Some bloodlines burn through the ages like stars—brilliant, brief, and cursed to fall.
On the eve of the moonless Solstice, Kael receives a summons unlike any before: not a scroll, not a dream, but a fragment of meteoric iron carved with only a name—
"Vaelorian."
The summons leads Kael and a small Flameguard escort to Elyrris, an island surrounded by mist that no map shows. It is said to exist only in memory—and only appears when the Fallen Star stirs.
Lia, still disturbed by the godfire visions in Thornsreach, urges caution. But Kael insists:
"If it remembers my name, I need to remember why."
The island is a scar upon the ocean—a crater jungle grown around a broken celestial blade: the Fallen Star, a weapon forged in the first divine rebellion.
The blade is not dead. It pulses with residual godlight, whispering fragments of divine language.
When Kael steps near, the jungle parts.
And the blade speaks:
"He returns. The bearer of the first betrayal. Flame that burned fate."
It reveals the truth: this is where the Vaelorian line began—not from mortals—but from gods cast down and made flesh.
"You are not of royal blood," says the blade. "You are the ashes of gods."
A ruined structure near the blade—a temple-palace of obsidian and bone—bears the sigil of the House of the First Flame. It predates all noble bloodlines, all kingdoms, all known history.
Kael's blood unlocks the gate.
Inside are murals animated by light and thought, showing scenes lost to time:
The birth of the Nameless One, the forgotten god who tried to unite all divine fire.
The Vaelorian Progenitor, Aurex, who betrayed the gods to grant fire to mortals.
The first flameborne child, born in the shadow of the blade: not human, not divine—something in between.
The last mural shows the seven shards of the Bone Crown being forged by Aurex himself, drawn from the broken minds of fallen gods.
The temple's heart holds a relic—The Starshard Dialect, a living codex that records bloodline truth.
Lia, suspicious of the relic's power, insists Kael not touch it.
He does anyway.
And the truth it shows could fracture the world:
Kael is the last direct heir to Aurex.
The current royal line of the Kingdom of Aurorium is a false branch, a bloodline rewritten after the First Flame Pact.
The Bone Crown was meant only for the trueborn of starfire.
Kael realizes: every noble house, every kingdom built on the lie of mortal supremacy, would fall if this truth is revealed.
But knowledge has a price.
As Kael reels from the revelation, a guardian awakens: Seraphael, the Star-Husk, once a divine herald of the Nameless One, now corrupted by memory rot.
Seraphael is a being of crystallized starlight and forgotten hymns, its voice a chorus of dying suns.
It attacks.
The battle is brutal—Seraphael sings Kael's oldest fears into being, turning the jungle into a cathedral of illusions. Kael nearly falls, until Lia unleashes the full power of her soul-glaive, invoking her ancestral spirit for the first time.
Together, they sever the husk's connection to the Fallen Star.
As it dies, Seraphael whispers:
"You've taken what was hidden. The gods will know. And they will come for you."
Kael returns from Elyrris changed.
He does not share the full truth—not yet—but the Ash Lens now burns with starfire when he holds it.
The gods begin to stir in deeper dreams.
Back in Aurorium, the noble houses grow restless. Rumors of Kael's divine lineage spread. Whispers of rebellion spark.
And the third shard of the Bone Crown, the Mindthorn, glows in its sealed tomb beneath the Academy's forgotten wing.
As Kael sleeps, he dreams of a voice he has never heard.
"Child of betrayal… bearer of the truthfire… awaken me, and I will make you king not just of men, but of time itself."