Chapter 2: The Eyes of the Forgotten
The morning after the awakening was darker than any night Kairos had ever known. Not in light, but in weight. As the sun rose over Varnaka, the air itself felt heavier, as if the city could sense that a slumbering memory had stirred and now breathed again.
Kairos awoke to silence.
Not the usual peaceful kind—but a silence filled with anticipation, like the world holding its breath. Birds did not sing. Wind did not blow. Even the hum of distant traffic seemed muted. He sat up in bed, heart pounding. The sigil on his chest still glowed faintly beneath his skin, responding to something unseen.
He stood and walked to the window. The street below was unchanged—bustling, loud, mundane. Yet he saw something most others could not. A shimmer. A flicker. A slight distortion in the air just above a lamppost. Watching him.
He blinked. It was gone.
Kairos dressed quickly, throwing on a hooded sweatshirt and stuffing a notebook and pen into his bag. His instincts screamed to stay hidden, to avoid attention. But his curiosity burned brighter.
The dreams had returned that night, clearer than ever. This time, they didn't just show images. They taught. A thousand voices speaking in unison whispered the name of an ancient art:
Qi Perception.
He had practiced it all night. By focusing his breath, his blood, his heartbeat, he could stretch his awareness beyond the skin. He could feel the flow of energy—Qi—in the world around him. It was like learning to see for the first time. Every object pulsed with it. Every living being shimmered.
Some shimmered brighter than others.
He walked to school. Not because he planned to attend classes, but because he needed to see her again. The girl in his literature class. The one whose eyes shimmered like the sky in his dreams.
Her name was Lena Virell. She was quiet, brilliant, and deeply alone—a mirror of Kairos himself. No one noticed her. Yet Kairos had watched her write symbols in the margins of her books. Symbols he recognized.
She was awake.
He waited outside the building, leaning against a wall, pretending to scroll through his phone while reaching out with his newfound senses. Her presence appeared like a steady flame in a world of dying embers.
She appeared minutes later, walking with the same cautious grace he remembered. Her eyes scanned the surroundings. She stopped the moment she saw him. Her eyes widened.
"You... saw it too, didn't you?" she asked.
Kairos nodded. "The seal. The mark. The voice."
She didn't ask how he knew.
They skipped school together, walking in silence until they reached a quiet rooftop that overlooked the old quarter of the city. There, they spoke in whispers.
Lena had awakened a year ago. Her visions had started earlier but were fragmented. She had trained in secret, practicing arts she remembered only in dreams. Her family, descendants of a once-powerful cultivation clan, had long forgotten their roots.
"I thought I was alone," she said.
"We're not," Kairos said. "There's more. Something's waking up. And I think... I started it."
He showed her the mark. She inhaled sharply. Then rolled up her sleeve and revealed a similar sigil, though fainter, still forming.
"You triggered mine," she said. "It responded to you. To your energy."
They sat in silence, sharing visions, memories, and strange coincidences. The world was layered. Hidden. Bound by seals too ancient to fathom. But cracks were forming. And those cracks were being noticed.
Suddenly, Kairos stiffened.
A ripple in the air. The sensation of being watched returned—stronger.
Lena stood. Her eyes narrowed. She muttered a phrase in an old tongue. A pulse of golden light shot from her palm and formed a barrier around them. Moments later, the distortion revealed itself.
A man stood at the edge of the rooftop, dressed in a modern suit that didn't quite fit. His eyes were black voids. No whites. No irises. Just depthless darkness.
"Kairos of the Sealed Sigil," he said in a voice that sounded like crumbling stone. "You are marked. And you must be silenced."
Lena moved in front of Kairos. "He's under protection. You have no right."
"Protection?" The man laughed. "Your clan fell a thousand years ago. You are ghosts."
Kairos stepped forward, heart thundering, fists clenched. "Who are you?"
"I am a Sentinel of Silence," he said. "A Warden of the Seal. My purpose is simple: prevent the rebirth."
He lifted a hand, and the air twisted. Wind screamed. Reality bent.
But something inside Kairos awakened again. The sigil on his chest flared.
Time slowed.
In that moment, he moved not with instinct but with memory. Memory not his own. He raised a hand and drew a shape in the air—three strokes, one circle. The glyph ignited. The Sentinel's attack unraveled.
The rooftop exploded in light.
When Kairos opened his eyes, the Sentinel was gone. Only ashes remained. Lena stared at him, awe and fear in her eyes.
"You didn't learn that from a dream," she whispered. "You remembered it."
Kairos fell to his knees, breathing hard. The power that surged through him was fading. But for a moment, he had touched something divine.
They didn't speak for a while. The world below continued as if nothing had happened. But they knew the truth.
The seal was breaking.
And Kairos wasn't just a survivor of the old world.
He was its heir.