"Even the wisest tremble not at what gods can do, but what they've chosen to forget."—Edran Vex, Keeper of the Broken Name
The nights at the Academy of Nocthera were no longer restful.
Not since Kael's return.
The dreams came first to the librarians—quiet folk who whispered to parchment and ink rather than people. They began seeing flame-etched symbols drifting behind their eyelids. Then to the runeweavers in the West Hall—sigils bled from their scrolls into their palms during sleep.
And then the first collapse.
An entire section of the southern gardens—once a sanctum of tranquility—gave way with a groan of stone, revealing a spiral staircase carved not by mortal hands, but something more ancient.
Kael stood over the edge of the crater, watching the smoke spiral up.
"It's waking," he said.
"What is?" Selari asked, voice low.
Kael didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
It was in the air now. A rhythm that did not match the world's heartbeat.
Three days later, Kael, Selari, and four of the Memoryborn—Lirien the Soundbinder, Korin of Ironhall, Thessa of the Frost-Marked, and Ejal the Blood-Seer—descended the spiral.
Each step was a whisper. Each turn echoed with sounds from other lives.
Statues lined the descent, worn smooth by centuries, yet some bled from the eyes. One bore Kael's face—weathered, cracked, crowned with a wreath of burning chains.
"This place remembers you," murmured Ejal, tracing the statue's cheek.
"I've never been here," Kael said.
"Not in this life," she replied, not meeting his eyes.
At the base, they found the gate.
A door not made of wood or metal, but a solid sheet of silence. It absorbed light. Reflected nothing. It was not locked.
It was listening.
And when Kael placed his hand against it, it opened with a sound like thunder remembering how to scream.
Beyond the door was a chamber the size of a cathedral.
Pillars of fossilized light. Walls etched with runes that pulsed like veins. And in the center—a throne.
No occupant.
Only a cloak of smoke. A crown of embers. And a heartbeat.
A massive, ancient, echoing heartbeat.
Kael approached slowly. His own heart aligned with the rhythm, unwillingly.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Selari gasped, falling to her knees. Lirien clutched her temples, bleeding from the nose.
Only Kael remained standing, trembling, sweat rolling down his back.
"It's not a tomb," he whispered.
"Then what—" Korin began.
"It's a womb."
The cloak rose.
There was no body beneath it.
Only flame, chained in a circle of names.
Kael touched it. And the voice entered him.
"WE ARE THE FORGOTTEN.YOU ARE THE NAME WE LOST.BECOME US."
The moment Kael's hand touched the throne, the runes in the chamber blazed. Every sigil he'd ever seen reformed and merged—language collapsing and rebuilding into a single symbol burned into his skin:
The Sigil of Remembrance.
It tore the silence.
It awoke the Seal of Nine, deep beneath the capital.
It rang across the continent of Velgrath, breaking holy waters and waking sleeping gods in chains.
And above Nocthera, in the sky, the stars shifted.
Not metaphorically. Not in myth.
Physically.
The constellation known as the Flamecrown rotated.
And pointed downward.
Outside, the Academy quaked.
Professors fell to their knees.
Old relics shattered.
The Divine Concord held emergency councils. Portals sparked to life in long-dead shrines. A godborn child in the southern isles spoke in Kael's voice as her eyes burned red.
Kael rose from the throne.
The cloak now rested on his shoulders.
The embers now crowned his brow.
"They locked the flame away not to protect the world…" he said, voice no longer fully his.
"...but to keep the world from remembering who lit it."