Once, a man bore a crown of fire.
He had no beginning that the world could remember. To mortals, he simply was -a force of nature, an inevitability, like death or time. Kingdoms rose in fear of him, and kings grew famous simply for surviving his gaze. They named him Kairos, though that was never his true name. It was merely the sound of fate, spoken in fear.
For a thousand years, the Demon King stood undefeated. Not because he could not die - but because he chose not to.
Until one day… he changed his mind.
The final battle was not written in prophecy. No angels fell from the heavens. No cursed sword pierced the world.
Instead, Kairos stood upon the broken plains of Arendhil, his long black hair dancing in the wind like strands of silk spun from night. The sky wept ash. The armies of men, ragged and brave, charged forward screaming names of gods who had long abandoned them.
Kairos stood still, his black eyes raging but empty.
At his back were six - his most faithful. His generals, his killers, his only kin. And among them, there stood a woman cloaked in silver and silence.
She was a moon elf, the last of a dying bloodline, whose blade could dance with light itself. She bore no name of her own, having forsaken it long ago. But the Demon King called her Kai - for she was the closest thing to a reflection he had.
He turned to her then as the human armies grew near.
"Kai," he said, voice low and calm. "This might be my last battle, do not interfere."
Her expression barely shifted. But her grip on her sword trembled.
"You do not mean this," she said.
"I do."
"Then I will die first."
A flicker of a smile touched his lips. Not cruel. Not kind. Just… tired.
"No," he said. "You will live. All of you will. That is my final command."
And with that — he walked forward. Alone.
The world would forever remember what happened next: how the Demon King let the blade of a human boy pierce his heart; how he fell to his knees like a man, not a god; how he smiled as he died.
But none saw what came after.
A thousand years later. The world had forgotten his name.
His kingdom had fallen to ruin and his generals had vanished into myth and dust. The world, at last, belonged to mortals. And yet… somewhere beneath the roots of the world, in a ruined temple where time held no meaning, something stirred.
A breath.
A heartbeat.
A name, whispered not by lips but by memory:
"…Kairos."
And from stone and shadow, the so called Demon King opened his eyes once more.
When Kairos fell, the world exhaled.
The skies cleared. The soil, once scorched and broken, softened. The age of war ended - not in triumph but in the silence that comes when a storm has passed, and no one is left to count the dead.
But what became of the six who stood behind him?
Even now, a thousand years later, the truth is cloaked in shadow and rumor.
They did not die that day - that much is known. For when the human armies reached the battlefield, the generals of the Demon King were gone. Vanished. As if swallowed by the earth itself.
Kai, the nameless knight, was last seen kneeling beside his body, her sword driven into the ground beside her - not in surrender, but in mourning. Some say she walked into the sea and was never seen again. Others believe she still wanders the ruins of the Demon King's citadel, a ghost in silver armor, awaiting his return.
Ruin, the Beast of the North, howled once - a sound so sorrowful it split the ice of the frozen wastes - then disappeared into the endless snow.
Salem, the Binder of Shadows, whose magic once turned light to ash, burned every trace of his forbidden library and vanished into the fold between worlds.
Yura and Vex, the twin stormcasters, were seen only once more - locked in battle against a great serpent in the sky. Their bodies were never recovered, only lightning scars left in the shape of wings.
Orin, the Silent Strategist, left behind only a chessboard, half-finished, with a single white king tipped over.
They each went their own way - not out of fear, but because they no longer had a reason to fight.
The world told tales: of monsters, of betrayal, of vanishing demons and cursed bloodlines. But none could answer the question whispered in frightened corners:
"Why did the Demon King choose to die?"
And none dared wonder what would happen if he ever returned.
Now, a thousand years later, beneath the ruins of a long-dead world, a heartbeat echoes in a chamber carved from obsidian and bone.
His body lies unrotted — untouched by time. Hair still long and fine, black as midnight. Chest bare, marked by the scar of his death. Eyes closed, as though simply asleep.
Then— a pulse of dark light.
Faint. Then stronger.
His fingers twitch.
His eyes — black and furious — snap open.
He inhales sharply, the breath of a man who remembers dying.
"No," he whispers, voice hoarse. "Not again…"
Above, the world stirs. Kingdoms shift. And far away, on a forgotten cliff where silver leaves grow, a moon elf opens her eyes — and feels something she hasn't felt in a thousand years:
Him.
I. The Throne of Dust
Kairos sat in silence.
The air around him was thick with centuries-old magic — inert now, like coals long gone cold. The crypt in which he awoke was one of his own design, carved by his hands, shaped by his power, meant to be his end.
It had not been touched. Not by time, not by thieves, not by fate.
"So… the world obeyed my final command," he said to no one. His voice echoed against stone. "Let me rest."
His hand touched the stone beside him, the place where his sword had once been — the sword he shattered before dying, so none would wield it again.
Now it was gone. Not stolen. Dissolved.
His body ached, not from age, but from memory. He remembered the blade that ended him. A human boy — barely seventeen, wielding courage like a torch in the dark. Kairos had knelt to receive the strike, hands open. And in that moment… he had truly wanted to die.
And yet here he was.
Alive.
Why?
Outside the tomb, the world had changed.
