(4,165 Years Ago)
Avarin thrived.
What began as scattered tents and rebellious laughter had grown into terraces, aqueducts, and towers carved from the mountain's bones. Its people no longer whispered dreams—they lived them. Scholars taught beside farmers, thieves turned tax collectors (reluctantly), and orphans played beneath statues of no gods at all.
Kael, ever the
atrical, wore robes stitched from battle flags and crowned himself with nothing but a broken arrow—the same one fired at him during his first ambush. "We honor near-death with humor," he'd say, waving it around like a scepter.
But beneath his wit, something itched at him. A whisper. A tug.
Avarin had been built on ruins. Older than even the oldest empire. Its deepest chambers still lay sealed, carved with a language that hadn't been spoken in over two thousand years before Kael was even born.
And Kael—raised in a house that feared old knowledge—wanted to know why.
He led a small team down into the caverns beneath the palace. Tavo refused ("I only descend into wine barrels"), but Ilya followed, blades at her hips and a candle between her teeth.
What they found wasn't treasure or tombs—but a vault. A room untouched by time. On its walls: murals of a man with Kael's eyes—taller, older, standing atop a throne of bone and flowers. His name etched beneath in an ancient tongue neither of them could fully read.
But one word translated clearly: "Return."
Kael didn't sleep that night. Or the next.
He had built Avarin to escape his bloodline—but what if this place had chosen him long before he chose it?
(2025)
Liam Routh's life had quietly unraveled over the last 48 hours.
He hadn't left the library.
He'd photocopied every page of the book and scanned each map into his laptop. The language in the margins wasn't just a fantasy construct—it was Proto-Eblaite, an ancient tongue lost to time. Some words didn't even exist in academic databases.
One phrase kept repeating in a spiraling pattern:"He who reads shall remember."
The book's materials were even stranger. Carbon dating (thanks to a borrowed university tool) gave it an age of at least 3,800 years—older than the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Impossible.
And yet...
Liam's dreams began to shift. He saw desert cities, smelled fire and lilac, and heard a man's voice laughing in his ear—always mid-joke, always right before he woke up.
On the third night, he heard a whisper from the book's direction. When he looked, a single phrase had appeared on the table beside it—written in fine dust:
"Come find me."
He didn't scream. He didn't panic.
He booked a flight to Turkey.
(Back to Avarin)
Kael stood atop the eastern watchtower, staring at the stars with a wine jug in one hand and Ilya's scarf wrapped around the other. Seriyah approached silently, her armor traded for silk.
"You look like a drunk philosopher," she said.
"I'm trying to decipher the stars," he replied. "They're ignoring me."
"You've changed."
"Becoming a symbol will do that."
"Does the boy with no name miss anything from before?"
Kael paused. "I miss not being afraid of destiny."
She placed a hand on his chest. "Then let's defy it together."
Below them, Avarin sang. In markets and courtyards, in soft lullabies and drunken chants. It was a song of freedom, stitched together by every misfit who'd believed in a mad boy's dream.
But deep beneath the palace, in a locked chamber none dared enter, something stirred.
The stone door—once sealed for a thousand years—shuddered open just a crack.
And in the dark beyond it, something ancient remembered Kael's name.