She knelt in a pool of gold.
Sunlight poured from the dome above, filtered through crystal panes blessed by ten thousand prayers. The floor burned against her knees, not with heat—but with judgment.
The Temple of Aurelion stood silent.
Even the birds had stopped singing.
Celianne Virelain, youngest daughter of the Emperor, High Seeress-in-waiting, and the traitor's blood, whispered her prayer again.
And again.
And again.
Until the words blurred into air and the air became soundless.
Then—
A single beam of light shifted.
Not from the sun.
From something else.
It bathed her face, and for a moment, the marble beneath her shimmered—not gold, not white, but ash-gray.
Her eyes opened.
And she was no longer alone.
The Temple faded.
In its place: a void.
Not black. Not empty.
Just… absence.
As if reality had taken one long, deliberate breath and forgotten to exhale.
She stood barefoot on nothing. Her gown trailed behind her like spilled silk. And from the void, a voice came.
Female. Not human. Too many harmonies. Too few.
"Daughter of the blood that turned, you are seen."
Celianne's lips trembled. "Who speaks?"
"One who burned with your ancestor."
"One who offered fire and was denied."
"One who sees your brother's footsteps even in the places light won't go."
Her fists clenched. "Leonis…"
The voice softened. Almost pitying.
"He walks where he should not."
"He tears the veil. He speaks the names that were buried for good reason."
"Will you let him?"
"I don't want to kill him," she whispered.
"We do."
"But we will not ask that."
Celianne lifted her head.
"What then?"
A hand—if it could be called that—reached from the void.
A shape made of flame and geometry, impossible to look at without feeling her skin crawl.
In its center: a single eye, blinking sideways.
"See him as we do."
"See death not as end—but as structure. Purpose. Design."
"We offer you the gift of the Third Sight."
"But it has a cost."
"What cost?"
"You will no longer sleep without seeing the bones behind faces."
"You will no longer love without tasting the rot beneath breath."
"You will be… less."
Celianne hesitated.
Her mind screamed no.
But her voice, when it came, was calm.
"I accept."
Pain.
But not in the way mortals hurt.
This was undoing.
The way glass hurts when it remembers being sand.
The way hearts hurt when they see what keeps them beating.
Her body arched.
Her back split—just slightly—along a seam of divine light.
And then… stillness.
She stood in the Temple once more.
But her eyes—were not her own.
A priest stepped forward to speak.
She turned.
And saw the date of his death written in light across his chest.
She gasped.
And the gods whispered:
"Find him."
"Find the revenant."
"And see what lies at the end of his path."