The Void Scar breathed.
Kael could feel it as soon as his boots touched the crater floor. Black glass ground, warm, as if something vast and alive pulsed within it. Purple mist drifted low, coiling around his ankles almost as if it were snakes, curious to know him. It tasted like old lightning and spilled blood in a thick air, no wind, no sound apart from his heartbeat.
He walked toward the middle.
With every step, he stirred memories lying at the bottom. Shards of armor: crimson legion crests half-melted into stone. A torn pole of a banner. And a broken gauntlet. He recognized some designs. Friends. Comrades. People who had followed him to that day—the day they believed in the Tempest Blade.
He kept on walking.
It was a perfect circle of smooth obsidian, fifty paces across. This was the ground zero. It was where Vorath's core had bloomed. It was the same place where everything had ended.
Kael halted at the edge.
It was almost the void energy liquid here. It pressed against his skin, filled his lungs with every breath. His exile brand froze cold, an ice ring on his chest. The scarred pathways within throbbed like fresh wounds reopening where the bloodline of his Void once lived.
He sat cross-legged on the warm stone.
He closed his eyes.
And let the darkness in.
Slowly, it began, as a cool whisper along his mind, like fingers brushing the back of his thought. Then deeper, heavier. The energy poured itself into the empty channels, filling them with something sharp and hungry. Pain followed-clean, sharp, pains that carve rather than crush.
Kael did not move.
Hours bled themselves into days.
He lost track of the moment. The beat of hard and hungering faded. The mist rose until it swallowed the crater rim, hanging the whole world in a sea of purple. Only the obsidian beneath remained solid.
Work of void energy made him smith hammer. Burned by scar tissue. It tore ancient lacerations again. Rebuilt broken parts. Not in the same way, however.
On the third day the whispers began.
More.
Take.
Devour.
Soft at first. Then louder. They promised power. Control. Revenge.
Kael stayed silent.
Far to the south: in Eldren Citadel...
Elara Voss remained standing on the northern watchtower, long past her shift. Spring rain fell soft and steady, washing the stone clean. Below, the city lights flickered on one by one.
She wore her captain's cloak loose about her shoulders. The lightning bolt pendant rested against her skin, inexplicably warm.
Five years. Scar enough to fade on the outside but not enough for the scars inside.
She almost whispered to the rain.
"If you are still out there, Kael... I hope you found something worth the pain."
Expected no answer. But the rain seemed to fall softer after she spoke, as if listening.
Deep in the Scar...
It changed suddenly.
There was nothing but pain and whispers. Then suddenly, something clicked into place.
Phantom born of the Void bloodline woke.
It woke not as it had been. Not clean and controlled as in the glory days. This was different. Muted. It drank the ambient energy greedily, growing fast-too quickly. Dark tendrils swept through his pathways, hanging cold and very vast-carrying the same hunger that whispered promises.
Kael drew breath into his instant between opening his eyes. Their color glowed a perfect purple, bright as the mist around him.
He stood.
Then the mist recoiled, parting as if now it feared him.
Three shapes formed from the fog- void wraiths, twisted remnants of the explosion. Shadows of human shapes with claws of pure darkness and eyes like dying stars.
And they sensed the change, and they attacked.
Kael never drew his sword.
The nearest wraith clawed toward the flesh of his throat. He raised a hand. Black tendrils burst from his palm, his shadows now thicker and mightier than ever-before-while he wrapped the wraith and pulled. The creature shrieked as its essence flowed into him, devoured in seconds. It crumbled into nothing.
Second and third came together. One claw raked his side, drawing blood turning to vapor in the chill air. Kael grabbed at the attacker. The void hunger surged. Pulled. The withered wraith vanished.
The last one was fleeing into the mist. Kael reached for it-not with his hands and will. He yanked it back with invisible force and crushed it without touching it to absorb everything.
And silence returned.
Kael stood blisslessly breathing. The blood collected at his side, but the wound was already closing-faster than it should. The new Void coiled inside him, huge and restless. Stronger even than his old bloodline at its peak-but wild. Dangerous.
The voices are louder now.
More. Always more.
He clenched his fists until his knuckles went white.
Not yet, he told the darkness inside. I decide when.
But he knew the truth. This power would demand a price. It always did.
That night, as he climbed the crater wall under a sky full of stars which were foreign to him, the final memory of this place came.
He was crawling through dust and fire, reaching for Elara's side.
Her hand was already cold.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, voice breaking. "I should have listened."
Those green eyes stared at an empty sky.
He had screamed then. Screamed until his throat bled.
Kael reached the top of this crater and stopped for the briefest instance to look upon it one last time.
Down below the mist faintly glowed, and it would hide the scars.
He turned south.
The Sunken Empires waited beneath the waves-those ancient places where sword saints had forged intent that needed no bloodline.
Soft but patient, the whispers followed him into the night.
Kael walked on.
Far off, south, Elara woke suddenly in her bed. The pendant at her throat was burning hot.
She straightened, winded.
The air in her room was thick and charged, as though it felt the heavy promise of the coming storm.
It was the first real hope, in all the years past five, to flicker in her chest.
He was alive.
And he was changing.