Chapter Two
The Watcher Below
The city of Virelith shimmered beneath a dome of stormlight, rain running in thin streams down glass towers and spire-temples. From the highest chamber of the Sanctum of Echoes, Seren Vael watched the world crack.
She didn't breathe.
Didn't blink.
Not when the wards pulsed crimson for the first time in six hundred years. Not when the Accordstone—sealed in its obsidian cradle since the binding—shuddered.
It was calling.
Or maybe… answering.
Seren pressed a hand to the old stone. Her gloves hummed with arcane resonance, but it was her skin beneath that burned. A subtle mark on her wrist—a circle split by a line of light—glowed faintly.
She'd hoped she'd never see it awaken.
"Something has stirred," came a voice behind her.
High Chancellor Dareth stood in the doorway, robed in silver and bone-gray, his face weathered by too many years and too many secrets. His voice carried the weight of half a dozen oaths, each older than the city itself.
Seren didn't turn. "Not something," she said softly. "Someone."
Dareth stepped closer, gazing down at the Accordstone. A single fracture now marred its surface, like a vein of starlight running through black glass.
"You're sure?"
"I felt it," she said. "The name. Spoken at the peak of Vehl. The mountain screamed."
Dareth cursed under his breath, something in the old tongue. "The Ashten. He's awoken."
Seren finally turned to face him. Her eyes—striking silver, like polished moonstone—held no fear. Only purpose. "Then it's begun. The Accord is breaking."
"And the Balance?" Dareth asked.
Seren looked past him, to the western window. Out there, beyond the shielded walls of Virelith, the Riftlands boiled in shadow. War beasts roamed. Old magic stirred.
And a sixteen-year-old boy had just said a name the gods had buried.
"The Balance," Seren said, "is about to tip."
-
Far across the sea of Dorne, past the drowned valleys and the redwood reaches, a single candle flickered in the heart of the forgotten forest of Eltharyn.
In the ruins of a temple long buried by vines and silence, a woman sat cross-legged on a slab of living stone.
Her name was Nyren.
The world called her many things: Witch-Mother. Star-Thief. Oathbreaker.
Kael would one day call her teacher.
But now, she simply sat—eyes closed, breath shallow—as the air shifted around her.
The birds stopped singing.
The roots beneath her curled, as if recoiling.
And the fire in the center of the temple bent sideways, pulled toward a single direction.
East.
She opened her eyes.
Gold irises, ringed with deep green, caught the flame's motion and read what it meant. Not wind. Not ward disturbance. Something deeper. Older. Something in her bones knew.
She rose slowly, the rings on her fingers humming against the pulse of the world.
Then, softly, reverently, she whispered:
"Ashten."
The trees shivered at the name.
She turned toward a shattered mirror half-buried in roots. Its surface clouded—then cleared. Not a reflection, but a vision.
A boy, not yet a man, standing at the edge of a cliff. Snow whipping around him. A dark sword across his back. And in his eyes—a question the gods had no answer for.
Nyren smiled, not kindly.
"He doesn't know yet," she murmured. "Not what he carries. Not what he is."
She touched the mirror, and a single word formed on the glass:
"Bound."
Behind her, something massive moved. A creature cloaked in bark and smoke, chained to the temple's stone with ancient runes glowing in its skin.
"Should I kill him?" it rumbled, voice like thunder through leaves.
Nyren didn't turn. "No," she said. "Not yet. He must come to me on his own."
The creature snarled, low and reluctant.
Nyren's gaze never left the image in the mirror.
"Find your fire, little heir," she whispered to the boy who couldn't hear her. "The Accord may be dying… but you? You're just beginning."
Continue to chapter III...