The moment they left the Vault of the Echoes, the skies above Elarith were no longer still.
The stars flickered.
Not like lights—but like eyes.
Kael stood on the cliff's edge, the cold mountain wind rushing past him as his aura pulsed erratically. The Ashen Core embedded in his chest still glowed faintly, its embers dancing along his skin like living tattoos. His breathing was steady, but his gaze was distant—locked on a vision only he could see.
"Kael…" Lyra stepped beside him. "What exactly did you see back there?"
Kael didn't answer immediately. Drayke was lounging on a broken pillar nearby, sharpening one of his Infernal Gauntlets with a cracked grin. The silence was thick, weighty, like the calm before a blood-soaked storm.
"I saw them," Kael finally said. "The ones who came before us. The true Revenants. The Ashen weren't weapons—they were guardians of something older than the Eternals themselves."
Drayke scoffed. "Guardians? Then where the hell are they now?"
Kael closed his eyes.
"They were devoured."
Far beneath the world, in the Sable Deep, something stirred.
The Veilborn.
Creatures that existed between life and aura, shaped from ancient hatred and eternal silence. Neither alive nor dead, but something far more dangerous—remembered.
The Priest knelt before the central chamber of the Deep, where a throne of bones and blackened soulstone sat vacant.
A voice echoed from the abyss.
"Send the first. A test. A warning."
The Priest's eyes bled ink as he raised his staff.
Across Aurenya, every dungeon trembled.
The Veilborn were returning.
Back in Elarith...
A new aura ripple shook the ground.
Kael instinctively turned, drawing his blade—only to see a glowing glyph shimmer in the sky above.
A symbol none of them had ever seen before. Spinning. Ancient. Watching.
Then came the pulse.
A wave of aura energy surged through the land, like a heartbeat. Trees cracked. Snow vaporized.
Kael dropped to one knee, clutching his chest. The Ashen Core inside him screamed in resonance.
"What the hell is this!?" Drayke shouted, shielding his face.
Lyra's wings flared, struggling to stabilize her aura as golden light shimmered from her palms. "It's not a dungeon… It's something else!"
Kael gritted his teeth.
"No. It's a beacon. Someone's calling something here—"
A rift tore open above the mountain.
The world split sideways—and from the void stepped a creature that shouldn't exist.
It had no face. Only drifting tendrils of aura, like smoke given thought. Its body shifted between skeletal and divine, adorned in fragments of forgotten armor. Where it stepped, the ground unmade itself.
[Veilborn – Calreth the Hollow Memory]
> Rank: ??? (Aura Undefined)
Origin: Sable Deep
Aura Traits: Memory Corrosion, Time Bleed, Echo Drain
"Do not speak to it," Kael warned, rising. "It speaks in echoes. If you answer, it learns you."
Drayke's hands burned to life. "Too late. I already wanna punch it."
The Veilborn tilted its head, aura twitching like a broken clock. Then—
It screamed.
But not in sound—in thought.
Visions flooded the mountain: wars, endings, forgotten tombs. The air thickened. Lyra fell to her knees, nose bleeding. Drayke staggered, coughing smoke.
Only Kael remained standing.
His eyes narrowed.
"I've seen this before."
He stepped forward.
The air bent around him. Ember flared. His aura surged outward in a dome of ashen flame, pushing the Veilborn's pressure back. The creature paused, as if sensing something familiar.
Kael's voice dropped.
"Haaah… what a strong aura."
The mountain exploded.
Kael launched forward, blade catching fire mid-strike. Calreth phased, then reformed behind him, claws slicing toward his spine.
Kael vanished—Burnout Dash.
He reappeared in midair, twisting to deliver a downward slash that erupted in a Soul Scorch, the first use of his newly gained ability. The blade connected, and for the first time—the Veilborn reacted.
It bled… memory.
Images spilled from its wound—Kael, alone, burning cities. Lyra, lying dead in a field of ash. Drayke impaled on his own gauntlet.
The creature fed them false futures.
Kael gritted his teeth.
"Not real. Not real. Not real."
The Veilborn moved again—this time slower, flickering, destabilizing.
Drayke yelled, "Now or never, ash boy!"
Kael nodded. The ember veil surged to life.
He raised his sword—then lowered it as the blade split into two.
A new ability.
[Aura Sync: Revenant Twin-Blade – Ashfall Mode Unlocked]
He charged, both blades howling with soul heat, and crossed them through the Veilborn's core.
There was no explosion.
Only silence.
Then—
Collapse.
The Veilborn shrieked and folded in on itself, consumed by Kael's ashen aura. Its body crumbled into glyphs—forgotten language—and then dust.
The rift sealed.
Kael fell to one knee, gasping.
Lyra rushed to his side, pressing a glowing hand to his back. "That thing… it wasn't like anything we've seen before."
Drayke spat blood. "If that was the first one, I'd hate to see the second."
Kael stood, looking up at the sky. The stars blinked again—three times.
Like a countdown.
"We'll see them again."
He looked at his hand—ash curling from his palm.
"And next time, they'll know my name."
[Unknown Location – Deepwatch Citadel]
Zera watched from a high tower, eyes unreadable.
So it begins, she thought.
The Veilborn had returned.
And Kael Arclight was no longer just a variable.
He was a threat.
She sipped her tea, lips curving slightly.
Let them come.