The First World still breathed—barely.
It was called Zeraphine, once a nexus realm of sacred harmony, where Grand Sects spanned mountain ranges and Dao Lakes whispered to cultivators in their dreams. But now, it stood as a pantomime of glory.
Ruled not by virtue but by doctrine.
Sanctified not by merit but by lineage.
In its eastern quarter, beneath the iron skies of the Sablewind Province, a child was being born. A prince? No. A slave. His cry went unnoticed by the realm—but far beyond the heavens, Kael Vanthelmir felt it.
He had returned.
Not through portal, nor resurrection.
But through silent descent.
Kael emerged at the edge of Zeraphine's memory—a realm between pages, a myth too inconvenient to be preserved. The heavens shuddered slightly, but no alarm was raised. After all, the world had forgotten him.
The Celestial Court had decreed him dead.
The Heavenly Scribes had erased his name from the Eternal Scroll.
Even those who once called him "brother" now chanted a new sect's hymns, building golden towers atop the graves of his kin.
> "Let them forget," Kael whispered, his voice carried by a breathless wind.
He walked through ruins older than Zeraphine itself—the Twilight Halls of Qen'Thalar, one of the last remnants of the pre-Veil era. It was here that he would anchor his first steps back into the mortal tapestry.
Here, amidst broken stars and haunted stone, he found them—the Cradle Souls.
Three in number.
One born of fire, who spoke only in screams.
One born of time, weeping for moments never lived.
And one born of null, silent even in agony.
Kael knelt before them.
> "You remember," he said.
And they did. Even as their minds were shattered and their forms crumbling, they bowed to him—not as a god, nor a savior.
But as one of their own.
He reached into the void and pulled forth his second divine body—one still incomplete:
> The Aetherion Nihility Body — made not from matter, but from what never was.
His bones shimmered between dimensions. His breath echoed in languages no longer spoken. And as his feet touched the soil of Zeraphine, the land itself recoiled.
Somewhere, in the upper heavens, a bell rang—a small one. A tremor of fate.
> "He has returned," whispered an old priest, before collapsing into dust.
But Kael did not march toward the heavens. Not yet.
He walked toward a village—a forgotten patch of mortal insignificance nestled between decaying mountain sects. He watched them.
Humans. Living.
Laughing.
Praying.
> "Prayer…" he murmured, watching a boy light incense to the Skyfather.
A god who did nothing while Kael's sect burned.
He watched. Waited. And when the stars bled slightly red that night, he stepped back into shadow—not yet ready to reveal himself.
But soon.
> "When the heavens hear my name again," Kael whispered, "they will not sing it.
They will scream it."