The wind howled like a dying god across the highlands of the Ashvale Wastes.
Rayne climbed through the fractured bones of a forgotten temple, each step scraping against crumbling stone, each breath labored from the freezing altitude. Towering monoliths, scorched and half-swallowed by time, jutted skyward like the fingers of a buried titan. The stars overhead twisted—bent slightly askew as if reality here strained to hold its shape.
He had followed the torn map to its end: a ruin older than any temple, predating the Kingdom of Aurum by millennia. It was known in no public texts. Only in a footnote, in an illegal grimoire penned by a heretic mage who died mad in a realm-collapse.
He stood at the edge of a blackened circle etched into the stone. Old blood marked its rim. Symbols writhed in and out of focus, as if resisting comprehension.
He raised the lantern. Its flame flickered blue.
He had reached the Void Gate.
The dreams had led him here for years.
Each night, darker.
Each whisper louder.
"Step into the silence. Become unmade."
Rayne knelt. He placed both palms on the circle.
The world stopped.
No wind. No cold. No sound.
And then—agony.
Black flame erupted beneath his skin. His blood turned to ash and shadow. Symbols carved themselves onto his arms and spine, as if hot knives etched runes into his bones.
He screamed.
The scream tore through the Wastes.
And something heard.
The sky cracked. Just a ripple—but the stars dimmed, and a great presence peered through. Not eyes. Not thought. An intent vast and ancient. It pressed down on him like the ocean on a drowning man.
From the circle, a hand emerged. Not flesh. A silhouette of nothing. It reached into his chest.
And branded him.
A symbol—black, pulsing, shifting—burned itself onto his heart. Not skin. Not soul. Something deeper.
He collapsed.
Time unraveled.
He dreamed.
In the dream, he stood on a battlefield where gods had died. Towers the size of mountains burned. The sun bled black ichor. Armies knelt before him.
"You are the Heir of the Void. You are the Mouth of Ending."
"Speak us into the world."
He awoke gasping, the taste of ash in his mouth.
The mark still burned.
The circle was gone. No trace remained. Only a spiral of scorched earth, and the wind, now whispering in a tongue no mortal throat could speak.
Rayne stood.
For the first time in his life, power hummed through his limbs.
Not realm-born.
Not gifted.
Stolen.
Claimed.
He descended the mountain as a different thing.
Behind him, shadows followed.
And far away, in the capital, a seer screamed in her sleep.
"The Void walks," she cried, blood leaking from her eyes. "The end has teeth. And it remembers its name."