Ten years before today.
Ten years before Kairos stood above the Academy's fractured halls,
he watched the sky split open like an old wound.
Aetherra had once been a song of order—towers of light, laws etched in runes, and whispers of gods who never bled. Kairos remembered those days through the blurred lens of a child's gaze. Safety felt like his mother's lullabies, stitched with incantations and the scent of burning incense.
But safety died with the bells.
He was seven when the Sinfall came. The bells were the first to scream—shattering mid-toll as crimson light clawed down from the sky. The world had no time to pray.
One moment, a lecture of runes.
The next—fire, shadows, and something breathing inside the earth.
People burned from the inside out. Temples collapsed like paper lanterns in the rain. And Kairos—wide-eyed and untouched—stood amidst the smoke, a shard of red crystal humming in his chest like it had always belonged there.
They called it a miracle. A curse. An omen.
He called it silence.
He didn't remember when Selene first found him. Maybe weeks later. Maybe years. But she came with silver hair kissed by ash, and eyes too sharp for a girl her age. She didn't cry when others did. She didn't flinch from the monsters in the mist. She just sat beside him, quiet and still.
Two survivors. One world that no longer made sense.
---
Now.
The Academy Bell Tower.
Kairos stood where wind whispered like old ghosts.
Ten years later, the world hadn't healed. It had adapted.
The Academy rose from ruins like a parasite dressing as priesthood. Students below moved like threads woven into control—some shining with divine potential, others bound in red, the color of sin. Kairos wore neither. His badge, obsidian and blood-etched, marked him as an Initiate of the Unbound Path.
A weapon they didn't trust—but couldn't discard.
He heard her before he saw her.
"Still brooding?" Selene asked, voice cutting through the wind like a familiar blade.
She stepped into view, violet cloak fluttering around her like a shadow stitched to moonlight. Her silver braid was tighter today. Her boots dusted with training chalk. There was always a kind of precision to her—every movement deliberate, every glance measured.
"You're late for second cycle," she added.
Kairos didn't look at her. "So are you."
Selene smirked. "I've earned the right to be reckless."
He finally turned. "So have I."
They stood in silence, twin pillars in the fading light. The city beyond writhed with unseen things. Rifts pulsed at the edge of the horizon. Somewhere, a scream echoed—distant and wet.
"You feel it too," he said.
Selene nodded. "The currents are wrong. The aether's shifting again. Like something's… waiting."
Kairos stepped past her, toward the stairwell. "I need to check the old district. Where my family was."
She stiffened. "The eastern ruins? That zone's unstable—half its wards collapsed last cycle."
"I know."
"And if you go, alone…"
Kairos met her gaze. "Then stay close."
She hesitated. Not out of fear for herself—but for what he might become.
Then she followed.
As they descended into shadow, neither noticed the sigil above the bell tower glow faintly red—then vanish.