Kael stood among the corpses. Still as stone. Listening.
The silence of the catacombs was not true silence—it was heavy, layered. Like something behind the air was still murmuring.
He took one step forward.
The moment his boot struck the dust, he heard a voice.
"Mercy… gods, I begged them…"
It wasn't his thought.
Kael froze.
Then turned—slowly—toward the nearest skeleton, half-crushed beneath a fallen beam.
"He paid them. I saw. The judge's seal—he had it—"
More voices now. From everywhere and nowhere. Some faint as breath, others cracked with rage, fear, grief.
Kael shut his eyes. But he didn't stop them.
He let them in.
And they remembered.
He wandered deeper into the tomb. It was a noble vault, its sigils long erased by mildew and erosion. His fingers grazed a cracked urn, and he staggered.
A flash. Screams. The clanging of a dropped sword.
He saw a man in ornate armor pleading before a faceless figure. A door slamming. Silence.
Kael gasped and stumbled back.
This wasn't memory. It was something worse. Something echoing through time and bone.
They had not just died. They had been buried with purpose.
With secrets.
In the center of the chamber stood a stone pedestal, weathered but intact. A circlet rested atop it—blackened silver, inset with dull, cracked gems.
It called to him.
Kael approached.
The moment his hand touched the metal, the whispers became screams.
"Traitor!" "Long live the last breath!" "The child must not remember!"
Kael collapsed.
He awoke minutes—maybe hours—later, drenched in cold sweat. But something was different.
The circlet was gone.
No—he was wearing it.
And it fit like it belonged.
His veins burned. His shadow pulsed. And his eyes—when he looked into a broken shard of mirror near the gate—had turned grey.
Storm-grey.
He left the tomb a different man.
Kael Vaerin, heir to the forgotten grave.
And the dead walked with him