Kael didn't return to his dorm.
He slipped past the main quadrants of the Institute, avoiding familiar paths. The evening sky overhead bled into starlight, and soft floating lanterns began their nightly ascent—rites of remembrance for fallen cultivators.
He had no one to remember.
Instead, he walked.
And the relic pulsed at his chest.
The visions in the Seer's Division had left his thoughts spinning—not with fear, but with calculations. Each image had been a branch of possibility, a fractured mirror of what could have been. Some were riddled with power, others with ruin. But all pointed to a singular truth:
His path was converging.
Beneath the Institute
The lower sanctums of Emberlight were rarely spoken of, and even less frequently patrolled.
Carved into the mountain's bone beneath the campus, these catacombs once served as trial chambers during the War of Inheritance. Now, they were locked, sealed with sigils most students didn't recognize. But Kael had studied maps. He knew where the forgotten paths were.
As he descended through a crumbling passage hidden behind the eastern observatory, he felt the atmosphere change. The air thickened. Not with dust, but with… memory. A familiar heaviness. His relic began to warm.
Then, a whisper.
"Descendant of silence… you return."
Kael halted.
The voice was not from the relic—it echoed from beneath him. Old. Hollow. Familiar.
He moved faster.
The Forgotten Vault
The stairs ended at a vast iron door, split by age, sealed with triple-layered glyphs.
Kael pressed his hand to the cold metal. The glyphs flared—not with resistance, but with recognition.
They opened.
The chamber inside was circular, filled with statues—ten in total. Each depicted a faceless figure, body fragmented in three: body, mind, and spirit split like shells from a single core.
At the center stood a broken pedestal. Cracked. Empty.
But the stone bore a single sigil Kael knew from memory, though he had never seen it in waking life:
The Triune Seal.
His relic flared.
Memories surged.
Visions Unleashed
A battlefield of ash and dying stars.
Immortals locked in combat, each wielding laws beyond comprehension.
A voice—his voice—crying out:
"You cannot chain Ascension!"
A tower fell. Realms fractured. The seal shattered.
Then darkness.
And from it, a single command:
"Preserve the Path. Even if the world forgets."
Kael stumbled back, heart racing. Not from fear. But clarity.
This chamber was not a vault.
It was a tomb.
And he had returned to it.
Above Ground – Seer's Division
Lirae jolted awake from a meditative trance, her third eye—an ethereal lotus at her brow—shimmering.
"Something's opening."
She ran to the viewing pool. The waters boiled with motion.
A vision coalesced: Kael standing before the broken Triune pedestal, the relic at his chest glowing with celestial fire.
But something else stirred too—beneath him.
Buried deep beneath the tomb, a second seal… cracked.
Deep Below
As Kael turned from the pedestal, the walls of the chamber trembled.
From the far end, a figure stepped out of shadow. Not a ghost. Not a projection.
A man. Or what remained of one.
Wrapped in faded ceremonial robes, bones showing through decayed skin, yet eyes burning with immortal flame.
"You are… the Triune Lord's inheritor," the figure rasped.
Kael didn't blink. "Who are you?"
The man bowed. "I am Malek Vos. One of the Nine Witnesses. I guarded the legacy you now awaken."
Kael's tone remained flat. "You failed. The world forgot."
Malek smiled, teeth like knives. "Only because it was meant to. The War demanded silence. But now, the Path stirs again. And with it…"
His eyes narrowed.
"…your enemies awaken."
Kael tensed. "What enemies?"
Malek turned toward the pedestal. "The ones who chained Tier Ten. Who slaughtered the Immortals. Who fed the Devourers."
"Devourers?" Kael asked. The term echoed from his relic, half-remembered.
Malek nodded. "Creatures not of realm or law. They erase. They consume not just life—but memory. They are coming again. And you, Kael Aetherborne…"
He stepped close.
"…you are the first light they will try to extinguish."