Kaelen fell through darkness and ash down an endless spiral of uncertainty and echoes. When he landed, it was in a place unmade: twisted stone, ashen sky, and a silence so vast it felt like emptiness itself.
He rose, his heart hammering in his chest, cold sweat pooling at his feet. In the sky above, a word burned brighter than any star:
THE SAINT OF UNDOING
The letters pulsed in agony, dripping ash as they carved themselves into the heavens.
He walked forward, ragged breaths rattling through his bones. All around him, the world was already dead. Crumbling statues of angels wept molten glass. Rivers of black flame pooled into pits of despair. The mountains floated like fractured teeth, jagged and hungry.
As he moved, people knelt each bowed head facing him. Their faces were empty, devoid of hope. Their posture surrendered, but their silent reverence spoke of prophecy: He had won.
Kaelen's boots cracked stone. "I… I didn't want this." His voice sounded lost in the rancid sky.
And then he saw himself.
A figure in mourning white, regally tall. Wyrdmarks traced across his chest and shoulders black sigils sewn like wounds into living flesh. He stood on a pedestal like a god, but Kaelen recognized the emptiness in his eyes.
Future Kaelen: "You couldn't bring him back. You couldn't stop Auren's breath from going out. But you found a way to stop everyone else's heartbeat from ever ending."
The voice was soft, unavoidable and spoken in the same tone Kaelen had used when promising never to let anyone die again.
Kaelen's throat burned. "Who… who are you?"
Future Kaelen: "I am what happens when grief refuses to rest. You became the myth that stopped time. They call me the Saint of Undoing. I rewrote the world's grief into immortality."
Ash fell from the sky. Kaelen raised a hand, but the wind kept him silent.
Saint: "I have rewritten death.""I have sewn wounds into wreaths.""I have danced on broken clocks."
A choir of whispers echoed behind them:
"He ended it all.""We live... always.""He will save us."
Kaelen's chest heaved. "No." The word broke like glass.
Saint: "You can carve a name now. Utter it. Silence the past completely."
In the sky above, another glyph began to form: Vahl'Sereth Silence as Sovereign.
Kaelen felt a cold steel pull in his gut: this name was thistle, thorn, blade, and shackle all in one.
He shook his head. "No. Never."
The great statues shattered around him. The ashen world trembled. Earth cracked, revealing glowing glyphs beneath.
"Then speak a different truth," the Saint urged.
Kaelen closed his eyes. He thought of Auren's face the bright ember of hope. He thought of Kaelen's hands, bloodied but willing to hold.
He spoke:
"He Should Have Lived."
The ground erupted.
A slab of runestone rose. The three runes Aen (Should), Tol (Grief), Veyr (Life) formed around him, glowing in incandescent grief.
A blade of living flame formed in his hand, blue‑white and cold not shining, but agonizingly bright.
The Saint stepped back. His voice faltered, caught in the wind.
Kaelen lowered the blade, and the world shook. The sky cracked. The statues of angels, once weeping molten glass, fractured into thousands of mirror shards that fell and exploded in silence.
Kaelen steadied himself as a roar ripped through the heavens.
The Wyrd was answering. The world wept.
From the pain of reality a living glyph formed around Kaelen. It encircled him, a cage of runes that burned with blue-white energy. Every pulse was a heartbeat of grief made flesh.
The forbidden glyph bled through the fracture:
𓂀 - the myth of named silence now consumed by Kaelen's grief.
His new sigil absorbed the distortion, warping it. The symbol twisted itself to read:
The Flame of What Should Have Been.
He dimmed the blade. The air stilled. No one knelt anymore.
The Saint watched. Silence filled the cratered land.
Kaelen's blade drooped. Brilliance drained.The wind abated.
He was alone. And it felt like victory.
Kaelen faced the apparition now no pedestal, no crowd.
Kaelen (voice brittle): "You… you're me."Saint: "I am what happens when myth refuses to be undone."
He raised his hand. A shard of ash fell. "I choose-
Kaelen's voice broke:"I choose sorrow. I choose this grief. I choose this-"His voice choked.
The new glyph pulsed, reshaping the world. The sky began to heal colors returning, air stabilizing.
Saint whispered softly:"Then I die."
The Saint's form shattered. Light bent through him. He broke, folding back into the world like wounded paper.
The sky roared. Time fractured.
Kaelen felt it every promise unmade, every future uncarved.
He fell to his knees. The glyph burned through him. It pulsed: stronger than the pain.
And he whispered:
"Let the world remember."
Kaelen felt himself falling. Back into the Archive. He gasped, choking on ash-lit air as the Master appeared beside him.
The Archive's corridors glowed with brand-new runes etched into stone like lightning.
The Master knelt. His voice cracked:
Master: "You chose."
He gently touched Kaelen's shoulder.
"You carve yourself into myth… and now… you are remembered."
Kaelen's Wyrdmark pulsed. It blazed.
Master: "The Wyrd watches. Not as recorder but as witness."
Light pulsed through the forbidden glyph-wall.Kaelen's chest tightened fear still lingering.
Far, far away, in a dark room beneath a shattered chapel, a cloaked figure knelt before an altar of black stone.
They raised a quill. Trembling.
They carved three mirrored runes:
"He Should Have Died."
Blood pooled at the base of the altar. Glyphs flared.Something ancient stirred.
A low growl or perhaps a voice:
"They remembered me wrong."