The wind over Mithralin's rooftops was thin tonight — sharp, anxious.
El sat alone on the highest spire she could find without alerting the city's trackers. Below her, the lights of Tier Two pulsed like quiet heartbeats. And somewhere in that pulse, she could feel him.
Kael had been marked. She didn't see it with her eyes.She felt it — like a thread had been tied around his presence, so faint it should be ignorable.
But it wasn't. "You fools," she whispered into the wind. "You don't even know what you've touched."
She held a memory-stone to her temple and called an old contact — a soulkeeper from another sector.
"Has the Soul Mirror activated?" she asked.
"Yes," came the reply. "And it saw mist."
El exhaled sharply.
Only one other being in recorded history had registered as mist: A name scrawled in a long-lost script, dug from the ash of a forgotten moon:
Raygon Drako.
Beneath the throne of Mithralin lay a circular stone chamber — the Oris Vault — where no light touched unless summoned.
The Queen stood at the center, surrounded by her Circle of Twelve: generals, seers, historians, and bloodline heirs. A single scroll hovered midair — old, half-burned, ancient script still glowing.
It read only a few lines:
"He walked without a shadow. He wept before time broke. The threads bent to him — not out of fear, but out of recognition. Raygon Drako: Name of Silence."
The Queen pointed.
"This is the source of the myth. One name. No power signatures. No battles recorded. Not a god. Not even ranked in the Ascendant lists."
One of the Twelve asked, "Why mention him now?"
She turned.
"Because the Soul Mirror read mist. And only one other has ever done that. This Kael… may be nothing. But if he's connected to this, I want him near the cleansing."
The Queen walked toward a larger map now — one covered in sigils, constellations, and corpse markers. She placed a hand on a faded marking: The Sector Wound.
"Each decade, we open a false gate," she said. "A dimensional cut designed to attract those whose souls are... malformed. We call it the Sector Battle. But it is not a game. It is a culling."
"To weed out those who do not belong." The others nodded. This was not new to them. But she leaned closer now, eyes hard. "If this Kael reaches the Gate… and survives… we will know what he is."
"And if he doesn't," one general said. "Then something else will consume him. Either way, we learn."
El stood atop the quiet rooftop, the cold wind brushing past her, sharp as memory.
She could feel Kael now — marked, watched. Drawn into the coming storm.
"They don't know what the Shards are," she whispered."And maybe… neither do we."
The word Raygon sat in her mind like a name she wasn't supposed to speak.
She had studied the scrolls. Fought the battles. Watched others rise, then vanish.
None of it brought clarity.
Was Raygon a god? A myth? A mistake?
No one agreed. Not the scholars. Not the echoes. Not even the last Shard she met — before they were erased in the last Sector.
She touched the sigil hidden beneath her collarbone. It still pulsed when she was near the unknowable.
Kael's aura had made it pulse. And that terrified her more than anything. "If he steps into the Sector Gate unprepared…" She didn't finish the sentence. Because she didn't know what would be lost. Only that something would be.
And for once, she didn't want to watch it happen.