The world did not end.
That was the first mistake people made.
When time resumed, it did so unevenly—like breath returning to lungs that had forgotten how to expand.
Fireworks finished exploding. Smoke continued to curl. Conversations resumed mid-word, unaware they had ever stopped. Most people would later insist nothing unusual had happened at all, blaming dizziness, alcohol, faulty memory.
But something had changed.
Kael felt it immediately.
The weight was back—but different. Not scattered. Not chaotic. The names inside him were organized now, layered with a structure that hadn't existed before. Like a library that had finally been given shelves.
He turned his head slowly.
Every person he looked at carried a faint pressure now, subtle but undeniable. The Eye in his socket adjusted without his consent, focus sharpening until the outlines of people felt etched into the world.
Behind his eyes, stone scraped.
Graves were being added.
Three days later, the first sorcerer found him.
She didn't announce herself. Didn't need to. Kael felt her before he saw her—the way one feels a storm before clouds appear.
She stood across the street from him, pretending to check her phone. Her cursed energy was controlled, refined, layered with years of discipline. She was afraid, though she hid it well.
Kael's eye settled on her.
Names arrived like a collapsing ceiling.
Titles. Aliases. Call signs. The name she used only when she thought she would die that night.
A grave formed.
She stiffened.
Her gaze snapped up, locking onto his face.
"You," she said quietly. "What are you?"
Kael didn't answer.
He had learned early that explanations only made people panic faster.
She took a step forward.
The pressure spiked.
Her cursed energy flickered—then died entirely, smothered as if someone had dropped a mountain onto it. Her eyes widened in genuine shock as her body refused to obey her.
Kael felt it then.
Not the domain.
The edge of it.
A boundary that wasn't space, but permission.
"I didn't do this on purpose," he said, truthfully.
Her knees hit the pavement.
"What did you do on New Year's?" she whispered.
Kael looked past her, at the empty air where the Vigil waited just beneath reality.
"I was seen," he said. "So was everyone else."
That night, Kael dreamed of the church for the first time.
He stood at its doors, hands trembling inches from the rotting wood. Inside, something waited—not hostile, not kind. Simply patient.
He knew without being told:
If he opened those doors, someone would die.
If someone else crossed that threshold, he would not be able to stop it.
He woke with his heart racing and his left eye burning.
The Eye had been open the entire night.
The second sorcerer was less careful.
He attacked from behind, a technique meant to crush Kael's spine before he could react.
The Vigil responded before Kael could think.
The world folded.
Not fully—not yet.
The street warped, stone bleeding through asphalt as the village tried to surface. Graves pressed upward, half-formed, trembling at the edge of existence.
The attacker froze mid-strike.
Kael turned.
The man's eyes were wide with terror as he realized his cursed energy was gone. Not blocked. Not countered.
Denied.
"You don't understand," the man gasped. "They'll come for you. All of them."
Kael felt the names before he felt the fear.
He knew exactly who "they" were.
He also knew how this would end if he did nothing.
"I don't want to kill you," Kael said.
The man laughed weakly. "That's not how this works."
Kael hesitated.
That was enough.
The ground behind the man split open.
A grave finished carving itself.
The man was pulled backward, screaming, fingers clawing at the street as the world rejected him. He never reached the church. He didn't need to.
When it was over, there was only silence—and a new weight settling into Kael's chest.
Cursed energy flooded him.
Techniques unfolded in his mind like memories that weren't his.
He understood them instantly.
He wished he didn't.
Far away, alarms were sounding.
Organizations that monitored cursed activity lit up with readings that made no sense. Instruments malfunctioned. Barriers failed to report breaches because there had been no breach—only overwriting.
Records began to contradict themselves.
Witnesses remembered things differently.
And somewhere deep beneath the world, something old and cautious shifted its attention.
The Vigil had taken its first deliberate life.
And now, the world knew—instinctively, if not consciously—that it had been judged.