[Flashback — Kael's Memory]
Once, Kael was praised as the mind of a generation—an inventor, philosopher, and scientist whose thoughts moved faster than time. He created tools that altered energy, systems that rewrote natural law. The world should have worshipped him. Instead, they feared him.
Because Kael questioned what others wouldn't.
He questioned Amon.
"A god?" Kael laughed during a public forum once. "What god needs to manipulate minds to be believed?"
The next day, his labs were burned. His students vanished. His name was scratched out of every record.
But Kael didn't break—because someone believed in him.
Vael.
He was nobody in the eyes of society. An orphan, a wanderer. But to Kael, he was everything.
They met when Kael was at his lowest, bleeding in an alley, hunted like a dog. Vael didn't ask for an explanation. He just knelt beside him, tore his own shirt, and wrapped the wound.
"You don't look like a monster to me," Vael said.
They lived together in exile. Hiding, studying, surviving. Vael would ask questions Kael never expected—about stars, about the soul, about why people needed gods.
"Because gods make fear feel like hope," Kael once told him.
Vael smiled sadly. "Then maybe the world needs a better kind of god."
But one morning, Kael woke up to an empty bed.
No signs of struggle. No sound. No blood.
Just a single page left behind:
> "If you ever find someone worth trusting again, don't let them go like you let me."
– Vael
Kael searched. For years.
But Vael was gone. Like a dream swallowed by morning.
And the one name Kael never forgave… was Amon.
[Present — The Cell]
Chains rattled. Dust choked the air.
Sunny awoke in the cold cell, his breath visible in the stale air. His head pounded with leftover memories from his forced transition between dreams and dimensions.
Then… a voice broke the silence.
"You breathe like a soldier," the voice said. "But you smell like failure."
Sunny stood, eyes narrowing. In the far corner of the cell sat a man draped in shadows. His hair was wild, face scarred, eyes gleaming with a mix of genius and madness.
Kael.
"You… fought Amon, didn't you?" Kael said, standing slowly. "You came with fire in your chest and an army behind you. What happened?"
"I lost," Sunny said. "But I didn't die."
Kael stepped closer, studying Sunny's expression. "Most don't make it here with memory intact. They wipe minds clean before tossing people into this pit."
"There was a mistake," Sunny said. "I saw something I wasn't meant to see… and now I remember too much."
Kael chuckled bitterly. "Good. Then maybe you'll understand what's coming."
"What's coming?"
Kael looked at the cracked stone walls. "This cage isn't just metal and silence. It's a symbol. Amon uses this place to erase anyone who resists. But people like us?" He leaned in. "We remember. That makes us dangerous."
Sunny's voice hardened. "Then I'll do what no one else dared to do. First, I'll destroy this prison. Then I'll find a way to kill Amon."
Kael stared at him for a long moment… then something strange happened.
He laughed.
Not mockingly—but like a man who hadn't felt hope in years.
"You're the second person I've ever believed in," he said.
Sunny nodded. "And I won't disappear like the first."