Cael stood in a void—not darkness, but the absence of anything.
A voice whispered behind him in a tongue that sounded ancient and lonely. A symbol—a broken ring—floated in the space before him, glowing faintly. Then it shattered.
"The first ring cracks.
The Veil thins.
One remembers.
The rest will awaken."
He woke gasping, cold sweat soaking his collar.
Back in the Hermit's Refuge
Two days had passed since the battle with the Watcher.
Varuun had dragged Cael back to the crumbling sanctuary above the temple. The old hermit tended his wounds with bitter roots and Essentia threading, muttering the whole time.
"You're lucky you didn't tear your soul stitching," Varuun scolded. "Void magic isn't like other flows. It doesn't take energy—it takes meaning. Memory. Identity."
Cael sat up slowly, head pounding. "So… what happens when there's nothing left of me?"
Varuun met his gaze. "Then you become something else."
Recovery & Spell Refinement
While recovering, Cael begins:
Sketching glyphs from memory into an old journal
Practicing mental casting of Tseron and Nihil Vein
Sensing fluctuations in his Essentia threads
He discovers:
His Void Affinity causes unnatural resistance to temperature and psychic pressure
He can faintly perceive Essentia currents now, not just use them
The Loop of Unraveling relic sometimes reacts to spoken lies
"I'm changing," he says one night. "Even when I don't cast. The shard… it's rewriting me."
Varuun simply nods. "You think truth and power come without price?"
External Shift: The Wastes Stir
A sudden Essentia storm hits the region.
The sky above the Glacien Wastes fractures into shifting auroras. Creatures once dormant now wander dangerously close to human settlements. Mana-beasts mutate—some become unstable, others vanish entirely.
From the ruins, Cael and Varuun watch the swirling lights overhead.
"This isn't just the seal breaking," Varuun murmurs. "The land itself is reacting."
Cael clenches his fists. "Then what I did… it's not just my burden."
"No," Varuun says. "It's the world's now."
Discovery: The Second Seal's Location
In the temple's old library vaults (now slowly crumbling), Cael finds a partially intact void-map, activated by the shard embedded in his chest. He sees seven points, faintly glowing.
One brighter than the others, pulsing to the south.
Cael: "Another seal?"
Varuun: "No… that one's cracked already."
Cael: "Then someone else has one of these shards?"
Varuun turns slowly. "Or worse—something got there first."
Signs of Pursuit
In the snowy distance, unseen by Cael or Varuun, something stalks the ruins—a beast-shaped shadow wearing broken armor, its body stitched with glowing blue veins. It sniffs the frozen air, then turns its hollow gaze toward the ruins of the temple.
It growls in a broken voice:
"Void…
I smell it… again."