The winds of the Dominion blew colder than death as Rheon stepped into the Glass Labyrinth, an ancient prison hidden beneath the capital of Vael'dorak. Unlike the dungeons of stone or flame, this was a vault of time each corridor a memory, each reflection a shard of forgotten truth.
The door behind him vanished the moment he crossed the threshold.
Echoes of the Past
The glass walls shimmered with shifting scenes: Rheon's childhood, the burning of Drakenshade, his father's betrayal, and the moment he first touched the Chrono Sigil. These were not just illusions they were living echoes, able to speak, bleed, even wound.
One shard showed his mother, her arms outstretched in warning.
"Do not trust the man with the golden eye. He sees too far forward, and never enough behind."
Rheon turned away. He couldn't afford distractions. Somewhere within this labyrinth was the Truthlock, a fragment of pure Chrono essence, sealed by Altheris himself. Only it could reveal the true origin of the Dominion's power.
The Memory Hunter
He wasn't alone.
As Rheon turned a corner, the air grew thick. From the glass stepped a Memory Hunter a wraith made from a thousand dead recollections. Its body was faceless, its arms a swarm of claws dragging behind like chains.
"Truth has weight," it hissed. "You are not strong enough to carry it."
Rheon didn't answer. He drew his blade not steel, but Chrono-forged, its edge humming with unstable time. The duel was brutal. Every strike fractured the glass around them, memories collapsing in on themselves like dying stars.
At last, Rheon impaled the creature through its core where a younger version of himself trembled, eyes wide.
"You are your own torment," the Hunter gasped, and disintegrated.
The Chamber of Origins
At the heart of the labyrinth stood a circular chamber, its walls mirrored perfectly. A lone pedestal bore the Truthlock a crystal pulsing with unstable Chrono magic. The moment Rheon approached, the chamber flickered.
Time unraveled.
He saw Altheris younger, mortal, desperate. A forbidden ritual. He saw a dying god. A theft. The merging of two timelines. The birth of the Dominion, not by unity but by erasure.
"The Dominion was never born," Rheon whispered. "It was stolen."
He fell to his knees. His entire crusade, his rebellion, the suffering of millions was built on a fabricated history.
And now, he held the truth in his hands.
The Decision
Behind him, a second version of himself appeared, twisted and bitter.
"Use it," the reflection said. "Rewrite it all. Burn the past. Start again."
Rheon clenched his fist around the Truthlock.
"No," he said. "I won't become another tyrant of time."
Instead of using it, he bound it to his will, not as a weapon but as a lens. He would reveal the truth, not rewrite it.
As the Labyrinth shattered, Rheon emerged into the night, the crystal glowing at his side, his eyes now carrying the weight of all that had been lost and lied about.
When Gods Remember
The winds howled above the Citadel of Fractured Thrones, its obsidian towers groaning under the weight of the coming storm. Lightning veined the sky like the cracking shell of an ancient egg. Something was awakening not from slumber, but from forgetfulness.
Rheon stood at the edge of the battlements, the Truthlock suspended above his palm like a second heart. Its glow pulsed erratically now, resonating with forces beyond the Dominion.
He wasn't alone.
Kael's Return
Kael arrived on the back of his skywyrm, Varax, cloaked in scorched robes and stained ash. His eyes were no longer youthful; they were old, as if aged a hundred years in a single season.
"You opened the Labyrinth," he said.
Rheon turned, shadows cast deep across his face. "I didn't just open it. I bled inside it."
The two stood in silence as thunder rumbled overhead. The distance between them had grown not just in time, but in truth.
"The Truthlock changes everything," Kael muttered.
"Not everything. Not us."
But even Rheon's words felt like they belonged to another life.
The Stars Weep
In the southern deserts of Theruun, the sky cracked like glass. Stars began falling slowly at first, then in torrents. But these were not meteors. These were memories of gods, once erased, now remembering themselves.
Ancient beings, long believed to be myths, stirred.
In the temple of Sahratha, the twin moons realigned a sign that the Titan of Thought, Y'sharan, had awakened.
In the frozen tombs of the Kaldaran Wastes, Velkarth, the god of Endings, opened one pale eye.
And in the seas, where no light ever reached, something colossal began to stir its breath making whirlpools in the deepest trenches.
They were gods not of belief, but of forgotten truth.
And now that Rheon held the Truthlock… they remembered him.
