I. The Last Son of Flame
His name was Kael—the youngest of Zaxton's children, born in the twilight of the Third Realm's reconstruction.
Where his brothers embodied storm and discipline, Kael was fire and shadow, silence and curiosity.
He had always been a step outside the rhythm of the world, a boy who stared too long at the stars and asked questions older than war.
He vanished when Zaxton first entered his 32-year seclusion.
He left behind no note, no goodbye—only a half-burned star map, found in his meditation chamber, inked in celestial blood.
Only now, with the Fourth Realm unified, did Zaxton allow himself to truly ask:
> Where did Kael go?
And more terrifying—
> What was he chasing?
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II. The Hollow Star Gate
Zaxton returned to Kael's last known location—a hidden observatory buried beneath Dawnward Bastion, layered in celestial seals only a Starborn could unbind.
There, he found a Hollow Star Gate—a forbidden type of celestial transit, forged not with spatial intent, but with temporal resonance.
It pulsed not with a destination, but a when.
Worse—its aura was corrupted, laced with a strange energy: lightless light, as if something had inverted the very laws of flame.
As Zaxton touched it, a vision tore into his mind:
> —Kael standing before an obsidian planet that devoured light—
—a black sun rising in reverse—
—a whisper, not in words but certainty: "He has seen the Fifth."
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III. The Vault of Icarus
Alarmed, Zaxton sought counsel from Icarus, who led him deep beneath the Dragon Scale Empire into the Vault of Falling Stars, a chamber sealed from even the Realm's laws.
There, Icarus showed him a stone.
It was small, but it pulsed with power beyond the Fourth Realm. Not planetary. Not stellar.
> "This came from the Fifth Realm," Icarus said gravely. "We've called it the Void Seed."
"Kael has touched something like this," Zaxton muttered.
"Then your son has glimpsed the edge of our reality. And something looked back."
Icarus hesitated, then handed him a key made from starlight petrified into matter.
> "If Kael opened a Hollow Star Gate, there's only one place you'll find traces of his path."
"Where?"
"The Waning Citadel—a ruin that fell from the Fifth Realm thousands of years ago, now drifting between dimensions. You'll need that key just to survive its gravity."
Zaxton took it.
His blood roared. His rings pulsed.
He whispered his son's name like a vow to the stars:
> "Kael… I will find you. Or I will burn the path open myself."
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IV. Journey to the Waning Citadel
With the Solar Guard forbidden from following, Zaxton departed alone. He exited the fourth realm through a dimensional fracture only visible under the black phase of the triad moons.
The void between realms howled.
Time slowed. Light crawled.
And then he saw it—The Waning Citadel: a fractured fortress of dead orbits and shivering light, its halls cracked and bleeding blue mist. A relic of a realm that should not yet be real.
He stepped inside.
The gravity screamed.
But the Petrified Star Key held.
He walked through rooms where time repeated itself in loops, corridors where stars whispered secrets, and one chamber where he saw a frozen vision of Kael—alive, screaming, locked in a time fracture as something tried to consume him from all directions at once.
> "FATHER!"
Zaxton struck the fracture with all his might, but it did not break.
Only Kael's voice remained, echoing:
> "They come. From the Fifth. Through me."
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V. The Fifth Realm Moves
When Zaxton emerged from the citadel weeks later, all his rings flickered with instability. His very soul had touched a place beyond understanding.
He returned to the Fourth Realm changed—but not broken.
And when he opened his palm, he held a sliver of Voidfire, cold and bright, the first of its kind ever brought back.
> "They're using my son as a Gate."
"They seek to invade through blood," Icarus said grimly.
"Then I will build a warpath from every bastion I've made. I will burn a scar into the Fifth."
But deep inside, even Zaxton feared it:
Kael had gone where even Golden Gas Giants feared to tread.
He had touched the eldritch edge of celestial cultivation.
And whatever was coming through him…
…it did not obey moons.
It did not obey planets.
It did not even obey stars.