Night had fallen over the Seal.But Kael was not asleep.He sat in the center of the circle, legs crossed, palms open. He was meditating. Or rather… he was listening.Not to the noises of the camp.
Not to the wind in the stones.
But to something else.Something that spoke beneath the world.
Lyssara approached silently, a blanket in her hand."Won't you rest a little?""No. The Void… is speaking to me."She raised an eyebrow."And what does it say?"Kael opened his eyes."That it is not alone."
Dream or vision?Suddenly, he was thrown out of himself.A formless place.No ground, no sky. Only voices.
"Three. Three pillars. Three wills."
"Order. Chaos. Void."
"You are one of them. But you are not yet yourself."
Then three figures appeared — faceless, bodiless, yet heavy with presence.The first shone with a suffocating light.
The second was made of flames and twisted laughter.
The third… was nothing. A hole in reality.
Kael addressed it."Who am I, then?"
"You are the one who will decide."
He woke with a start.Lyssara was asleep beside him, sitting, her head resting on a spear.Kael rose slowly. He felt something inside him had changed.One word had come to him in the vision.
"Nihrael."
Not a name. A title.
The Ether ManuscriptIn the ruins he had uncovered beneath the camp, Kael found a tablet. Ancient, engraved in a metal that seemed alien to this world.The glyphs vibrated.When he placed his hand on it, the text translated itself into his mind:
"When the Three speak again, the world will dissolve. Not in fire, nor in blood, but in negation. He who holds the Void will hold the origin."
He understood.He was not merely a Void mage.
He was destined to embody its will.
Back at the CampKael summoned all the former brigands and spoke to them for the first time as a leader, not just as the master of the Seal.
"The world has no place for you. Nor for me.
So we will create one. Here. Outside the rules. Outside the gods.
You are no longer thieves, nor survivors.
You are my pioneers."
A silence.Then one of them, a man with a weathered face, stepped forward."And you? What are you?"Kael looked up at the black sky."I am the first king of a world that does not yet exist."