Some truths are written not in ink, but in blood—and some blood is a doorway.
Three days after the Feast of Chains, as stormlight blisters the Academy sky, the guards at the Eastern Gate stop a lone child—barefoot, cloaked in soot-colored linen, his eyes glassy with knowing.
He carries no sigils. No name. Just a book with no pages and arms covered in symbols that seem to crawl.
When questioned, he speaks not with words, but thoughts. Echoes inside the minds of those who approach him.
"I am the Message. I am not the First."
He's taken to the Chancellor.
But that night, five of the Academy's soul-weavers die—driven mad by visions of other timelines.
Kael is summoned to the Hall of Veiled Scribes, where the boy has been placed under arcane quarantine.
When Kael enters, the boy speaks clearly—for the first time:
"You wear the Third Shard. I remember you. From before."
The boy presses his palm to the black-steel floor. His blood leaks—not red, but silver-blue, glowing with sentient flame.
Where it falls, words form.
Languages not spoken for eons. Glyphs from the time before gods.
And a prophecy begins to write itself across the floor:
"When the Flame of Unmemory burns, the Crown shall awaken its Judge. The world will bleed thoughts. And the Nameless shall rise, clothed in the lies of kings."
Lia, standing nearby, steps back. "He's a chronoseer."
But Kael shakes his head.
"No. He's not seeing the future. He's remembering it."
The boy's name is Ihlon—or at least, that's the closest translation of the thought-name he shares.
He is a Mindborne, a synthetic soul engineered by the Mind-Eaters during the War of Unmade Crowns to preserve truths even gods couldn't erase.
Ihlon was created to survive the forgetting—an apocalyptic spell cast centuries ago by the divine kings to erase their greatest sin: the true origin of the Bone Crown.
His purpose was to find the Shardbearer, and ensure the crown was reassembled… or ensure it was destroyed forever.
But Ihlon is broken.
He is leaking prophecy—each drop of his blood rewrites history into existence.
And if too much is revealed too soon, the Nameless One will awaken prematurely, without balance.
Chancellor Ygreth wants Ihlon sealed.
The Obsidian Convocation wants him dissected—"for the safety of the world."
Even Lia hesitates, sensing the power warping from Ihlon's aura. He is becoming unstable.
But Kael chooses to protect him.
"He's not a weapon. He's a survivor."
That night, Kael brings Ihlon to the Ashspire Dormitory, hiding him in an abandoned sanctum once used by outcast scholars.
There, Ihlon reveals one more truth:
"The next Shard is held… by a king who does not know he is dead."
And he names the location:
Syr-Kharad: The Kingdom in Mourning.
As Kael prepares to leave for Syr-Kharad, Ihlon convulses in his sleep.
His mouth opens, and a voice not his own emerges—twisting, multi-tonal, a ripple of all thoughts at once:
"The Mind-Eaters see you, Shardbearer. Return the Thorn. Or we will feast."
Kael's eyes burn silver.
The third shard pulses within him—reacting, resisting.
The war has begun.
Not between kingdoms.
But between the keepers of thought, and the flame that remembers.