The world had changed its breath.
Kael could feel it in the way the stars held their light longer. In the hush of birdsong. In how the soil grew warm even without sun.
It was no longer the world's will that guided fate.
It was his.
---
He journeyed east for nine days.
Past the severed steppes of Ral'Nohr.
Through the Whispering Dustlands, where even shadows forgot their names.
He spoke to no one.
But rumors walked faster than footsteps.
And by the time he reached the edge of the Iridescent Scar—where the fabric of reality split and shimmered like oil on stone—they were waiting for him.
Not soldiers.
Not sovereigns.
But keepers.
---
⟢ The Watchers of the Pale Gate
Twelve cloaked figures blocked the fractured path.
They stood before a chasm of molten stone and impossible angles, where reality bent inward and screamed into itself.
This was the threshold to the Harrowed Gates.
Behind them lay the last corridor to the Wyrm Synod.
> "Turn back, Kael Vanthelmir," one of them said. His voice was cracked stone. "You are not permitted."
Kael didn't stop walking.
> "You were dead."
> "So were you," another hissed.
The wind blew harder. The ground shook—not from fear.
From recognition.
Kael stood before them now. One man against twelve shades, each wrapped in starlight chains and ancient memory.
> "We are the Watchers. Bound by oath and ruin."
> "Then unbind yourselves," Kael said, voice steady. "Or be erased with them."
The Watchers drew their relic-blades.
Twelve weapons from twelve fallen realms.
Each one soaked in the death of a forgotten god.
They struck without warning.
---
Kael didn't flinch.
He moved like silence given form.
The first blade shattered against his palm.
The second, he caught with two fingers.
The third never touched him—it recoiled in midair, shivering as if it recognized him.
The rest came in a storm.
Kael stepped through them.
His hand—marked by the Primordial Brand—unleashed no fire.
Only stillness.
The kind that came before extinction.
Each strike that reached him vanished.
Each breath around him died.
And in seconds—
The Watchers were on their knees.
Not broken.
Not dead.
But freed.
Their chains unraveled.
Their oaths turned to dust.
> "You… you released us," one whispered.
> "No," Kael said, walking past them. "You just forgot who you once were."
---
He crossed the Iridescent Scar.
The Harrowed Gates loomed ahead.
Towering.
Sealed.
Not by power, but shame.
Carved with the bones of gods who had failed to stop him last time.
Kael reached out.
His fingers brushed the gate.
And it opened.
Not with sound.
But with acceptance.
---
Beyond it, the Wyrm Synod waited.
But the path now knew him.
And the gates?
They no longer stood in his way.