After a storm, the silence tells you what survived.
The capital was in lockdown.
Gates sealed.
Towers lit with the red fires of emergency.
Ravens dispatched across the empire with a single command: Find the boy. Kill him if necessary.
The child he saved? Taken.
The prince? Silent.
And the throne? Cracking, as if even it rejected its master now.
Far beyond the palace walls in the forgotten ruins of the First Citadel, where magic was born and buried Aelios knelt beside an ancient pool of starlight.
The runes on the walls pulsed as if they recognized him.
"You're late, boy," growled a voice from the darkness.
From the mist stepped a woman cloaked in twilight armor hair like spun night, her eyes deep with a sorrow older than kingdoms.
Saelyn, High Arcanist of the Lost Order.
The last one who remembered his birth
"You showed them too soon," she said, kneeling beside him.
"The Veil will not stop now. You broke the Balance."
Aelios touched the water. Visions swirled:
A burning throne.
His face crowned in shadows and stars.
A woman screaming as soldiers dragged her into flame his mother.
He pulled his hand back. Eyes darkened.
"They never intended balance," he whispered.
"Only obedience."
Saelyn studied him. Not with affection but calculation.
"If you rise, you will become the storm.
If you fall, the world may follow."
She placed an obsidian shard in his palm warm, humming with buried power.
"You'll need this.
The world only remembers names that burn."
Meanwhile back in the capital...
The emperor's health had failed.
The throne was empty for the first time in 900 years.
And in the shadows of the Great Hall, the nobles argued.
Whispers danced through every corridor:
Who is Aelios?
Is he the cursed heir of the dead dynasty?
Is the prophecy real?
Did the gods send him, or something worse?
But in a forgotten tower, one figure was not afraid.
The first prince, disfigured but alive, stared at a golden sigil glowing on his chest left there by Aelios.
"You should've killed me," he whispered.
"Now I know your power."
He turned to his steward. "Send word to the North.
If Aelios rises I want the world to rise with me… to destroy him."