[Gate Countdown: 61 Days]
The days blurred together like fading embers, each one marked by discipline, training, and silence.
Kael rose with the dawn and walked alone to the quiet peak beyond Elandor's walls. He stood barefoot among jagged stone, where even the winds grew thin. There, beneath the open sky, he searched.
Not for new techniques. Not for more Essence.
For himself.
He had built a warforge of power — Storm, Flame, Lightning, Kinetic, and Voidstream — refined into the Sovereign Codex, a legacy that could shake the heavens. And yet, when he reached for the next step… the world paused. Held him back.
Because Kael Fael didn't yet understand who was walking that path.
The Kael who had burned for vengeance? He was dead.
The Kael who had once feared failure? Long gone.
The Kael who now trained students and bore the title of Ethereal Warborn?
Still uncertain.
He meditated on the ridge, eyes closed as the wind stirred his cloak. Not directing Essence. Just breathing.
Who are you, Kael?
That question lingered.
In flashes, he remembered…
Velura's shy glance after a perfect strike.
Seris smiling through exhaustion.
Thorne laughing even as lightning singed his sleeve.
Gorran staying behind after dark, always trying again.
Reyne standing guard at night when she thought no one saw.
His students had grown — not just in skill, but in spirit. And they looked at Kael with belief, not fear.
And deeper still, Kael remembered Arlan's calm, Leiya's joy, and the first time his mother whispered, You carry your father's fire.
He saw the Varnok Sovereign's looming shape again in his dreams. But the fear had faded. Not because it grew weaker, but because Kael had stopped measuring himself against it.
He was no longer chasing power to match it.
He was becoming the kind of person that could stand before it — not as a weapon, but as a flame that would never be extinguished.
One night, beneath the starlit canopy, Kael stood on the meditation ridge again. His body ached with silence. His spirit was open.
He raised his hand and whispered to the wind:
"I am Kael Fael. Not just the wielder of Essence — but its answer. I do not rise to destroy fate… I rise to give it meaning."
Flame bloomed around him — not violent, not consuming — but living. A pulse of gold and crimson, slow and steady like a heartbeat. Storm winds swirled, not in fury, but in rhythm. Lightning crackled, not to strike — but to illuminate.
Voidstream surged like a still ocean, mirroring everything — past, present, future.
And in the space between breath and awakening, he felt it.
A quiet click — not of resistance, but of completion.
The universe accepted him.
His core burst outward, radiating Essence — not like a blaze but like a rising sun.
His limbs felt weightless. Every technique he'd ever created was suddenly complete. There were no more missing parts. No more fragments.
He had become his own anchor.
Kael opened his eyes.
The world looked the same. But he no longer did.