The first rays of dawn stretched over the ridge, timidly touching the land below—a place where light rarely lingered. Kael sat on the edge of the cliff, his silhouette still, almost carved from the stone itself. Behind him, the Umbra writhed like a slumbering beast, its breath hidden in the wind.

Beside him, Rin stood silent, her gaze not on the horizon, but on him.

“We survived again,” she said, her voice barely louder than the morning breeze.

Kael didn’t respond at first. His eyes were lost in the distance, watching a sun that refused to warm him.

“Surviving isn’t living,” he finally murmured.

Rin’s voice softened, but held firm. “But bonding is. And whether you like it or not… we have one now.”

There was no reply. Only a moment—quiet and fragile—suspended between warriors who had shed more than blood to be here. A breath. A heartbeat. The smallest glimmer of something human amidst the cold.

Inside the shelter they had claimed for the night, Lux hovered low. Its usual brilliance seemed dimmed, its glow tinted by something older—regret.

“I wasn’t always light,” it said suddenly, the tone more human than ever before. “I was created to guide someone… but I lost them.”

Kael’s eyes narrowed, not with suspicion, but familiarity.

“Then you understand,” he said. “What it means to carry failure.”

Lux’s glow pulsed gently. “And how it feels… to still try.”

For a moment, three broken souls sat beneath one roof. One forged from fire, one carved from healing, one born from light. All stained by the shadows they could not outrun.

Later, in the ruins, Kael and Rin trained beneath the ruins of a collapsed monument—once a symbol of hope, now just weathered stone. Blades flashed. Sparks flickered between light and shadow. Rin’s precision met Kael’s raw, focused energy.

He no longer fought to suppress the flame—he bent it. Shaped it.

Rin stepped back, her chest rising with each breath. “You’re learning control.”

Kael sheathed his blade slowly. “I’m learning choice.”

Then… the wind changed.

Not a gust, but a shift in pressure—as if the world exhaled something old and dangerous. Lux flickered violently.

“Someone’s watching,” it whispered.

Rin spun, instincts sharp. A figure stood across the ridge, distant yet impossibly close. Cloaked, poised, hands clasped behind his back.

Kael’s body tensed as if strings were pulled taut inside him.

“Who…?” Rin asked.

Kael’s voice dropped, dark and heavy. “Vael.”

The dusk kissed the land in silence as the figure stepped forward.

Vael’s presence didn’t announce itself—it unfolded like a whisper you couldn’t ignore. His eyes were calm. Cold. Familiar.

“So this is what the broken become,” he said with a slight smirk. “Not bad, Kael.”

Kael didn’t flinch. But his grip on the hilt of his sword tightened, white-knuckled.

“I don’t need your praise.”

Vael stopped, gaze steady. “Good. Because next time… I bring war.”

And just like that, he dissolved into the falling shadows—no sound, no trace.

Kael stood frozen, the weight of his brother’s words digging deeper than any blade.

His fingers unclenched slowly. His breath steadied. The light behind him faded into the approaching night.