The rain came down like the gods were weeping.
Raehdolf stood upon the obsidian platform, wrists bound in chains that shimmered faintly with rune light. The execution square was a sea of silence thousands watching, yet no one dared to breathe. The banners of the Imperial Court hung heavy and wet, their crimson colors bleeding into the wind.
He didn't flinch.
Once, he had been the Empire's favored King A noble idealist, a protector of the realm. Evil feared his name, and good men whispered it like prayer. But now, the same people who once cheered his victories waited for his head to fall.
"Raehdolf Von Ardyn," the Chancellor's voice boomed, amplified by magi-tech speakers embedded in the stone walls. "For the crime of high treason and consorting with forbidden powers, you are sentenced to death. Do you have any last words?"
He lifted his head, dark hair plastered against his face. His eyes, once bright gold, now shimmered faintly red under the rain.
Last words? What could words do against betrayal?
He smiled instead slow, cold, dangerous. "You can chain my body," he said quietly, "but you will never chain truth."
The crowd shifted uneasily. The Chancellor gave a small nod, and the executioner stepped forward a hulking figure in runesteel armor. The blade he carried wasn't mere metal; it pulsed with arcane circuits, each line glowing blue as it hummed to life.
Raehdolf exhaled. For a moment, everything went still the rain, the crowd, even his heartbeat.
Then the blade fell.
A flash.
A sound like thunder cracking through the world.
And darkness swallowed him whole.
He expected nothing after death. No light. No judgment. Only the silence of oblivion.
But instead came pain.
Searing, electric pain.
Raehdolf gasped as his eyes snapped open. He wasn't lying on stone anymore. Beneath him was soil wet, rich, breathing with power. Strange roots coiled around his limbs, pulsing faintly with crimson light.
"...Alive?" he whispered, voice hoarse. "No. This can't be."
The air vibrated with whispers, voices ancient and endless, speaking a language he somehow understood.
We remember you, child of ruin.
Your death was only the gate.
Rise… and see what has become of your light.
He pushed himself up. His body was changed leaner, harder, humming with little power. A faint mark burned on his left hand: a spiraled rune of black fire. It flickered in rhythm with his heartbeat.
Around him stretched a forest unlike any he had seen. The trees were metallic, their leaves translucent like glass, humming softly with magi-tech currents. The air smelled of ozone and ash. High above, storm clouds twisted around a distant tower that scraped the heavens.
Raehdolf stood, every nerve alive.
His memory was a shattered mirror flashes of faces, betrayal, a kingdom drowning in deceit.
He clenched his fist. The rune flared in answer, bleeding faint light.
"Who brought me back?" he asked the wind.
No answer. Only the hum of machines buried beneath the soil and the faint glimmer of runic patterns crawling over the bark of the trees.
He began to walk. Each step echoed softly, and the world seemed to breathe with him like it recognized him.
When he reached a clearing, he saw it: a massive stone monolith half-buried in earth, its surface carved with sigils that burned faintly red. Words appeared across its face, glowing one by one as if the world itself was speaking to him.
You are not what you were.
You are the Remnant.
Bound to the Oath of the Fallen.
Your light was stolen take it back.
He touched the stone. His vision shattered.
He saw flashes of a dying city machines burning, angels made of steel falling from the sky, the Emperor's face twisted in fear.
He saw himself standing over the bodies of traitors.
He saw the world kneeling before a black sun.
And then he saw his own eyes glowing like molten gold and shadow intertwined.
He fell to his knees, gasping. "What… am I?"
A voice, soft and ancient, whispered inside his mind.
The balance. The end. The beginning.
He laughed weakly, a bitter sound. "Cryptic as ever."
From the corner of his vision, movement stirred. A shadow detached from the trees a man in dark armor, watching him silently. His presence was heavy, like a weight pressing against his chest.
Raehdolf rose slowly. "You've been following me."
The man didn't answer at first. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough, reverent.
"They said you were dead."
"Perhaps I was."
"Then what are you now?"
Kael looked up at the swirling sky. Lightning streaked across it like veins of white fire.
"A reminder," he said. "That light can die but darkness remembers."
The man bowed his head. "The others will want to know. The loyal still remain."
"Then gather them." Kael's eyes blazed gold and red at once. "The world that condemned me will soon remember why it feared my name."
That night, as the storm raged, Kael carved his first vow upon the stone monolith with the burning rune in his palm.
I will unmake the lies that built this empire.
I will reclaim what was stolen.
And if the gods themselves stand in my way
I will kill them too.
The rune pulsed, brighter now, feeding on the promise.
Kael looked at his reflection in a puddle of stormwater.
A man reborn from death.
A myth the world thought buried.
He smiled.
"Let's begin."
The watcher at his shoulder bowed again, and from the grove beyond, faint figures slipped into the storm shapes that had remembered oaths and hated forgetting. The world had taken a small breath as if readying itself for upheaval.
Above the tower the lightning kept time. Below, a new sentence in an old story began to write itself in blood and thunder.