The world had begun to take notice.
Not just of the growing constellation of Darkshards, but of the subtle tide rising behind them: people letting go of burdens they'd been told to carry forever. Broken warriors abandoning pedestals. Once-faithful lieges folding the banners of flame. Not in anger. Not in rebellion. In something quieter. More whole.
That's when the Light Accord reacted.
In glass towers cracked by wind, in ruined churches where dust now led the sermons, Lightbearers began to whisper a word they hadn't spoken in centuries:
Umbrael.
They didn't name it in fear. They named it like something half-remembered—an ache they had buried, now stirring in the bones of the world.
In response, the Accord dispatched a seeker: Maelon, once a sculptor of light whose art carved cathedrals from rays and song. Now, his role was colder—one who silenced dissent. He traveled with no retinue, no armor. Only a mask forged from a broken mirror and a blade that hummed when lies were spoken.
His mission: trace the pattern of these so-called Darkbearers. Find the source. Break it.
He caught up with them in the skeletal city of Tel Vareth, a place long abandoned after its water turned to dust and its maps to myth. Solin, Vereya, and Revek had paused there not to hide, but to listen—because cities remember.
Among the collapsed spires, Revek traced a faded engraving of a child holding both sun and moon in either hand. "This place," he whispered, "once understood balance."
Maelon stepped forward from the broken streets.
"No place understands balance," he said.
Only victory. Only weight."
His presence disrupted the shadows. The Darkshards pulsed, uneasy—not in fear, but in recognition. For once, they had not approached one to invite. This time, the story had come for them.
And Solin, calm as dusk, did not reach for power.
He reached for Maelon's name.
He spoke it—softly, tenderly—before the sculptor could raise his blade.
A name not heard since he was a child, since before the mask, since before the light had taught him to carve beauty by slicing silence.
Maelon froze.
Because the dark did not resist him. It remembered him.
And in that moment, a fifth shard formed—not of pain, or surrender, or even witness.
But of recognition.
It flickered like breath held too long.
And it chose Maelon.
He dropped the blade.
Would you like to follow Maelon's first act as a bearer of shadowlight—or see how the Accord responds when they realize the seeker they sent has joined the silence? This isn't a war—it's an unraveling of old truths. 🕯️🖤