Echoes Beyond the Stars
The world was healing, but it did not forget.
Though the Woman had been unmade, her last words lingered—"You've merely delayed the spiral." And those who knew how to listen could feel the tremors in the ley-lines of existence. Something ancient had stirred when Alaric and Mira stood against her. And something older still had noticed.
In the high libraries of Kareth, a flame-wreathed tome reopened for the first time in a thousand years. Deep in the sunken city of Mael'Dorr, the dreaming leviathans turned uneasily in their watery graves. The wind howled strange names in forgotten tongues across the eastern Wastes.
And in the sky, a new constellation had appeared—one shaped like a wolf and a flame, dancing in eternal opposition.
Alaric didn't sleep the night that star first rose.
He stood atop the watchtower of Ridgefall, the wind tousling his dark hair, eyes fixed on the symbol that had no right to be there. He felt it deep in his marrow—a challenge. A message.
Mira joined him in silence. She had dreamwalked through half the continent that night, searching for echoes. What she found was a whisper, wrapped in wind and shadow.
"The Spiral is real," she said, voice quiet. "Not a prophecy. A pattern. Something deeper than time."
"What is it?"
"A cycle older than gods. Death, rebirth, corruption, collapse. The universe repeating itself again and again. But this time… something broke the rhythm."
"You mean us," Alaric murmured.
Mira nodded. "We didn't just fight the Woman. We cracked something open."
That morning, they gathered the Council remnants. A new alliance had to be formed, not just of kingdoms—but of guardians. A conclave of awakened minds, dreamwalkers, battle-forged souls and mages who had glimpsed the spiral.
They would call it the Vigil.
Its mission: to uncover the true nature of the First, to seek the remnants of pre-creation knowledge, and to prepare the world for what might come when the spiral tried to correct itself.
Alaric took command not as king, not as warlord—but as Warden of the Vigil. Mira, his voice in the dreams beyond dreams. Caelen, whose dark fire had not died but learned to bend. Others joined—Rylth, the bloodscribe; Ser Tova, last knight of the Eclipse Order; Anden of the Hollow Glass.
And as they spread across the world in search of fragments, warnings, signs—one message repeated across all tongues, all lost ruins:
"They are watching again."