, older than he could understand.
Laughter—low, cruel, his own.
A city crumbling under a tide of silver-winged horrors, his cloak torn, soaked in something golden and hot. A voice whispering his name, not "Kael," but something more, something wrapped in forgotten syllables and grief.
Then—a hand in his.
Small. Familiar. Blood-streaked. Clutching his as the world turned to ash.
The hand was ripped away.
He gasped.
Vision bled back into the chamber, but not entirely. The walls wavered like heat haze, stone warping around truths too ancient to hold still. Kael staggered back from the pedestal, heart hammering, the mark on his chest searing with dull fire.
He clutched his head, blinking away the images—but they lingered. Not just as memories, but as ghosts. Echoes that tugged at his soul, whispering in voices he knew without ever hearing.
Another flash.
This time… a throne.
Not one he sat upon—but one he attacked.
He remembered lunging forward, shield raised, gods recoiling in disbelief. Their power blistered the sky. His scream drowned thunder.
Then nothing.
A corridor of light.
Chains.
Screaming—not pain, not rage, but loss.
He fell to his knees again, eyes wide and wet. Not from tears—but from the sheer weight of remembering something that shouldn't belong to him, yet fit like a second skin worn beneath the flesh.
"I don't understand," Kael whispered. "I wasn't there… I shouldn't know this…"
The Warden knelt beside him, her tone gentler now, solemn.
"That's how the truth always returns," she said. "In fragments. Shards of self, scattered across time like the blade itself. You're not meant to remember all at once."
Kael looked at her, desperation cracking his voice. "Then who was I?"
Her gaze didn't waver. "The question isn't who you were, Kael. It's whether you'll become him again."
A long silence stretched between them.
Above, the tremor grew. Dust fell from the dome's peak. A low hum—like the one he'd heard in the chamber before—started again. Only now, it wasn't awe.
It was warning.
The relic pulsed in time with the shard. And Kael could feel it, feel them—those watching, stirring, sensing that the weapon was awakening. Their presence pressed against the veil of reality like weightless hands scratching at the seams of the world.
The visions didn't fade. They embedded.
Flashes still burst across his sight at the corners of vision. A name whispered in the back of his skull. A burning sword clutched in his hand with fire licking the heavens. Wings—black and gold—falling like torn parchment from the sky. A woman screaming his name.
A god, kneeling before him.
And himself—standing atop a crumbling altar, blade raised, as if defying the cosmos itself.
Kael stood.
His limbs trembled, not from weakness—but from convergence. The past was no longer past. It was bleeding through him.
"The gods…" he muttered, voice low.
The Warden nodded. "They remember your defiance. And they remember what you became."
Kael clenched his fists. "...I have to find the rest"
His eyes, once a calm gray, now glinted faintly with pale light.
The Shard drifted back to him, obedient, and settled against his chest once more. Its pulse was steady now. No longer calling. No longer testing.
It had found him.
The chamber dimmed, the light of the relic fading to a sullen glow—as though the Heartroom itself were exhaling after holding its breath for too long. But Kael's breath didn't steady. If anything, it grew shallower. Sharper. Like something vast had turned its gaze toward him from the deep dark between the stars.
His whisper hung in the air like a vow:
"I have to find the rest."
The Warden's expression tightened. Not in fear, but in grim understanding. "You won't be the only one searching," she said. "Each fragment calls out, not just to you, but to those who remember what the Aegis once was… and what it was meant to end."
Kael stepped away from the pedestal. The mark on his chest continued to burn with quiet fire, the Shard pulsing in rhythm—as if it were listening, sensing something on the edges of awareness. He felt it too: a tremor not beneath his feet, but within the fabric of the world itself.
As if the moment he awakened the fragment, he'd moved something. Broken some hidden seal.
The Warden turned, her voice low and swift. "We have little time. The others will feel the ripple. Godborn. Chosen. Watchers from the Hollow Realms. You've lit a beacon they cannot ignore."
Kael's mind reeled, images from the visions still flickering in flashes. His hand clenched unconsciously at his side, knuckles white. "Where are the other pieces?"
The Warden hesitated—and then, for the first time since he'd met her, her certainty fractured. She stepped to the center of the chamber, lifted her hand, and the stone beneath them rippled outward in a perfect circle. From the ground rose a flat disk—obsidian, ringed in runes, displaying a constellation map etched in starlight.
But the stars moved.
Not slowly, as they should have. These spun violently, caught in orbits that tore logic apart—chaotic, flickering, like wounds in the sky. And around each pulsing light hovered fragments. Five of them, glowing faintly. Broken, like jagged teeth scattered across heaven.
The Warden pointed to the first. A jagged shard orbiting a ruined moon.
"Jhorae—the Drowned Cradle. Buried beneath tides that remember the day the sky fell."
She turned to the second.
"Vahl Sutra. The city of tongues. Now swallowed by silence. They worshipped the shard they found there… and were devoured by its echoes."
A third fragment danced around a hollow place where no star burned.
"Nothing survives there but memory. Not even time."
The last two shimmered too violently to see clearly.
Kael stared at the map, his eyes reflecting the whirling chaos. He didn't need to be told—each of those fragments would bring him closer to the whole, but each one would also bring them closer to him.
The gods.
The betrayers.
The ones who had chained him in light, long ago.
His voice came soft, cold. "They scattered it on purpose. Not to keep it from me… but to keep me from myself."
The Warden inclined her head. "And still it calls to you. That is what terrifies them."
Kael turned toward her. "Then I'll gather the pieces. All of them."
"You'll be hunted."
"I already am."
"You'll lose yourself."
"I already have."
The Shard pulsed once more—brighter now. Ready.
The Warden stepped aside. "Then go. The path begins with blood and ash. And every step forward will awaken what sleeps beneath the world."
Kael gave her one final glance. "Will I find answers?"
"No," she said. "You'll find choices. And each one will carve you closer to who you were… or who you must become."
He stepped into the starlit disk. Each shards depiction seemed to shine brighter as it becoming its owner to come retrieve them.