The Memory That Bled
Kael woke to silence.
Not the peaceful kind—but the heavy, unnatural quiet that followed something being ripped away. His body lay sprawled across the cathedral's fractured floor, limbs numb, breath shallow. The stone beneath him pulsed faintly, a dying echo of the Shard's last surge.
Above, the ceiling had vanished. In its place, a yawning chasm of sky twisted with black clouds and shards of moonlight that bled like torn paper. Time did not move here—it waited.
"Kael!" Maera's voice tore through the stillness.
She knelt beside him, her hand trembling as she gripped his shoulder. He blinked slowly, registering her form through the haze. Behind her, Elarin's silhouette loomed, radiant and shadowed all at once.
"He's not responding," Maera said. "It's like something drained him."
"No," Elarin replied, her voice low. "Not drained. Rewritten."
Kael flinched. The visions hadn't been dreams. They were memories—not his, but left behind inside the Shard like bloodstains on steel.
He sat up slowly, vision swimming. "Aelith... she was a Warden."
"You've mentioned her before," Elarin said, kneeling across from him. "But that name hasn't existed in any surviving chronicle. Are you saying she bound herself to a Shard too?"
"She didn't just bind to it," Kael muttered. "She created it."
Riven's boots echoed through the hollow nave as he approached. "That thing inside you—it's older than anything we've faced. If she forged it, she left something behind. And I doubt it was kindness."
"I think it's worse than that," Kael said. "She didn't leave a piece of herself behind. She left... a purpose."
Elarin's eyes widened. "Then the Shard isn't a weapon."
"No," Kael said grimly. "It's a promise."
Outside, the wind shifted. The floating ruins of Nimruhl trembled as a low rumble crawled across the land like thunder swallowing a scream. Something was coming.
Riven unsheathed his sabers. "We've overstayed."
But Kael didn't move.
The altar behind him had changed. It no longer glowed. Instead, a circle of runes burned with dull violet light—a summoning mark, etched in the shape of a fallen star.
Maera saw it too. "It's calling something."
"No," Elarin said. "It already called it."
The shadows in the doorway stretched unnaturally. Out from them stepped a creature that didn't belong in the mortal world. Its body was humanoid, but elongated, like a puppet carved from nightmares—eyes too many, mouth stitched shut with glowing thread.
A Hollowborn Revenant.
One of the Veil's sentinels—beings forged to hunt down oathbreakers. And Kael, now marked by the Shard's ancient vow, was one.
It moved without sound, lurching forward as the runes flared. Riven leapt into action, his twin blades whistling through the air—steel clashing against bone-like limbs.
Elarin raised her staff, casting threads of binding light to trap the Revenant, while Maera circled wide, spear gleaming with lightning.
Kael rose to his feet. The Shard in his chest throbbed in rhythm with the Revenant's steps.
It wasn't trying to kill him.
It was trying to judge him.
And if he failed—
> "Return the Vow… or be unmade."
The words carved themselves across the air as the Revenant's claws struck down.