The halls of Havenwyck were quieter than usual.
Not in the way of sleep or calm—but in the way of reverence. As if the very stones beneath Kael's boots had learned to hold their breath.
A storm murmured in the distance, casting flashes of lightning through the stained-glass windows. Each burst painted the walls in broken mosaics of color—fragments of long-dead saints, fallen titans, and burning skies.
Kael moved like a revenant through the corridors, guided by instinct more than direction. The compass no longer pointed. It pulsed, like it recognized where he was… like it was afraid.
He passed beneath a rusted arch of wrought silver, half-collapsed with age. Beyond it lay a spiral staircase wrapped in shadow, descending deep beneath Havenwyck—beneath even the roots of the mansion's foundations.
The crypt.
The resting place of the one who had forged the rebellion. The one who had broken the sky.
Kael lit no torch.
He walked in darkness.
Step by step, the air thickened. Not just with dust and decay, but with memory—like every breath he drew was full of old sorrows, old vows.
The walls narrowed. The stone here was veined with strange metals that caught the eye wrong. Sometimes, they looked like mirrors. Sometimes… they blinked.
By the time Kael reached the bottom, the silence was deafening.
A wide chamber opened before him. Arched and domed like a temple, but draped in the rot of time. Statues lined the walls—cracked,
broken,
weeping rust instead of blood.
At the far end of the crypt, a sarcophagus sat beneath a crumbling canopy of black marble.
And there—beside it—was the Warden.
She knelt, head bowed, clad not in her usual iron armor, but in black ceremonial robes stitched with silver thread. Her hands were folded, not on a weapon, but over her heart.
Kael stopped in the archway. The Shard at his chest dimmed to a soft flicker.
He didn't speak.
Neither did she.
Not at first.
The only sound was the drip of condensation from the high ceiling and the slow, steady echo of grief.
Finally, her voice came, dry as dust.
"You made it further than any before you."
Kael stepped closer, his voice quiet. "I didn't know you came here."
"I only do when another soul is lost." She looked up slowly. Her eyes, always so sharp, now rimmed red. " Is he dead, Kael? Truly dead? For I feel no echo. No resurrection. Is The One Who Denied the Sky is gone?"
Kael's breath caught—not in sorrow, but in weight.
He stepped beside her, gazing down at the sarcophagus. It was plain. No inscription. No divine sigils. Just stone, black as void, cold as judgment.
"No gods came to claim his body," The Warden continued. "No titans to sing dirges. Only me. And now you."
Kael looked at her. "He was your master?"
She shook her head. "No. He was… the last one who understood."
A long silence passed between them.
"I thought I would feel… anger," she said. "Or betrayal. Or even relief. But all I feel is a longing sense of questioning."
"What question?" Kael asked.
She looked at him.
"What happens when the last rebellion dies?"
Kael didn't answer.
Instead, he reached out and placed his palm against the smooth surface of the sarcophagus. It was cold enough to bite. Beneath it, he could feel not life, nor death—but silence. A silence so complete it bordered on sacrilege. As if even the afterlife feared to speak his name.
"I can feel him," Kael murmured. "Not just as a presence. But… as a wound."
The Warden nodded. "That's all he ever was. A wound in heaven. A gash carved by defiance. Now the heavens are healing. That should terrify us."
Kael's jaw clenched. His voice dropped to a whisper. "They think they've snuffed out the fire. But it has only been kindled."
He turned to her fully. "It burns in me now."
She met his gaze. "Then you may very well carry the last spark that could end these wretched God's gaming."
A hush fell again.
Then Kael stepped back and reached into his cloak, drawing out the star glass compass. He held it over the sarcophagus. The needle spun violently, then slowed… and pointed to the west.
Beyond Havenwyck.
Beyond the broken horizon.
Another trial.
Another war.
"I'll mourn him in action," Kael said. "Not words."
The Warden stood slowly. "Then go,
Kael. Go and let those gods remember why they buried people like us in the first place."
As he turned to leave, she called after him—voice firm again, though something cracked beneath it.
"You may carry his legacy… but i beg of you don't carry his solitude. It was his greatest undoing."
Kael paused in the doorway, shadow stretching before him like a path written in ash.
"I'm already alone," he said. "I just stopped noticing."
And then he disappeared into the darkness once more—his next trial ahead, the silence of the crypt behind.
But even in the stillness, the Shard pulsed once.
As if somewhere, deep beneath the world, something had stirred.
The forge was quiet.
Not silent, but reverent. The low hiss of simmering coals, the clink of steel on stone, the rhythmic grind of whetstone against edge—it was a hymn to ritual. A preparation not just for battle, but for meaning.
Kael sat beneath the arching beams of Havenwyck's oldest armory. No banners hung here. No sigils adorned the stone. Just the tools, the dust, and the ghosts of a thousand sharpened blades.
He wore no shirt. Only the scars of a life carved by war. The wound from the god's spear still ached beneath linen bandages, but he moved with purpose. Precision. Roman.
Before him lay his armor—not ceremonial, not gilded. Used. Blackened plate, matte from ash and oil, engraved with veiled runes only visible under starlight. He had laid each piece out upon a woolen mat in a deliberate arrangement, just as the legionnaires once did—torso, greaves, bracers, shoulders, gloves.
A soldier's logic.
One piece for each failure. One piece for each vow.
At his side, the blade.
He had chosen it from the vault during the god's battle—half-forgotten, nearly crumbled with age. But the soul of it still lived. The edge had dulled, chipped from divine resistance.
Kael drew it across the whetstone.
Scrape… breathe. Scrape… breathe.
The motion was meditative.
He kept the blade at a shallow angle, letting the stone kiss only the edge, just as the old Roman manuals dictated: no haste, only hunger.
With every pull, sparks danced in the gloom.
The sword began to gleam—not with luster, but readiness.
Nearby, oil simmered over low flame. Kael dipped a cloth into the basin, then rubbed it slowly into the leather joints of the armor. Circular motions, deliberate. Every rivet checked. Every strap tested. This was not just maintenance—it was communion.
He murmured to himself—not prayers, but old verses from a book that hadn't existed for a thousand years. His voice low, almost lost in the hiss of the coals:
"He who wears iron does not beg for peace.He cuts it from the silence."
Outside, thunder rolled like a drumline.
Kael tightened the chestplate straps, flexed his shoulders. Then the greaves. Then the bracers. The armor was lighter than it looked—fused with something otherworldly now. It bore the weight of history, not just steel.
He slid the sword into its scabbard last, the leather groaning softly.
The compass pulsed in his pocket again, as if impatient.
He stood before the cracked mirror bolted into the far wall—a relic from when Havenwyck still served knights instead of exiles. His reflection stared back: pale-eyed, jaw tight, gaunt from months of suffering and truth.
He no longer looked like a man.
He looked like a memory sharpened into flesh.
Kael reached toward the mirror, placed his fingers against the glass.
"Another god," he whispered. "Another reckoning."
The Shard answered—one slow pulse, like the beat of war drums far beneath the earth.
Then slowly the mirror's image blurred and showed a new scene, An Aztec like temple surrounded by what seemed to be a rainforest and above it coordinates. Just as soon as the image appeared did it dissolve but it didn't just blur out as it came it transferred itself into the journal sitting upon the workbench at the entrance of the forge.
He turned from the mirror.
Fully armored, fully armed with sword and journal, Kael walked out of the forge, the scent of steel clinging to him like a second skin.