There was no pain.
No weight.
No ground.
No sky.
Only... stillness.
Kael floated in nothing.
He couldn't breathe but he didn't need to. He couldn't move but there was nowhere to go.
He was simply... there.
Am I dead?
A ripple passed through the void.
Like someone had thrown a pebble into silence.
Then light.
Soft at first. Then blinding.
It poured from a tear in the air, opening like an eye.
Something stepped through.
A figure, wrapped in flowing robes that shimmered like stardust. Neither man nor beast. Neither old nor young. No face just a shifting mask of light and shadow. It radiated something deeper than fear. Something ancient.
Kael felt small. Like a grain of sand in a storm.
"Kael Ardyn," the figure said, voice echoing from everywhere and nowhere. "Your thread has been cut. You are no longer of the living."
Kael tried to speak, but his mouth didn't exist.
"I am the End-Caller. The god who unties souls."
A pause.
"You should not have lived as long as you did. Your presence shifted faith."
The god raised a hand. Reality cracked like glass.
"Your soul will now be erased."
Kael's thoughts screamed. Erased? Not judged, not reborn gone?
He panicked.
Words slipped out not from his lips, but from the desperate core of his being.
"W-Wait!"
The god stilled.
"What purpose does a dead child have left?"
Kael swallowed or felt like he did.
"…Someone once told me you shouldn't die without using your talent." His voice trembled, but he forced the words out. "I was born to lead. To fight. To… understand the battlefield."
A pause.
"I might be dead, but I still have knowledge. Experience. Skills."
He looked up. "Couldn't I… use them somewhere else?"
The god was silent. The void itself seemed to watch.
Then...
The god… laughed.
A deep, ancient, quiet sound that stirred the nothingness.
"Interesting."
It stepped closer.
"I was not going to offer a choice."
The cracks in reality mended behind it.
"But… a request has reached even me. From a being I am not allowed to name."
Kael blinked. "A request?"
"Yes." The god lifted a single finger.
A book floated between them.
The Rise of the Hollow Core.
His favorite novel. His father's greatest work.
Kael's eyes widened.
"You loved this story, didn't you?" the god said.
"So much that you never finished it. Saving the end for the perfect moment."
The book glowed.
"Then I shall send you inside."
Kael stared in disbelief.
"W-Why?"
The god turned away.
"You are being given a second chance. Not because of merit… but because someone remembered you."
It faced the void again.
"Survive. Grow. Break the world, if you must. But this time finish your story."
Kael reached for the light as it swallowed him whole.
"Good luck, Kael Ardyn."
"The story begins again."
And then...
White.
Heat.
Breath.
Life.