The divine realms had always stood untouched.
Above war.
Above pain.
Above questioning.
But something was happening. Not in the outer lands — within Heaven itself.
A rift opened in the Sanctum of Law.
It wasn't physical.
It was worse: a fracture of belief.
Grand Elder Teshin — who had not spoken aloud in a hundred years — stood in the Hall of Concord, trembling.
> "I saw the mirror."
The other elders stared, unmoving.
> "I looked into it. And I saw not heresy…
I saw myself, before I became this."
Silence.
And then a voice from the shadows — sharp, cruel:
> "Then your eyes lie."
The figure emerged: High Inquisitor Ryel, face wrapped in silver cloth, eyes removed long ago to see only Law.
> "You saw temptation. Flickers breed rebellion. Doubt. Fire without boundary."
But Teshin shook his head, tears carving lines down his dust-pale cheeks.
> "No. I saw freedom. And I saw… Lumen."
The name rang like a funeral bell. Few dared speak it anymore.
The god — the One Above Names — had forbidden it.
Lumen was the first heretic, the first flame.
The one who had chosen to be forgotten — and now flickered again in Elun.
Teshin turned to the other elders.
> "You remember him. Don't lie.
He was kind. He wept when he ascended.
He believed… we were more than law."
> "We were meant to become light."
Cracks began to form in the chamber's marble. But they were not of stone. They were cracks in heaven itself. Because Heaven, as Lumen had once said, was made of memory.
Outside the sanctum, word had already begun to spread: Celestial Sentinels began removing their seals.
Young disciples stopped their meditations and listened to the whispers of the flicker.
The Path of Nature bloomed inside divine temples, cracking polished stone with grass and roots.
Time cultivators paused their eternal practice — and cried for the first time in centuries.
And Kael felt it all.
From his spire in the Seat of Flame, he watched the golden towers tremble.
> "They remember," he whispered.
A terrible thing, remembrance.
It doesn't shout.
It undoes.
He sent a sealed message directly to the god's throne. It was simple:
> "They fracture."
And the god replied:
> "Then burn the sky."
But as Kael raised his hand to obey, his fingers trembled. Because in the back of his mind, he saw not Elun.
Not rebellion.
But Lumen, smiling.
Saying:
> "You can never control fire. Only choose what it consumes."