He arrived in silence.
No boom of energy, no pillar of light, no divine chorus. Just the smell of iron, the stench of blood, and a cold wind brushing against the exposed stone of a ruined temple.
Kael hovered two feet above the ground, body shimmering faintly as the summoning glyphs beneath him crackled and died.
It took less than a second for him to understand what kind of place this was.
War.
A battlefield, not long abandoned. There were corpses scattered like discarded puppets. Armored knights with shattered helms. Mages burned to black husks. Even the sky had scars—ripped open with leftover magic, bleeding unstable clouds.
Another failed world, then.
Kael stepped down, boots touching the blood-soaked marble without a sound. The moment he did, the last trace of summoning light vanished from the air, like it had never been there.
He looked around.
A girl was kneeling near the edge of the summoning circle. Her robes were ceremonial—white and gold, lined with silver thread—but they were torn, soaked in crimson, and burned at the edges.
She was alive, barely.
Eyes wide, body shaking.
"P-Please," she whispered, voice raw. "We… we had no choice. The others—th-they said the ritual would work. That you'd come. That you'd save us."
Kael looked down at her without speaking.
She had no idea what she'd done.
No idea who she had summoned.
"You're not the first," he said calmly. "Not the first to call. Not the first to beg. Not the first to bleed."
The girl choked, trying to form words. Her fingers clawed at the hem of his coat. "Please… we summoned you because the gods stopped answering. The demons broke the seal. The empire—everything—it's gone. We needed help. We thought you were…"
"Divine?" Kael finished. His voice was quiet, not unkind, but something in it made her flinch.
He turned away, walking to the edge of the ruined platform. Beyond it, mountains burned in the distance. A black sun hovered low in the sky, casting the land in unnatural shadow.
"Irides never had a sun like that," he murmured to himself.
The girl blinked. "I-I don't understand."
Kael didn't answer right away. His hand rose slowly, and he traced a sigil in the air. It shimmered—a tiny thing, silver and flickering.
It showed him the weave of this world. The mana flow. The soul density. The planar signature.
New world confirmed. Coordinates unlinked. Summoner anchor: incomplete.
That last part made him pause.
There was no full summoning anchor.
Which meant...
They didn't know how to send him back.
Kael sighed. "You opened the door but forgot to build a way out."
He turned to her. "What did you offer for the summon?"
Her lips trembled. "W-We burned the Skyward Codex. A thousand years of spells. A generation of mages. And… and my lifespan. I gave all of it. Every day I had left."
Kael studied her quietly. He didn't feel pity. Not exactly.
But he did feel something stir.
An old emotion, half-dead.
"…That's expensive," he said finally. "And foolish."
She broke down then, sobbing into the stone, body racked with silent guilt.
Kael knelt beside her, gently prying her fingers off his coat. "Listen carefully. I won't undo your mistake. But I will answer your summon."
Her eyes lifted in disbelief. "Y-You'll… help?"
"No," he said. "But I'll walk your world."
And with that, Kael rose, dusted off his coat, and walked down the shattered steps of the temple—into a world already dying.