Kael didn't fall.
He descended—through a current that wasn't air, wasn't magic, but memory wrapped in heat.
The world on the other side of the gate was not fire. It was silence.
A valley, choked in black glass and grey sand. Cracked pillars rose like broken ribs from the ground, stretching toward a sky that didn't move.
Ash floated, not down, but sideways.
Kael stepped onto the surface. His feet didn't sink—the ground accepted him.
The shard in his palm dissolved into mist.
Before he could take a second step, the air thickened.
A voice. Not a whisper, but not loud either. It lived in the stillness.
> "Flameblood… your spark was not meant to awaken yet."
Kael turned slowly.
A figure stood beneath a fractured spire. Armor of ember and bone, crowned with coals that didn't burn.
Its face was hidden by a helm—but the air around it wept warmth.
The figure didn't move closer.
> "You bring no offering, no vow. Yet the Vein accepts you."
Kael didn't answer. Something inside him felt very small—and very old.
Then the figure raised a gauntleted hand.
The world shifted.
Kael's knees hit the ground. His body trembled. His thoughts—unraveled. The shard may have disappeared, but it had opened a gate within him, too.
The flames came next.
But not real fire.
Memories.
Cities burning beneath silver stars. Titans falling into oceans of glass. A child screaming under a sky shaped like a ring.
Then… silence again.
Kael gasped. He was still kneeling. But the ground beneath him had changed—warm, soft, like living coal.
The figure was gone.
In its place: a small pyre.
And floating above it—an ember-shaped glyph.
> [Class Fragment Activated: Emberborn Veinwalker]
No voice. No system box. Just the truth, etched into his soul.
Kael stood up.
And behind him, far off—he heard the cry of a creature not born of flame or flesh.
Something else was awake in this place.
---
Elsewhere
In the Aether Reaches, an old monk snapped a scroll in half.
In the depths of Umbral Dominion, a chain began to tremble on its own.
And in the skies above Nephys, a sealed gate blinked open for the first time in 1,000 years.
---
Growth:
New Class Fragment: Emberborn Veinwalker
Memory Echoes Unlocked
Hidden Trait Progression (Unidentified)