The grand hall of the academy's upper sanctum was carved from obsidian, cold and silent like a tomb. Here, beneath flickering silver torches, sat the Council of Ten, draped in ritual garb and hidden behind masks of bone, metal, and flame.
Kael walked in alone.
No chains. No guards.
The doors behind him shut with a boom that echoed like a war drum.
The Grandmaster, seated at the highest point of the crescent dais, leaned forward. "Number 9999… or shall we call you by the name you now inspire—Shadow King?"
Kael didn't bow.
"I'm not here for titles," he said. "Only to tell you this: Your time is over. Mine begins."
Several councilors laughed. One—a masked man with runes etched into his skin—snapped his fingers. "Bold words for a whelp raised in the dirt. You forget yourself."
Kael's shadow surged upward behind him like a wave about to crash. The torches dimmed, the shadows in the chamber crawling toward him as if pulled by gravity.
"I forget nothing," Kael said. "But you forgot something far more dangerous."
He lifted a hand—and the shadows obeyed. They launched forward like spears, stabbing toward the council.
Magical barriers flared up, golden and holy—but Kael's darkness didn't stop. It pierced them, twisted through cracks, and broke the wards with brute, impossible force.
Three councilors stood. One raised a staff, lightning crackling across the floor.
Kael extended his hand.
The entire hall darkened.
For one impossible moment, everything—sound, movement, light—froze. Not by spell or blade. But by a presence.
It wasn't Kael alone anymore.
Something was watching through him.
The runed councilor fell to his knees. "No… that presence… that's not shadow—"
Kael's voice came deeper, distorted. Layered. Two voices speaking as one.
> "I am not shadow. I am the thing that birthed it."
The floor cracked. The banners of the academy turned black. The Grandmaster stood, finally realizing the mistake they had made: Kael was not a threat to tame. He was a vessel they could no longer control.
Kael's shadow twisted upward into the shape of a throne behind him—spiked, ancient, pulsing with slow, heart-like beats of void energy.
Kael sat.
"Your council ends here."
---
The Awakening
That night, alone atop the peak tower, Kael stood in silence, his cloak of shadow fluttering in an unnatural wind.
He felt it.
Something changing. Inside him.
The whispers had grown louder. No longer voices of the dead or the fearful. These were primordial—echoes that predated language.
He looked at his hand. The skin shimmered—not just dark, but veined with glowing threads of midnight-blue. As if starlight ran through his blood.
The ground beneath his feet trembled softly.
A voice—calmer now—spoke inside his mind.
> "You were not made. You were remembered."
Visions flooded him. Not of this world—but before.
An ancient war. A figure wrapped in shadow, crowned with bone, holding a blade that screamed with every swing. Armies of light and fire breaking against him. Gods whispering his name in fear.
Kael.
He dropped to one knee, gasping.
Not from pain. From recognition.
It was not just a power he had inherited.
It was a return.
Something within him was awakening.
Something that once ruled.
And it wanted the world back.