He sky wept over Blackspire.
Rain fell like knives, cold and endless, washing the filth from the rooftops and pushing the stench of the city down into the gutters. Thunder rolled across the heavens, echoing off cathedral spires and fortress walls, but no divine voice followed.
The gods were silent.
They had already judged him.
Kael Draven stood barefoot on wet timber, chained and soaked to the bone, his once-proud uniform of the Royal Dawn Knights clinging to his body in bloody strips. His lip was cracked, his right eye swollen. A week in the dungeons had left his body broken, but not his will.
Across the square, thousands had gathered.
Nobles huddled beneath silk canopies. Merchants pressed through the crowds with flasks of warm wine. Commoners whistled and cursed from rooftops. And high above, on the eastern balcony of the Sanctum Tower, the High Cardinal himself sat beneath an ornate parasol, his white robes unstained by the storm.
Kael met the man's gaze.
The old bastard smiled.
He should have known it would end like this. The moment the High Cardinal called for a "purge of internal rot," the moment Kael spoke against the slaughter of mages and orphans and priests who refused to kneel.
A knight protects the people. Not the lies of the powerful.
But justice, Kael had learned, was the first thing sacrificed on the altar of order.
A priest approached, robes dragging across the flooded platform, his voice nearly drowned by wind.
"You were a hero once," the man murmured. "Confess, and the gods may take your soul before the flames do."
Kael turned his head slowly, wincing at the pain. His voice came out rough, cracked.
"Tell your gods I'll see them soon enough."
The priest stepped back.
The executioner, a masked brute in a leather apron, adjusted the thick rope and slipped it over Kael's neck. The noose was tight. Heavy. Familiar. For a moment, it felt like a hand—personal and cruel.
The crowd quieted. The storm paused.
A bell rang once.
Twice.
Three times.
"Kael Draven," the herald called, voice booming through arcane amplification. "Knight-Commander of the Royal Dawn. Convicted of high treason, murder, and heresy. Do you offer final words?"
Kael looked beyond the gallows, to the towering spires of Blackspire, to the crowd of faces twisted in fear and curiosity, to the balcony where his enemies watched.
He smiled.
Not with bitterness.
With a strange, calm certainty.
"They buried the wrong man," he said. "And they'll regret not burning me properly."
The platform dropped.
The rope yanked tight.
There was a crack.
Then nothing.
No breath.
No sound.
No light.
Only darkness—and fire.
It wasn't heat. It wasn't pain.
It was memory burning backward, unraveling everything he was. Visions of blood and banners and betrayal. Screams. Lies. Fire. All collapsing into a single point.
And then...
A whisper.
Ancient. Cold. Hungry.
"You were born to die. But you were not born to stay dead."
Kael opened his eyes.
The air was wrong.
Heavy. Still. Damp.
He lay on cold stone, surrounded by whispering echoes. Not voices—but remnants. Faint trails of grief and hate and rage woven into the very walls.
He sat up. The noose was gone.
His hands were unchained, but pale. Too pale.
His fingernails were blackened at the tips, and glowing red runes pulsed faintly beneath the skin of his forearms.
He wasn't breathing.
He didn't need to.
The ceiling above him was domed, carved with ancient glyphs that shimmered like dying embers. The walls around him were cracked and veined with moss. In the center of the room stood a stone altar, broken in half. A sword—his sword—lay embedded in its side.
Kael stood slowly.
No pain.
No hunger.
No heartbeat.
Only clarity.
He stepped toward the altar. With each step, the whispers grew louder—not from his ears, but from his blood.
Rise...
Blood remembers...
They all forgot... but blood remembers...
His hand wrapped around the sword hilt. It was cold. Familiar. Loyal.
He pulled.
The sword slid free with a scream of stone.
Red light flared.
Around him, runes ignited in a spiral pattern, casting the chamber in a deep crimson glow.
The whispers silenced.
And something ancient stirred in the dark.
Bones shifted.
Chains rattled.
Eyes blinked open in the shadows—dozens of them.
Kael turned slowly, sword raised.
He didn't know where he was.
He didn't know why he was alive.
But he knew one thing with absolute certainty.
They tried to bury him.
They should have run instead.