Trees had grown where there once were thorns. Villages dotted the hills, with laughter and smoke curling from chimneys. Even the cursed river — once turned black by Kairos's own rage — now ran clear and cold.
But not all had healed.
There were ruins still. Bones. Names carved into stone no one remembered. Temples abandoned. In the north, shadows still whispered in ancient tongues. And south of the Sunlit Vale, something dark stirred once again.
The balance held — just barely. As if the world, despite its peace, still remembered what it had once feared.
He walked the land as a stranger.
Clad in simple black cloth from the tomb, long hair tied back with twine. The people did not recognize him. Why would they? The legends painted him with horns, wings, eyes like suns — not as a man with weary steps and a face half-buried by time.
In a nameless village, he sat by a fire.
Children ran past him, laughing, chasing each other with sticks.
A woman offered him bread. He took it.
"You're not from around here," she said.
"No," he answered. "I'm from a place that no longer exists."
"Aren't we all?" she said with a smile.
He watched her leave.
He could have cried - not out of sorrow, but something harder to name.
This is the world without me.
It was beautiful.
It was right.
So why… was he back?
Far across the continent, in a forgotten temple overgrown with silver vines, Kai stirred.
She had not aged.
Moon elves, it is said, live as long as the moon remembers their name - and she had given hers away long ago. She was no longer a woman of the court, no longer a knight, no longer a blade of vengeance.
She was simply Kai, as he had called her.
And today, for the first time in a thousand years, she felt him.
It wasn't just memory. Not hope. Not delusion.
"Kairos," she whispered, and the temple trembled.
The silver sword she had sealed into the altar — the one she swore never to draw again — shimmered with a faint pulse.
A promise, reawakened.
If you return, I will find you.
And so she rose.
As Kairos journeyed, he saw pieces of the old world hiding beneath the new. Statues overgrown with ivy — his own face, defaced or forgotten. Relics of his six companions, warped by folklore into monsters, saints, or ghosts.
He found a ruined fortress by the sea. Once it had been Ruin's stronghold — a citadel built of bone and salt, where the Beast of the North had ruled with fang and fire. Now, only crows lived there.
He stood in the courtyard, listening to the wind howl through the cracked stone.
"Where are you, old friend?" he whispered.
No answer came.
In a city of glass towers and scholar-kings, Kairos entered a library bearing his own name - The Kairosian Vault of Warded History.
He laughed, just once.
Inside, scrolls spoke of him as a myth, a tyrant, a devil in flesh.
"He drank the blood of stars," one scroll said.
"He could not be killed, so the gods erased him," claimed another.
"He was slain by the Hero of the Light — Ser Alvan the Pure," read a third.
Kairos smiled thinly. Ser Alvan was the boy who struck the final blow — but he hadn't won a battle. He had granted a request.
He traced the parchment with one hand.
"You needed me to be a monster," he murmured. "So you could feel holy."
But there was no anger in his voice.
Only exhaustion.
It was on the seventh night of his wandering that he first saw the mark.
A symbol, burned into the bark of a dead tree — shaped like a spiral of teeth. Old magic. Wrong magic.
It didn't belong to the humans.
Or to the elves.
Or to him.
He crouched, hand brushing the edge of it.
"You woke me up," he said aloud, "but not for your sake. So whose?"
He looked toward the sky, where clouds churned unnaturally fast.
Far to the east, something vast stirred in the dark. A slumbering god. Or worse.
Kairos stood.
"So… perhaps the world hasn't changed as much as I thought."
That night, he dreamt.
He stood once again in the moment of his death — the blade inside his chest, Kai's scream echoing through the storm.
But this time, he saw more.
He saw a shadow standing behind the boy.
Not a man. Not a god. Just eyes.
Watching.
Laughing.
"You really thought you could leave?" the voice whispered.
"Even death is not yours to choose."
Kairos jolted awake.
His hand burned.
On his palm, where once there was nothing, a brand had appeared: a spiral of teeth.
At sunrise, on the edge of a crumbling forest, Kairos heard a voice.
"I should cut you down for abandoning us."
He turned.
There she was — dressed in worn silver mail, white hair tied back, eyes like moonlit steel. Her blade was at her hip. Her posture still perfect.
Kai.
He looked at her, taking in every detail. It had been a thousand years, but she had not changed.
And neither had he.
"You found me," he said softly.
"I felt you the moment you breathed again," she replied.
They stood for a long time in silence.
"Why are you here?" she asked at last. "Why now?"
"I didn't choose this," he said. "Something brought me back."
"And the others?"
"Gone. Lost. Scattered. Perhaps dead."
"Then we find them."
He raised an eyebrow.
"You would gather the Six again?"
"If the world dares wake a king it buried, it should be ready to face his generals."
He smiled.
"Still faithful, after all this time?"
"No," she said. "Still angry."
Later, as they camped under a shattered tree, Kairos stared into the fire.
Kai sat beside him, silent as always, sharpening her blade.
"I meant to stay dead," he said.
"You died by choice. But you're here now."
"What if I make it worse again?"
She paused. Looked at him.
"Then maybe this time, we win. Or maybe not."
He laughed.
The fire crackled.
Above them, the stars spun - same as they always had, uncaring and eternal.
But beneath them, something ancient began to move.
The Demon King had returned.
And the world, whether it wanted to or not… would remember.