The chamber beneath the Dreamspire trembled—a cathedral of starlight and screaming mirrors. Each surface showed a different future: Kaelith crowned in flame, Kaelith kneeling in blood, Kaelith alone beneath a shattered sky.
He stood at the center, eyes blazing behind the mask. Runes carved into his skin shimmered with pain-born power, each blow from the battle above feeding the storm inside him.
And still he smiled.
"Come," he whispered to the whirling echoes. "Let me feel it all."
Above, the Six pushed through the final ward. Thorin's warcry cracked the air. Selene's pact with the forgotten gods burned in her veins like frostfire. Lyra's arrows curved with impossible precision, guided by grief and purpose.
But it was Vaelorith who stepped forward first—face drawn, magic already unraveling in his hands.
"I've seen enough of your futures," he said coldly. "It's time you stopped seeing."
Kaelith tilted his head, intrigued. "You, Vaelorith? I thought you'd be last to act. Always the one chasing truth through arcane riddles and cowardice."
"I don't need courage to end you," Vaelorith snarled, and he began to speak in the language of unmaking.
The spell's name was Severance of the Ever-Gaze, a forbidden rite used by ancient seers to silence prophets who went mad from too much vision. It cost blood. It cost mind. And it would not be reversed.
Kaelith realized too late what was happening.
"No—" he hissed, reaching out with threads of fate—but they slipped through his fingers like smoke. The timelines around him fractured. Mirrors cracked. Futures went dark.
And for the first time in years… Kaelith could not see what came next.
He screamed—not in rage, but in terror.
His knees buckled.
The mask dimmed.
The mirrors shattered fully now, casting fragments of once-possible worlds into the void. In every shard, he saw himself—helpless. Blind. Mortal.
The Lunavynx shrieked, its form flickering. The creature stumbled to his side, nuzzling him in panic, its eyes full of lightless stars.
Kaelith clawed at the floor, breath ragged. "No... I need it. I need to see. Without it... I'm nothing."
Selene arrived next, her steps soft on the blood-slick floor.
"You've never feared death," she said gently. "Only uncertainty."
He looked up at her, eyes wide—childlike. "I built this world from pain. I knew how it ended. That was the only way I could survive it."
"No," said Aelric, stepping from the shadows. "You controlled it because you were afraid it would control you."
Kaelith blinked. The prophecy no longer danced in his thoughts. No whispers. No threads.
Only silence.
He trembled.
And for the first time, he did not smile.
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