The grass was damp with dew, but beneath Kael's feet, the ground pulsed faintly—like the heartbeat of a world that remembered him.
They had returned.
But the world they returned to was not the one they had left.
Mist curled low across the hills, and strange stars shimmered in a sky that no longer obeyed the same constellations. The capital's outline loomed far in the distance, but its spires were… different. Twisted upward as if trying to pierce the heavens, some cracked, some glowing with unfamiliar symbols.
Lin narrowed her eyes. "This isn't the Empire."
Aelira rose slowly, brushing grass from her robes. "No. It's the same land—but shifted. Altered by our absence."
Kael said nothing at first. He felt it too—that wrongness. The Prism had stabilized, but the thread he'd chosen had consequences. He wasn't just an anchor. He was a seed.
And something had bloomed in his absence.
He knelt and touched the earth. It pulsed again—faint, rhythmic. But not alone. Other pulses answered it, deeper underground. One by one.
"Graves," he whispered.
Lin looked to him, confused. "What do you mean?"
"They're waking."
A cold wind swept the field as Kael rose, his cloak trailing sparks of gold. In the east, thunder growled. In the west, flames crackled, distant but growing.
Aelira paled. "It's the Forgotten, isn't it? The ones cast out when the first Pacts were made. The old bloodlines. The lost names."
Kael nodded. "The Prism unlocked their echoes too. I didn't just walk my path—I shook the web. Now the things history buried have remembered their names."
As if to punctuate his words, the sky split in a single seam of black lightning.
A towering figure emerged from the horizon—a silhouette of bone and starlight, cloaked in time-worn armor. It held no weapon, but its presence was war itself. Around its form swirled dozens—no, hundreds—of lesser beings, each clad in fragmented relics, eyes glowing with silver fire.
The first of the Forgotten.
Kael stepped forward, the glow within him flaring like a silent beacon. The figure paused, and for a moment, time bowed.
The ancient being spoke.
"Threadwalker… do you remember us?"
Kael's heart pounded. Not with fear. With recognition.
"Yes," he said. "You were the ones they sacrificed for peace. The ones erased."
"We were not erased," the being replied. "We were sealed. But you, Kael of the Prism, have become the key."
Aelira's voice was tight. "Then this world… this peace… it's about to shatter."
Kael turned to her. "No. Not if we guide it."
"But if they won't be guided?" Lin asked quietly.
"Then we stand against them," Kael replied. "As we always have."
The Forgotten began to move—slowly, steadily—toward the capital. Not in a rush. Not in rage. But with the weight of inevitability.
Kael turned toward the distant city. "It's time to gather those still loyal. This world is new, but the war is old."
He looked up at the stars, at constellations that once meant safety. Now they meant warning.
"This is the rise of the Forgotten," he said. "And the last Pact is yet to be written."