On the day Kael Veyron was born, the world split open above Nuvora. Fire rained from the clouds. Towers collapsed like sandcastles. The air turned to ash. People screamed, but the sound was swallowed by something deeper — a silence that didn't belong to this world.
They called it the Collapse.
No one knew what caused it. Some blamed rogue tech. Others whispered about dimensional fractures. But the truth was buried — not in data, but in memory.
Elira ran through the burning city with a newborn wrapped in cloth and blood. Her boots cracked glass. Her breath came in gasps. Her arms trembled, but she didn't stop.
Kael didn't cry.
He didn't blink.
He stared at the sky as if he recognized it.
Elira knew she couldn't save the city. But she could save him.
She turned down an alley, past a shattered monument, into a tunnel that hadn't existed the day before. It was carved into the mountain like a wound — a cave that pulsed with something ancient.
Waiting inside was a man in a cloak.
He didn't speak. He didn't move.
But Elira knelt before him and placed Kael in his arms.
"He's not ready," she whispered. "But he's all that's left."
The man nodded.
Elira touched Kael's forehead.
"You are more than this world, Kael…"
Then she stood.
And walked back into the fire.
The man didn't cry. He didn't comfort. He carried Kael into the cave, past walls that shimmered with memory, into a chamber that pulsed like a heartbeat.
He placed the child on a stone altar. Kael stared at him. The man reached into his coat and pulled out a pendant — black metal, a spiral inside a triangle. He placed it on Kael's chest. The cave responded immediately. It screamed, not with sound — but with sensation. A rush of heat, grief, and something sharp. The walls flickered. The air thickened. Kael's eyes glowed faintly. Then it stopped as the man lifted him, and the cave went silent.
Kael grew up in the shadows of Nuvora — a city rebuilt on silence. He lived in a small apartment with no windows, attended school with children who didn't speak to him, and ate meals that tasted like dust.
He didn't remember Elira's face. Only her voice.
"You are more than this world, Kael…" He didn't know what she meant. He only knew the pendant pulsed. Sometimes faintly. Sometimes violently. And sometimes, when Kael was alone, the cave would whisper to him — not in words, but in memories that weren't his. He saw battles. He saw betrayal. He saw a boy who looked like him, standing at the edge of something vast and terrible.
He didn't understand, but he felt it. Like a storm waiting to be named.