The candlelight in Asael's Vigil flickered uneasily as the wind pressed against the stained-glass windows of the Vigilant Chapel. Kael stood before the cold altar, his scythe anchored at his side like an obsidian sentinel. The crimson metal caught the flickers of light and scattered them like droplets of blood across the stone floor. The silence of the sanctuary was thick, reverent—but Kael felt none of its comfort. He felt watched. Judged.
By whom? The dead? Himself?
No.
Her.
The thought of her lingered like the soft scent of lavender after rainfall. She had walked through his memories again last night, speaking in half-formed words. Apologies. Farewells. Warnings.
But when Kael woke, there was only blood on his hands and smoke on the horizon.
"They've found another safehouse," said Verrian, one of the few remaining personalities not yet swallowed by Kael's dominance. He flickered into view beside him—a young man of noble features and poetic sorrow. "Fifth this month."
"The Whisper Choir?" Kael asked, voice void of warmth.
"Likely. Their magic always tastes of stillness and old grief."
Kael moved to the doorway of the chapel. Outside, the skies churned with the golden-gray promise of war. The scent of pine and ash mingled in the air. Farther north, toward Azkaris, the mists thickened—where mind-mages whispered the thoughts of rebels into oblivion.
He was preparing to strike at them.
He had to.
By midday, the remnants of the Cult—the Resistance, as Kael had once called it—gathered in the depths of the Hollow Tunnels beneath the village. Only a few were real. The rest were shades, born of Kael's splintered psyche. Each bore their own skill, their own magic. Each existed to fulfill the gaps in his plan.
A soft cough echoed from a real throat.
"Lord Kael," said Talan, an actual human boy with a cracked leather grimoire and a soul bright like an open wound. "Our scouts report that the Eldrinthian envoy has entered the outskirts of Asael's Vigil. They are not alone. Mind-mages. Four, at least."
Kael didn't blink. "They want to negotiate."
"Or test your resolve."
A smile, empty of mirth. "Then let them see it."
That night, the town square was turned into a meeting ground. At its center, suspended in the sky like a divine eye, hovered the crystal artifact of Asael's Vigil—the Aether Lens. It spun slowly on its axis, its silvery iris aglow, reflecting truths unspoken.
Beneath its gaze stood Kael.
The Eldrinthian envoy was draped in silver robes, embroidered with the Eye emblem—six rays extending from a spiraled iris. Their leader was a woman whose presence bled authority. Her name was Maeryll of House Virelan, the Keeper of Silence.
"You are accused of blasphemy, heresy, and subversion," she began. "And yet, the kingdom offers a pardon. Should you disband your resistance and surrender the Aether Lens."
"You mean bow."
She did not flinch. "I mean survive."
He stepped forward, and the moonlight traced the lines of fatigue carved into his face. "I have survived. I survived when my father was cut down. When the world said vengeance was madness. When I bled alone in frozen fields until my magic screamed into life. I do not survive anymore, Lady Maeryll. I endure."
She studied him. "And yet you look like a man falling apart."
He said nothing. The words would betray the cracks in his focus.
That night, after the meeting ended without bloodshed or surrender, Kael returned to the hollow where he meditated.
In the dark, his memories clawed at him. She was there again.
But this time, not silent.
"Why do you keep pretending you're alone?" she asked, her voice soft as ever. "You've created a world around yourself. You've filled it with pieces of your soul. That's not solitude. That's grief."
"You died."
"I left."
Kael trembled. Even in hallucination, her presence was unbearable.
She stepped forward, her spectral form coalescing in front of him, her eyes filled with unspoken ache. "Your blood magic is killing you. You use it not to fight, but to punish yourself. And them. Even your enemies—what are they to you but echoes of your own pain?"
He touched the scythe at his side. Its surface rippled as if made of liquid memory.
"They tried to erase me. My father. Our lives."
"And so you became their weapon."
The next morning, the cult marched.
Azkaris loomed on the horizon—a city veiled in illusions and riddles, where truth bent and broke. His followers—both flesh and phantom—walked behind him, armored in crimson and obsidian, their spells etched in blood and sorrow.
"They will see," Kael whispered. "Even if it breaks me. They will remember us."
As the gates of Azkaris opened in silent welcome, the wind carried the smell of lilac and ruin.
Inside the city of Unseen Chains, every wall whispered doubts. Every light was false. He could feel their minds touching his, prodding at his intentions.
But Kael had become a maze they could no longer read. He fragmented too fast. Thought in layers too deep.
Still, one voice—one whisper—pierced through it all.
"You are alone."
He stopped.
In the plaza before the Palace of Chains stood a figure. A mirror of himself. Younger. Before the madness. Before the scythe.
"You don't have to keep doing this," the younger Kael said.
"But I will."
"You made all of us because you didn't trust anyone else. You killed for an ideal you never believed in. She would've hated this."
The older Kael said nothing. He merely walked forward—and the illusion shattered like glass.
Behind it, rows of mind-mages awaited. The final battle for truth.
It was not glorious.
Blood sang. The scythe wept. The city screamed.
And as the final mind-mage fell, Kael stood surrounded by the bodies of thoughts never born. He had won. He had nothing.
He looked up to the sky, to the Aether Lens now suspended above Azkaris. It turned its gaze upon him.
And for a moment—it saw him.
Not the warrior. Not the killer. Not the cult-leader.
Just Kael.
Just a boy who had once loved someone.
That night, alone in the ruins of his victory, he whispered her name.
And for the first time in years, he allowed himself to cry.
Not for vengeance.
Not for justice.
But because he missed the version of himself who once believed in more than blood.
And as dawn approached, the sky did not break.
It watched.
Just like him.