The sky was wrong.
It stretched forever a shimmering ocean of colorless light, fractured by veins of black, like scars across heaven. Beneath it, the world bent in ways that made the eye ache. Trees that bled light. Stones that hummed beneath bare feet. The air didn't carry scent or warmth or wind only pressure, as if memory itself pressed against the lungs.
Kaelen awoke on a smooth platform of obsidian, surrounded by emptiness. No horizon. No birdsong. No brother.
His breath caught.
"Auren…?"
Nothing.
Only the echo of his voice, bouncing across unseen walls, sounding smaller each time it returned.
His fingers curled against the stone. He sat up slowly, muscles aching with phantom pain, as if grief had weight. His chest burned where the Wyrdfire had touched him in the trial. He could still see the Hollow Flame in his mind flickering with memories, with Auren's face.
He stared into the nothing.
"What is this place?"
"You ask that as though the Wyrd owes you clarity."
The voice returned, calm and timeless.
Kaelen turned sharply.
The veiled figure stood again at the edge of the light, draped in robes darker than the void itself. Their face was obscured not hidden, but forgotten. The longer Kaelen looked, the less he could remember the shape of it.
"Who are you?" Kaelen demanded, stepping forward.
The figure tilted its head slightly.
"I do not know. I have long since bled the shape of my name into the bones of the Rift. What remains is a shadow, and a burden."
Kaelen's voice was hoarse. "You talk like I should trust you. But you're just another mystery. Another cage. I've had enough of both."
"And yet you remain."
"I didn't choose to come here."
"Did you not?"
Silence. Heavy. Drenched in implication.
Kaelen's fists trembled.
"I watched my brother die. I held his hand as the light left him. I did everything right, and it still wasn't enough."
"You did nothing wrong," the figure said softly. "But you did nothing final."
Kaelen stared, hollow-eyed. "What the hell does that mean?"
The veiled man stepped forward.
"It means you've not yet chosen what you are only what you've lost. That is not power. That is a wound."
Kaelen's laugh came out like a growl. "You think I care about power anymore? About saving anyone? I don't. I just want to be strong enough that no one dares take anything from me again."
"Then you are already walking the Wyrd."
The figure lifted a hand.
From the air, a stone slab descended etched with unfamiliar glyphs. It hovered before Kaelen like a forgotten altar.
"This is the first lesson," the figure said. "You must learn to write yourself."
Kaelen squinted at the slab. "What is this?"
"Your myth. Your root. In this world, strength is not given. It is carved. Into stone. Into soul. Into story."
He gestured to the sky.
"The Wyrd is not magic. It is memory. The shape of belief etched into the world until it becomes real. When you take a name when you carve it into the Wyrd it becomes law."
"So you want me to write my name?"
"No. I want you to become it."
The figure gestured again, and symbols unfolded in the air complex spirals, interlocking circles, mirrored runes. They shimmered like breath on glass.
"Power in this world," the Master said, "is not arcane energy or divine gift. It is the strength of narrative.
We call it Wyrdbinding.
All that exists flows from the Wyrd the record of all things that could have been. It is not a place. It is not a spell. It is a memory of possibility written into the bones of the world.
To wield it, one must carve their myth into the leyflow.
This is done through:
Mythcarving - Writing your own legend into the Wyrd, using memory, pain, and symbolic sacrifice.
Wyrdmarks - Binding your myth to your body; glyphs that react to emotional resonance and narrative fulfillment.
Soulcasting - Projecting fragments of your Wyrd identity into reality; attacks and actions drawn from your legend.
Echoforming - Confronting aspects of yourself, split through time, and binding or consuming them.
Leysteps - Movement through symbolic space; allows passage where logic fails, but belief holds.
There is no 'mana.' No spells. No elements.
You burn what you are.
You become what the world remembers."
Kaelen stood silent.
"No one ever told us this," he muttered. "They killed people like us for even touching power."
"Because those who carve their own names do not bow. And those who do not bow… are dangerous."
Kaelen stared at the slab. His hands curled.
And then, he reached forward.
The glyphs shimmered beneath his fingers. The surface of the stone felt warm not like heat, but like blood.
He did not write his name.
He carved something older.
Darker.
Colder.
The Master watched in silence as the glyphs formed, curling inward like frostbite.
When Kaelen stepped back, the mark was complete.
The slab glowed red.
And then cracked down the middle.
Kaelen's body flared with Wyrdlight. A new mark burned across his chest, coiling like a serpent a crown of broken thorns beneath it.
The Master spoke slowly.
"So it is done."
Kaelen said nothing.
The air shifted. The sky darkened.
From far above, a single echo fell like a whisper carved in stone:
"The One Without Light."
And the Rift shuddered.
Kaelen fell to his knees, breathing hard.
"That is what they'll call you now," the Master said. "Not because it is true. But because it is what they fear."
Kaelen stared at the mark on his chest.
He didn't understand it. Not yet.
But he would.
And when he did, the world would remember the name carved that day
The One Without Light.