Years later, after the great war.
Kael survived.
But survival wasn't the same as living.
He moved, he breathed, he worked — but he wasn't alive. Not really. Just a husk of what he once was, a shadow clinging to the edges of memory. The Unbreaking Fang, the pride of Karneth, reduced to wandering from town to town, taking odd jobs just to scrape by.
Now?
He lived in a no-name rural outpost scraping the edge of the Ecliptix Dominion's northern border — a place so irrelevant it didn't even appear on most official maps.
Feyhall.
A small, self-sustaining town of dirt-covered farmers and soot-faced miners. The kind of place where people raised livestock, not flags. Its entire "military force" amounted to five half-trained boys barely old enough to hold swords — more cosplay than combat, swinging wooden practice blades and calling each other "captain."
Once, Kael would've laughed.
Now, he just watched in silence.
They had allowed him to live after the battle — a prisoner of war who should have died, broken and bleeding beneath a foreign banner. But the Dominion's victory over all other nations had changed the rules.
Instead of execution, he was given a pardon.
Set free.
Allowed — no, tolerated — as a refugee and former enemy soldier. A war veteran… in name only.
But in Feyhall, the title held no weight.
No glory.
No one here cared that Kael had once fought in battles that shaped the world. No one asked how many men he'd killed, how many victories he'd carved with steel and fury. To them, he was just another crippled man with old eyes and a permanent limp — a reminder that history moves on, and legends are forgotten.
After a long day hauling crates and cleaning up drunken spills at the Feyhall Tavern, Kael dragged his aching body home.
Home.
A crumbling shack on the edge of the woods — one room, half-kitchen, half-bed, barely insulated from the wind. The kind of place where even the walls felt thin enough to listen in on your failures.
He opened the door with a tired sigh.
"I'm home…" he muttered, voice thick with sarcasm, laughter dry and hollow.
A pouch clinked against the counter as he tossed down his meager paycheck — barely enough to afford bread and firewood. He slumped onto the edge of his bed, boots off, sweat crusted to his skin, muscles sore in all the wrong ways.
The sun dipped low, bleeding orange into the clouds.
"I'm a mess…" he chuckled — a sound too close to sobbing.
His hands pressed against his forehead. Then his fingers curled into his scalp. The chuckles turned into laughter. And that laughter frayed at the edges until it was manic.
His thoughts spiraled.
Rage simmered beneath the surface like lava beneath a cracked stone.
The greatest swordsman of the Karneth Empire — now living like this. A useless refugee. Abandoned by the world he once bled for. His prime gone. His edges dulled. His form rusted from years of stagnation and survival.
An hour passed.
He didn't notice.
Memories played behind his closed eyes — memories of the men he trained, the brothers he forged through steel and sweat. Dead now. Or worse — moved on without him.
None of them came looking.
Not even once.
Eventually, exhaustion swallowed him whole. His body gave up. His mind shut down, overloaded by grief, fury, and bitter nostalgia.
And then—
In the dead silence of night:
CHIME.
His eyes snapped open, chest heaving.
Sweat clung to his skin like cold oil.
"What…?" he whispered, sitting up, breath shallow, hand reaching for the chipped glass of water beside his bed.
He downed it in one go.
Silence.
Then again—
CHIME.
A sound not heard, but felt — echoing through his skull like a bell tolling behind his eyes. A sharp, searing pain stabbed through his temples.
Kael groaned, clutching his head.
"Am I finally dying?" he croaked with a bitter grin, collapsing to the floor. "I'd gladly accept it."
But death didn't come.
Only silence.
And then — something stranger.
From beyond the wooden walls of his shack, a faint blue light began to glow. Not flickering like fire. Not cold like moonlight.
Something... else.
Ethereal.
It pulsed once, twice — then brightened, leaking through the slats in the wall like water through a cracked dam.
Kael's heartbeat quickened.
His limbs ached, but his curiosity moved faster than his pain.
He stood, barefoot, each step creaking the floorboards beneath him.
The glow extended beyond his shack, past the trees — a thread of radiance pulling him forward.
He paused at the door, hand over his chest, trying to calm his pulse. Whatever had awakened him, it wasn't natural. His instincts, dulled though they were, stirred.
"I've got nothing to lose…" he muttered, a twisted smile forming on his lips. "Why not check it out?"
He stepped out into the cool dirt, the night air brushing against his skin, and followed the light barefoot into the woods.
Drawn forward by a force he couldn't name.
For god knows what reason.