The dream bled away slowly.
Ash dissolved into dawnlight, and the echoes of Vorath's throne room scattered like frightened crows in Kaelen's mind. The waking world was quieter — but not kinder.
He sat upright beneath the grey skies of the Vaelgardan outskirts, the others still asleep near the dwindling campfire. Beyond the frost-laced trees, morning wind stirred old banners on the ruined watchtowers.
But Kaelen barely saw them.
The dream had not been just a dream.
Long before the Order, before blades and vows, Kaelen had another name — one only the oldest kept records remembered.
He had grown up in the hinterlands of Thareth, a village nestled beneath ruins no one dared map. There, whispers spoke not of gods, but of something older — the Veilkin, spirits that danced at the edges of twilight, their voices braided into wind and water.
Kaelen's mother was the last of the Whisper-Blooded. She had never claimed magic. But sometimes, when her voice drifted through the house during winter storms, the fire would rise on its own. Sometimes, the shadows leaned forward to listen.
And when she died, they did not fade.
They followed him.
As a child, Kaelen would see things others could not. At first, he spoke of it — and earned the fear of his kin. Then he grew quiet, learned to carry the strange burden like a second spine.
He trained with blades not because he craved war, but because he feared what stirred inside him when he did not move. There were nights when his blood hummed with voices. Forgotten names curled like smoke behind his eyes. In those moments, he feared he would split apart and something ancient would crawl from his ribs.
When the Order found him, he was only fifteen — bloodied, exhausted, standing alone atop a ridge surrounded by the slain. Raiders, they had said.
But their bodies were scorched from within.
The Seer who took him in said nothing that day. Just looked at him for a long time and said: "There is something older in you than your years."
Now, years later, the dreams had returned — clearer, louder, wrapped in whispers too familiar to ignore.
Kaelen rose, moving quietly through the forest.
He pressed his hand against the old scar beneath his ribs. A burn that had never healed right.
Sometimes, he thought it whispered.
Sometimes, he thought it called.
He didn't know what he was. Only that it was growing harder to stay who he'd once been.
And whatever ancient blood still slept inside him — it would not sleep forever.