Far above the realms of mortals, beyond the drifting veil of stars and the broken thrones of ash, the Divine Realm quivered.
On the edge of its outermost bastion—where the breath of gods shaped constellations and wind walked with memory—an obsidian pool cracked.
No one had touched it in ten thousand years.
The Pool of Severance, once a conduit for watching lower realms, was now a silent relic. But now, its still waters shimmered, reacting to a ripple not from above—but from deep beneath the Waking World.
From the Veiled Labyrinth.
From the boy marked by the Nameless Core.
A tall figure clad in white-gold robes stood before the pool. Eyes blindfolded. Arms wrapped in cloth etched with the True Names of extinct stars.
Archon-Orator Elian Veyr, First Tongue of the Celestial Choir, stared into the crackling vision as if blindfolds no longer mattered.
"The seal bends," he murmured.
Another figure approached—a being robed in flowing dusklight, skin of auric glass. She bowed. "Then the Core has awakened?"
"No," Elian said. "It has been answered."
He turned.
"Send a herald to the Mortal Realm. No, three. One to the Tower of Pale Flame. One to the Ashen Gate. And one to the Inquisitorium."
The glass-skinned servant hesitated. "They will not listen."
"They will if they see what I have seen."
He reached into the pool, and the crack flared open—briefly showing a name that was not a name, a rune whose mere existence tore holes through logic.
Elian Veyr bled from his palms.
". . . Vareth'alun," he whispered. "The Name that should not be spoken has found breath again."
—
Elsewhere: Inquisitorium Fortress of Cindermarch
Cardinal Enred of the Blood Sigil stood in silence, fingers splayed across a map of Velserra.
Rivers had begun flowing the wrong direction near Eidralune.
The stars overhead were in slight misalignment.
Reports whispered of dreams that refused to end, and children speaking in runes their families had never taught them.
Inquisitoress Narelle, half-masked and battle-scarred, stood at his side. "The Dreamblight spreads. Our seals fail faster than we can renew them."
Cardinal Enred exhaled. "There is one whose echo matches the breach."
"You mean him?"
He nodded. "Solan Maelvaran."
"The fallen prince?"
"No," Enred corrected. "The last unmarked heir of the Hollow Choir."
Narelle froze.
They had purged that bloodline.
Or thought they had.
"Prepare the Tetherblade units," Enred said. "If he is who the system has chosen, we cannot kill him."
"Then what?"
"We bind him. Seal him. Or sacrifice him as the Choir once did."
—
In the Abyss Realm – Below the Corpse-Cities of Tharn
A shadow moved among shadows.
Lord Na'zakhar, the Abyssal Prince of Unremembered Hells, stirred from his chasm.
He had no face. Only a mask carved from the bones of dead gods, and beneath it, a voice that gnawed on the concept of time.
His attendants—a crawling host of blind prophets and stitched-mouth servants—shivered as his gaze passed over them.
He did not speak.
He tasted the shift.
A name had been stirred that once even the Abyss feared.
He leaned toward a great chasm of devoured stars and uttered a single phrase in the Older Tongue, one that killed the three nearest prophets by accident.
"The Nameless One has found its vessel."
And from the dark, a response—an echo not heard in eons:
We remember him. The one who walked the White Hollow. The boy who touched the Oracle's eye and did not burn.
Lord Na'zakhar laughed.
And the Abyss laughed with him.
—
Back in the Waking World: Solan
Solan Maelvaran sat by the edge of the Tower's balcony as wind sliced over the bone gardens below.
His blood still ran strange. The Labyrinth's mark had not faded. His dream-echo had not lifted.
But something had changed.
The gods had felt him.
And now the world would begin to turn