The sky was gray when Kael opened his eyes.

Not the gray of clouds or ash—
but of something unfinished.
As if the world had been paused mid-thought, then abandoned.

He lay on cold, broken stone.
His cloak was torn, soaked through.
The air had no scent. The light had no source.
It simply was.

All around him: ruins.
Archways broken in half. Stones cracked by time and heat.
Some of them floated slightly above the ground,
as though gravity itself was remembering how to work.

His breath was shallow. His ribs ached.
He didn’t know his name yet—
but he felt the absence of knowing it.

And then—
a presence.

Not a person.
A pulse.

To his left, something moved through the ruin-scape.
Not water. Not wind.

A river.
But not like any he'd seen.

It glided across the land like a scar—
its surface smooth, shifting, like molten glass.
Underneath: movement.

Not fish.
Faces.

Flickering in and out of sight.
Some looked calm. Others terrified.
One turned toward him and opened its mouth—
no sound.

Then it vanished.

The rhythm didn’t flow forward or back.
It throbbed, slow and steady—like it was alive.
Like it was listening.

Kael stared, unmoving.
The world around him held its breath.

A voice came.

From nowhere. From inside.

“Don’t look too long.”
“This river… it remembers more than it should.”

He turned—no one.
But the voice lingered.
Neither male nor female.
But it sounded... tired.
Like it had waited through too many endings.

His hand brushed something under his cloak.

Cold. Hard. Familiar.

He pulled it free.

A shard of crystal—smooth, clouded, glowing faintly.
The moment he closed his fingers around it—

✴️ open a memory.
A scream.
Fire.
A sky burning violet, torn by fractures of light like bleeding stars.

He stood alone on a stone platform, suspended in void.
Around him, the bones of a forgotten temple drifted —
floating, groaning, as if time itself had cracked.

The wind howled, but nothing moved.

Beneath his feet, the stone began to fracture—
veins of light streaked through it, pulsing like a dying heartbeat.

Then—

a tower collapsing,
the sound of breaking sky,
a voice with no mouth whispering:

“So this is what your courage amounts to.”

Kael gasped and fell to one knee.
His heart thundered in his chest.

The shard still burned in his hand.
The rhythm beside him hummed softly—just beneath hearing.

The voice returned.

“Not yours yet.”
“But soon.”

He stood.

Behind him: stillness.
Before him: the river, the ruins, the pull of something unending.

He didn’t know what he was walking toward.
Only that he could no longer remain still.

Kael walked.

And the world walked with him.