For a long moment there was only silence—an endless suspension between heartbeat and breath. Then a sound, soft and slow, like wind threading through glass.
Adrian opened his eyes.
Light surrounded him. Not white, not gold—something between both, shimmering with colors that changed whenever he tried to name them. He lay on a surface that looked like water but held him like air. Beneath it, constellations drifted, moving as though the stars had drowned and found peace at the bottom of an invisible sea.
"Lucien?"
His voice came out as a whisper that didn't echo.
A shape stirred nearby. Lucien rose, expression dazed, the same light reflected in his blue eyes. His pale hair looked silver here, as if the world had polished him clean of all dust and blood.
"I'm here," he said quietly. "Where's Kael?"
They turned. Kael stood a few steps away, silent, watching the horizon—or what passed for one. There was no true distance here, only the illusion of it: ripples of space folding and unfolding like breathing cloth.
"We made it," Lucien said, almost disbelieving.
"Or this is what dying feels like," Kael answered.
Adrian flexed his hands. The scars he'd carried for years were gone. His skin gleamed faintly, alive in ways it hadn't been before. He felt weightless but not weak, as though gravity had decided to forgive him.
"Wherever this is," Adrian murmured, "it isn't Earth."
The air pulsed in response, faint vibrations through the soles of their feet. Then the light condensed, folding inward into a single radiant figure. No face, no shape—only the suggestion of one, carved from illumination.
{You stand between what was and what will be.}
Eidolon's voice again—clearer, closer.
Lucien instinctively reached for a weapon that no longer existed. "You kept your word," he said.
I keep all things that still have purpose.
The three brothers exchanged a look. Even here, even cleansed by impossible beauty, they didn't trust easily.
"What happens now?" Adrian asked.
Now you breathe the air of the new world. It will taste of Aether. It will know your names.
The light spread outward, forming shapes—mountains of translucent stone, rivers of mist, skies stitched with pale moons. It was as though the idea of a world was rehearsing itself before being born.
Kael frowned. "This place feels…alive."
It is. Every leaf, every gust, every shadow listens. The world you will enter—Novum principium—hungers to grow. It needs those who can teach it to remember strength.
Lucien's eyes narrowed. "And that's supposed to be us?"
You carry the remnants of a civilization that forgot mercy and mastery alike. Bring both. The world will test you, reshape you. When you reach the age of twenty-one in its count, it will offer you a Class—a reflection of what you choose to become.
Kael asked, "And until then?"
Survive. Learn. Build. You will begin weak, as all things do.
Adrian's chest tightened at the word weak. He remembered the bunker, the last gunfire, Kael's blood. The promise they'd made—to build something better.
He nodded once. "We'll manage."
The light seemed to approve.
Then step forward, Adrian Vale. Step forward, Kael Vale. Step forward, Lucien Vale. May your second beginning be worthy of its price.
The surface beneath them dissolved. The brothers fell—not in terror, but as if gravity were simply inviting them home.
The fall ended in silence.
Adrian's body struck ground that felt both solid and alive—a soil of pale ash that released faint motes of light with every touch. The air was sharp, cold enough to sting his lungs. He rolled onto his side, gasping, and saw the horizon bleeding into dawn—or something like it. The sun here was enormous, its edges ragged, as if still being drawn by unseen hands.
Lucien landed next, half-crouched, half-stumbling. He pressed a hand into the glowing dust and grimaced. "It's warm. Like it's breathing."
Kael appeared last, suspended for a moment before impact, as if the world hesitated to claim him. When his boots finally met earth, he straightened slowly, scanning their surroundings. "No signs of life. Not yet."
The landscape stretched for miles—empty, shifting. Great monoliths of crystal jutted from the ground, humming faintly when the wind passed. In the distance, the skeleton of a forest shimmered like glass under pressure.
Adrian stood, steadying himself. "We start here."
Lucien raised an eyebrow. "Start what? We don't even know what this is."
Kael's gaze didn't waver. "It's the same rule as before. You survive first. Purpose comes after."
A low tremor passed beneath their feet, subtle but certain. The monoliths pulsed once, resonating with each other like tuning forks. A whisper moved through the air—not words, but something that wanted to be.
