Echo of the First Betrayer
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Kael stood at the pinnacle of Zephyrinth.
The air around him buzzed with newly-awakened power — too much power. His senses fractured, then reformed. He could hear the stillness between seconds, see the tension in sunlight, taste the fear stitched into the wind.
The Shard had changed him.
It hadn't just bonded. It had rewritten something inside him.
Below, the Glass Desert rippled like water under a storm. The Veilstorm faded, leaving the sand charred and humming. And far in the distance — on the horizon of memory and time — Kael saw a gate begin to form. A gate made of dark glass and bone.
The Door of Return.
He didn't know how he knew that name.
He just did.
---
Theron limped toward the tower's base, blood trailing from a wound beneath his ribs. Aenya Drae had vanished — vanished, not fled. She had whispered something before the light consumed the battlefield:
> "He's awake now. Let's see if he remembers me."
Kael met Theron at the tower's base. One look between them — exhaustion, worry, the quiet bond of shared war — and no words were needed.
But then Theron said, almost absently:
"She said something before she vanished. About you."
Kael's voice was hoarse. "What?"
Theron hesitated. "That you already knew her. That you loved her… once."
The world tilted.
Kael staggered, hand to his temple. Images crashed into him — a girl with ember eyes, laughing beneath a veil of moonlight. Her name wasn't Aenya, not then.
Eiryel.
She had been his first Echo partner. His protector.
His betrayer.
The Veil surged in his blood, ancient and angry.
And suddenly, Kael remembered.
---
Eight years ago.
A hidden monastery, cloaked in snow.
Two students, bound by Shard inheritance. Trained together. Bled together. Loved each other.
Kael and Eiryel.
But Eiryel had made a different choice.
She had opened the gate that should've remained sealed. She had betrayed the Echo Order to the Veilcrowned Dynasty. And in the fire that followed, Kael's memory had been erased to keep the Shard within him hidden.
Not forgotten.
Just buried.
Until now.
---
Back in the present, Kael's fists shook.
"She was the one who broke the Axis," he whispered.
Theron's face darkened. "You're sure?"
"I saw it. Not with my eyes… with the Veil."
Silence hung between them.
Kael turned toward the emerging Gate on the horizon — the Door of Return, a myth whispered in ancient scripts. Said to lead not to another place, but to a forgotten age.
And somewhere beyond that gate… the Veilfather waited.
"I need to go through it," Kael said.
Theron exhaled slowly. "Then we'll need a crew. That's Dynasty territory. And we've got a bounty on our heads the size of a small kingdom."
Kael's voice sharpened. "Then let's steal a kingdom."