The skies over the fractured realms turned blood-red.
The three Chimes—Silence, Sorrow, and Despair—hovered before Kiel, spinning slowly, resonating with each other. Together, they formed the Trinal Harmonic, an ancient pattern older than time itself. It was the key to the World Requiem, a spell not meant to destroy... but to reveal.
Myra stood beside him atop the Tower of Ashes, once the seat of a fallen god, now their staging ground for what was to come.
"You're sure about this?" she asked, wind lashing her silver cloak behind her.
"No," Kiel admitted. "But certainty was a luxury I abandoned thirteen millennia ago."
He raised his hand. The Chimes aligned.
Below them, the world paused. Armies halted their march. Storms froze mid-sky. Even time held its breath as the spell began to form.
---
The World Requiem wasn't a song.
It was truth given sound.
As Kiel spoke the words—syllables not meant for mortal throats—the Chimes sang in harmony. Each pulse shattered illusions that had buried reality for eons. The lies of empires, the fabrications of gods, the false memories planted by Architects—all began to unravel.
From the ruins of Iskar to the frost-locked tombs of Varthuun, people began to remember.
The Elders were never divine.
The Vaults had been prisons, not gifts.
Magic was stolen, not discovered.
And the one called Altharion Veil had been framed—his legend twisted into villainy.
---
But the Requiem had a cost.
Kiel faltered as the spell clawed at his essence. His body began to flicker, pieces of him eroding like paper in flame. Myra caught him as he fell to one knee.
"It's eating you."
"I know," he gasped, blood trickling from his mouth. "But I have to finish."
"You'll die."
"Then I'll die free."
Myra pressed her forehead to his.
"Not alone."
Together, they placed their hands on the final Chime—Despair.
It screamed.
And the world saw.
---
The spell completed.
Across the realms, masks shattered. The Elders lost their glamour, revealed as hollow parasites feeding on belief. The cults that worshiped them crumbled. The Citadels of the Eternal Choir collapsed as the illusion that sustained them vanished.
And in the silence that followed, the world wept—not out of grief, but relief.
Because for the first time in millennia, truth reigned.
---
Kiel stood on the edge of the Tower, smoke rising from his form, his flesh etched with runes burned into his bones.
"Myra... did it work?"
She looked up, eyes filled with both sorrow and wonder.
"Yes," she whispered. "We broke the cycle."
The Chimes, now inert, fell into their palms—no longer artifacts of control, but relics of liberation.
From the horizon came voices—people chanting, not his name, but a word long buried:
> "Veil."
Not a tyrant. Not a monster. But a man who defied fate.
Kiel smiled, weakly.
"I liked it better when they hated me."
"Too late," Myra smirked. "You're a myth now."
---
And far beyond, in a chamber untouched by the Requiem, a cloaked figure observed the unfolding dawn.
"She did it," the figure said. "They both did."
Another voice answered, dry and cold.
"Then begin the second phase. The Requiem was only the prelude."