The Astral Concord Breaks
Far above the mortal world, the Celestial Archive, a realm of pure starlight, began to fracture. The Astral Concord, a pact forged between god and time itself, had been broken by mortal hands.
In the great amphitheater of constellations, the Archivist spoke:
"The human has pulled memory from void. We must decide: reclaim what was taken, or let the world remake itself."
But not all the gods agreed.
Some wanted vengeance. Others… saw opportunity.
Rheon's Vision
That night, Rheon dreamed.
He stood in the center of a spiral of stars, surrounded by shadows wearing his face. Each spoke a different truth, a different destiny, a different betrayal. One raised a sword. One offered a crown. One burned the world.
And one the last held Kael's heart, still beating, pierced on a blackened thorn.
"You cannot stop what has already remembered itself," the shadow whispered. "You are not rewriting history… you are waking it."
Rheon woke in a sweat, the Truthlock floating above his chest, glowing with a terrible light.
Dawn of the Forgotten
As the first light of day touched the shattered lands of the Dominion, Rheon, Kael, and the scattered remnants of their rebellion realized the truth:
They were no longer fighting an empire.
They were no longer defying kings or magi.
They were standing between a forgotten pantheon and a world that had dared to live without them.
And those gods once buried in time were returning.
The Sky that Bled Memory
The sky did not merely bleed it wept truths. Great rivers of silver light poured down from the rift that hung in the heavens above the Dominion, a jagged scar that pulsed like the beating heart of some ancient god. To the common folk, it was a celestial omen. To the magi, it was an abomination. But to Rheon… it was a mirror.
A mirror showing what had always been hidden.
Whispers from the Rift
"They're speaking again," whispered Lyra, the Seer of Hollowvale, as she clutched her ears.
The voices had returned half-forgotten, half-invented whispers in languages no longer known to any living soul. Each syllable vibrated with power, making the air shimmer and warp. Towns near the rift had gone quiet. Entire populations lay sleeping, trapped in shared dreams of things that had never happened, or perhaps had just not in this version of the world.
At the center of it all stood Rheon, arms open, his body bleeding starlight.
"They're not just memories," he muttered to Kael. "They're instructions. Blueprints from a world that once was."
"Then who are we?" Kael asked. "Imitations?"
"Possibilities," Rheon replied.
In the Depths of Aetherholt
Far beneath the Citadel, a chamber sealed since the First Dominion cracked open. The Vault of Aetherholt, built by the gods to hide a single truth, now stood exposed. Within lay a being not dead, but erased: Solathir, the Shard of Recollection.
Chained in mirrors, it had no true body only reflections. Its face changed every moment: an elf queen, a child, a warrior, a god, a beast. All fragments of past selves. All screaming in unison.
When Rheon entered, the being turned its infinite gaze on him.
"You hold the Lock," it said, with a thousand voices.
"You seek the Dominion."
"But you cannot hold what was never yours to forget."
"Then tell me," Rheon challenged, stepping forward, "what was taken?"
The mirrored god wept a single tear. It fell upward, dissolving into mist.
"Your name."
The Black Concord
In the west, the High Kingdom of Nareth fell.
Not to soldiers. Not to war.
But to revelation.
An entire nation lost its identity in a single night. Every book blanked, every mural gone gray. The statues crumbled, not by magic, but because no one remembered who they were. Even the king, once proud and cruel, awoke nameless, wandering the halls in robes that no longer fit the image of a crownless man.
The Black Concord an ancient, buried spell forged by the gods themselves had been broken. Its purpose? To erase the true rulers of the world from memory.
And now, the Dominion remembered.
Kael's Choice
Kael stood before the Shard of Recollection long after Rheon had gone. The reflections whispered his forgotten past: the child he failed to save, the fire he started, the crown he once wore in a lifetime never lived.
"You can remember who you truly were," the Shard tempted.
"You need only let go of who you are."
But Kael clenched his fists.
"No," he said. "I'll carry both. I'll be the man I was… and the one I chose to become."
And so the Shard smiled. One of its reflections faded Kael the Betrayer leaving only the Kael who still stood.
The Sky Falls
When the rift pulsed again, it was not light that fell.
It was stone. Black, jagged spires the size of mountains, each carved with runes that twisted the air around them. The gods were not sending messengers.
They were building a staircase.
To descend.
And somewhere, across the mountains of Halvorr, a voice long-forgotten called a name not heard in ten thousand years.
"Rheon…"
A name not given by parents. A name not meant to be remembered.
But it was too late.