Adrian's heartbeat quickened. "Did you feel that?"
Lucien's hand hovered near his hip, reflex searching for a weapon that wasn't there. "Yeah. And it felt like it was listening."
{It listens because you are remembered.}
The voice came from nowhere and everywhere, threading through the air like static through silk.
Kael lifted his head. "Eidolon."
{Names remain, though form fades. I am not as I was. The passage cost much. What remains of me will guide what remains of you.}
Adrian looked up, but there was no figure this time—only faint motes drifting like fireflies. "Guide us how?"
{Through what you will call the Veins of Origin. Eight paths. Eight powers. Each drawn from what your kind once sought to master.}
Lucien exhaled softly. "Eight stages… eight veins."
{They are not gifts. They are mirrors. Choose poorly, and they will hollow you out. Choose well, and the world itself will learn your shape.}
A gust swept through the plain, carrying a scent faintly metallic. Far off, something moved—slow, deliberate, too large to belong to any human dream.
Kael's jaw set. "Then we move. We find shelter before it finds us."
Adrian nodded. "We begin with survival."
Lucien looked once more at the trembling horizon, then followed.
Behind them, the soil pulsed faintly, absorbing their footprints.
{And thus the new order begins.}
The whisper faded, leaving only the hum of the new world.
Adrian lifted his head against the dim light. He stood a little over six foot two, broad-shouldered but lean, built from years of running rather than rest. His hair was grey, cut unevenly and falling over his brow, still carrying the ghost of its former darkness. His eyes were a clear, piercing blue, sharp as frost beneath dawn light. The ash-glow of Novum gave his skin a faint metallic sheen, like warmth trapped beneath cold steel. He wore what remained of their survival gear: torn combat trousers, boots cracked at the seams, a black undershirt burned along one sleeve. A scavenged jacket, patched in places with synth-leather, hung from his shoulders—dust-streaked but still whole. There was gravity in the way he moved, the quiet weight of someone used to leading even when it cost him.
Lucien, the middle brother, stood six foot three, all long limbs and quiet precision. His hair shared the same muted grey, but finer, almost silver in certain light. His eyes were the same deep blue as Adrian's, bright against the pallor of his skin and the desolation around them. Even here, he looked composed—expression cool, movements deliberate. His shirt was torn open at the collar, revealing faint scars along his throat. The rest of his clothing, a layered mix of tactical fabric and worn linen wraps, clung to him as though the world itself refused to let him appear unguarded. There was a detached sharpness to him—the kind that came from seeing too much, too young.
Kael, the youngest, was the tallest at six foot four, built like the edge of a blade. His frame carried the tension of a man who had learned to stand his ground in the shadow of others. His hair was a darker shade of grey, coarse and uneven, as if ash had permanently claimed it, and his eyes mirrored the same stormed hue—cold, steady, unreadable. The coat he wore was a relic of another life—heavy, military-grade, its insignia long burned away. Beneath it, the dull gleam of armored weave hinted that he'd been ready for a fight when the old world ended. He carried silence like a weapon, and the air around him felt sharpened by it.
They stood together—three echoes of a dead civilization cast into a newborn one.
Adrian turned his gaze toward the distant shimmer of the crystalline forest. "That direction," he said. "Elevation, shelter, maybe water."
Lucien glanced at the faint silhouettes beyond the haze. "And if whatever's moving out there reaches us first?"
Adrian adjusted the strap of his torn jacket. "Then we learn how this world bleeds."
Kael's jaw tightened, but he said nothing. The wind stirred again—cool, electric, whispering across the plains as if amused.
{The world will test what you have left,} Eidolon murmured, voice faint as breath on glass. {Remember: strength is not survival. It is the memory of purpose.}
Lucien frowned. "That's comforting."
Adrian started forward. "Move."
The brothers began their march across the ash-white plain, the ground glowing faintly beneath their steps. Each footprint sank slightly, then sealed over, as though the land itself refused to let the past remain. Above them, the jagged sun burned without warmth, and far beyond the horizon, something vast exhaled.