Retrieving dormant consciousness was accompanied with an ache that was eternal—his most recent sensation.His lungs ached with every inhale, a thick fog mixed with the noxious smoke filled the air, and the scent of rusted metal lingered. Each and every inch of his skin felt like a thousand needles were piercing him, painfully burning.
Even so, he had no other option but to open his eyes, forcefully.
The stillness of the ruins was but an illusion.
Firefly-like symbols flickered up and down across cracks that split the land beneath his feet. The air around him danced and shimmered, filled with the energy of whatever event occurred moments ago.
Turo and his companions no longer remained, Kaen couldn't tell whether they had run or perished in the pandemonium. Nevertheless, it was of no importance. When the world spins out of control, cowards chooses to run.
He felt different, as he took baby steps onto a standing position. Kaen's body felt as if it had been completely remade. From within, something powerful surged through him. Unfamiliar, strange and…. utterly terrifying.
Losing cloak would be both easy and difficult.
The mark.
"Serenus Hadronemem!" A voice boomed, startling Kaen out of his internal monologue.
Undescribable pain coursed he through him as he squinted and stepped out of the cloak, only to receive blinding sunlight.
The kind of mark that guaranteed no freedom from a brutal life hostile had forged on this planet.
> "Shadowless, no more…," escaped his lips that caught his breath as the weight of the words pondered him.
Then came the memories.
But those fragments of the past were not his.
Visions of tempest storms swallowing towers, a creature forged from a dying star, and the most heart wrenching moment, a child cradling the body of a burning titan flashered across his mind. The surge of emotions battered him like a ruthless storm, relentless. Whatever pain he carried felt overwhelmingly amorphous.
His thoughts were shattered when a sharp noise pierced through.
A clang, a metallic scrape.
Without a second thought, Kaen turned around to face the source, his hand flew out.
An energy burst from his palm.
The bolder that was pointed at him exploded mid-air with a deafening bang.
Stillness.
A figure emerged from the shadow looking visibly shaken.
"W-what… was that?" the voice shook.
Kaen glared at the figure as his voice died out and transformed into fragments. Staring at the hand which crackled with energy felt atleast tangible.
It certainly did not stem from the mark.
Somewhere within my being lay things, mythical things, which caged me in ignorance and bereliv dead all my life.
Turo staggered, emerging from the jagged remnants of half-destroyed buildings hopelessly clutching onto his chain hoping it would insulate him from the strange power he had just witnessed.
"Tu– you're a freak!" Turo yelled, shivering and fuming. "That thing you touched ! it has put a curse on you."
"No, I am calm and composed," Kaen disagreed softly. "It showed me who I am."
The pattern on his back throbbed faintly, as if infused with life, while he paused, permitting his cloak to billow behind him like a silhouette.
Leave them to fear me. Even just this once.
Not that Kaen sought vengeance.
But, there was a split inside him—an urge that they ought to be able to recall him.
A pair of violet eyes, concealed by dark clouds, far above were out of sight to Kaen—blinked open and stared unblinkingly.
A voice that felt like it traveled a thousand years rushed out, echoing in the aether.
> "The Fractured One has woken; tell the High Circle… and alert the Sealhunters."
In an area sealed away by time, deep under Auraterra's surface, an ancient artifact has been provoked.
Now… it burned with flame.
But, it hadn't pulsed in a millennium.
The end of Two: Riddles