The hall of judgment rose like a mountain of marble around Caelum Vey.
White stone gleamed under cold sunlight, reflecting a thousand hateful stares from the balconies above.
Banners bearing the crest of the Council — a chained Eidolon — hung limp and heavy over the court.
Caelum stood alone, bound by chains laced with nullstone — the metal that severed the bond between a magician and the Soul-Web.
Magic was dead to him now.
And still, he stood.
Above him, the Seven High Magisters of Velmoria presided, each a master of Phase 5 Eidolon Resonance — the highest legal attainment in magic.
Behind them loomed the massive statues of Eidolon Lords: beings once tamed, bound into contracts, their power feeding the Soul-Web that made civilization possible.
"Caelum Vey," intoned High Inquisitor Velden, "you stand charged with crimes against the sanctity of the Eidolon Pacts.
You have breached Phase Laws.
You have dabbled in Phase Six — the domain of forbidden gods."
A murmur rippled through the crowd —
Phase Six.
An impossibility.
A heresy.
In Velmoria, magicians were allowed to climb only so far:
Phase 1: Manifesting simple Eidolon projections.
Phase 2: Bonding with minor Eidolons.
Phase 3: Commanding combat-form Eidolons.
Phase 4: Merging souls partially with Eidolons.
Phase 5: Full-body Eidolon Fusion — the pinnacle of lawful magic.
Phase 6 — true transcendence, bending the Soul-Web itself — was banned long ago after the Collapse Wars.
They feared what lay beyond.
They feared him.
---
In the prosecution stand, Lira Vance — Caelum's childhood friend — presented the Council's evidence.
Cracked soulstones, blackened by over-resonance.
Shattered Eidolon vessels, howling faint echoes.
Fragments of broken Pacts — visible to those sensitive to the Soul-Web's currents.
She stood stiff, voice clinical as she recited his crimes.
"Brilliant... but reckless."
"He sought to reach Phase Six by fusing forbidden Eidolons with his own soul."
"He endangered the Soul-Web itself, the source of all magic and life."
---
The High Magisters listened in grim silence.
To tamper with the Soul-Web was to threaten the very fabric of Velmoria —
The network that bound magician to Eidolon, city to city, nation to nation.
A crime against magic itself.
---
Caelum lifted his gaze.
His silver eyes, once bright with hope, now reflected only cold ashes.
"Your system is built on fear," he said, voice low but steady. "You chain power. You chain Eidolons. You chain people. And you call it balance."
No one answered.
The High Inquisitor raised the black scroll — the final verdict.
"By unanimous decree," Velden declared, "you are sentenced to exile into the Hollowlands.
Your soul shall be marked.
Your name — stricken from the annals of Velmoria."
---
The guards moved.
They pressed the Brand of Exile against his shoulder — a burning iron sigil that seared into the Soul-Web itself.
Caelum felt his magic scream, his Eidolon bindings sever, his place in the Web shatter like glass.
He staggered but did not fall.
---
Dragged through the streets, through crowds who threw stones and curses, Caelum was cast into a black carriage reinforced with nullstone.
The road to the Hollowlands awaited —
A place where magic faltered, where Eidolons went mad, where lost experiments of the old magicians still prowled.
Where monsters born from broken Pacts howled under blood moons.
As the carriage jolted down the broken road, Caelum closed his eyes.
The pain of the brand burned deep, pulsing with every heartbeat.
Yet deeper still, something stirred.
The mark was supposed to sever him from power.
And yet...
He could feel something beyond the brand.
Beyond the phases.
Beyond the laws they had written in fear.
Something older.
Something hungrier.
If the Soul-Web rejects me...
I will carve a new path through the void.
Even if I must bind the forgotten Eidolons themselves.
Ash fell from the dying sky as Velmoria faded into the distance.
The boy who once dreamed of saving the world had been broken.
In his place, something else would rise.
Something the world would come to fear... and hate.