Mirage of the Forgotten
---
The Glass Desert was more than a wasteland.
It was a memory engine.
Each step Kael took shimmered beneath his boots — reflections not of the sun, but of his own past. Images rippled across the polished dunes like ghosts made of light: his mother's tear-streaked face, a younger Kael watching the stars, his brother's betrayal—
He clenched his jaw and pressed forward.
Theron walked a few paces behind, silent, watching the land as if it might rise against them — and it very well could.
They'd seen no birds. No beasts. Only silence and sun. But the Shard in Kael's chest stirred like it knew this place.
By midmorning, the horizon shimmered.
A tower — tall, thin, floating slightly above the dunes — drifted into view. It rotated without turning. Reality bent around its spire like a mirage folding in on itself.
Zephyrinth.
Theron's hand tightened on his sword. "That's no structure. That's a scar in the world."
Kael didn't answer. He was too focused on the pull — the way the Shard in his body responded like a magnet nearing a pole.
But they weren't the only ones approaching.
From the opposite ridge, five figures watched — cloaked in ash-gray armor, crests of obsidian threading their shoulders.
The Veilcrowned Dynasty had arrived.
And at their front stood a woman with eyes of ember and a blade that whispered in a forgotten tongue.
Commander Aenya Drae.
Blood of Kael's father. Trained in Echo techniques, stolen in infancy by the Dynasty.
She watched Kael through the spyglass.
"Target confirmed," she said coldly. "Initiate the Mirage Protocol. No survivors."
---
Kael and Theron moved down the dune toward the floating spire.
The wind sharpened. The air grew thin.
And then — without warning — the sky bent.
A wave of heat and light rippled over the sands. The tower shattered into prisms before rebuilding itself upside down. Dunes twisted into spirals. The sun fractured into a thousand reflections.
A temporal veilstorm.
Theron cursed, pulling Kael down just before a bolt of mirrored lightning slammed into the sand beside them.
"Run!"
But running was useless.
The air wasn't air. The ground wasn't ground.
Suddenly Kael stood in a memory — but it wasn't his.
He was a child in a temple of fire. A woman screamed his name — but not his mother. The world burned around them.
He blinked.
The desert snapped back into view.
"Veilstorm mirages," Kael gasped.
Theron pulled him up. "They're not just illusions — they're fragments of lives that never were. One wrong move, and your mind breaks."
Another ripple pulsed.
This time, Kael wasn't in a past.
He was in a future.
He stood over a battlefield, blood on his hands, Shards circling him like broken moons. Corpses surrounded him — Elara. Theron. Aenya.
"This is what you become," a voice whispered. "The Axis is a weapon, not a savior."
Kael fell to his knees.
---
Then a blade slammed into the ground beside him — real this time. It hissed with Veil energy.
Theron spun, slicing upward with his sword just in time to block the second attack.
The Veilcrowned Dynasty had struck.
Five warriors, masked and silent, surged through the warped air like shadows born of smoke. Aenya Drae walked calmly behind them, not yet drawing her sword.
Theron met the charge, blades clashing.
Kael struggled to focus — the Shard inside him roaring against the mirages — until the Veil screamed through his mind:
"Awaken the Third."
He looked toward the floating tower.
Then ran.