Consciousness returned as a single, pure chime that echoed in a void. Kaelen opened his eyes—or the memory of eyes—to a whiteness without dimension. There was no ground, no sky, only an infinite, silent expanse.
Then, a form bled into being before him.
It was a thing of nightmare geometry and impossible anatomy—obsidian flesh that seemed to absorb the light, limbs that articulated in too many places, and eyes that were windows into the cold, empty space between galaxies. It was an Ikannuna. Its voice was not sound, but meaning etched directly onto his soul.
"Behold," the voice resonated, a glacier of disdain. "The zenith of your evolution. The grand climax of ten millennia of striving."
The white void dissolved into a flash of memory: the plaza, the falling moon, Ninella's face etched in terror, the oak sapling in its sterile case.
"You wage your little wars," the Ikannuna continued, its psychic tone scouring him. "And believe the bloodshed tempers your spirit. You anoint your kings and ministers, blind fools leading the blind, using your brief, flickering lives as pawns on a board of their own vanity."
Kaelen tried to scream, to deny it, but he was a ghost here, without form or voice.
"You clutter your minds with meaningless noise, congratulating yourselves on your 'progress' while you forget the very purpose of your existence: to ascend. To create. To reach for the stars, not with machines, but with your souls."
The entity shifted, its presence an unbearable weight. "You have not ascended. You have only built a taller cage. And now, the cycle concludes. The experiment must be purged."
Despair, cold and absolute, washed over him.
"But… a single datum of interest may yet be preserved," the Ikannuna intoned, a hint of clinical curiosity in its thought. "You. You saw the fragility. You cherished the dirt, the green, the stories of the past. You looked backward while the others only stared at their own reflections. For this flaw, you are chosen. You will not be a messiah. You will not be a deity. You will be a testament. A record. You are the memory that must outlive the fire."
The featureless white around him began to pulse. He could feel them—six other points of consciousness, six other souls being scoured and sentenced. They were all here, together and alone.
The Ikannuna's voice rose, a cosmic decree that hammered into the seven of them at once.
"ARISE."
A title, a function, a crown of thorns made of pure purpose, was fused to Kaelen's essence.
"THE WITNESS." Kaelen Vance
And as the naming continued, he felt the roles assigned, each a reflection of a core sin, a fundamental strength.
"THE KING." Liam Creed
"THE MOTHER." Isabelle Sterling
"THE QUEEN." Chloe Reed
"THE LAWGIVER." Julian Thorne
"THE BUILDER." Marcus Slate
"THE WATCHER." Sebastian Cross
"Go," was the final, dismissive thought that washed over them. "And this time… learn."
The whiteness shattered. The void collapsed into a violent, shocking rush of sensation—cold, pressure, and a brutal, gasping need for air. The last thing Kaelen knew was the taste of mud and the crushing weight of a new, tiny body. The first thing he heard was the cry of a newborn, and it was his own.