Location: Riftvein Expanse – Between the Dustline and the Echo Belt
The land here didn't breathe.
It remembered.
Kael Arclight stood alone amid a canyon of inverted gravity—where stones floated like memories and sky cracked like glass. The Riftvein was known only by whispers: a forgotten divide where reality had once been stitched shut by unknown forces.
And now, it stirred.
Kael slowly unsheathed Ashenflame. The blade didn't glow. It pulsed. It listened.
Behind him, Zera Vaelith emerged from a ripple in shadow.
"This place shouldn't exist anymore," she said.
Kael didn't look back. "Then maybe I'm exactly where I'm meant to be."
Above them – The Celestial Apex Fracture
Stars bent.
A singularity of shattered time spiraled open—and from it, something descended.
Not a beast. Not a god. Not even a shadow.
But a concept, walking.
Its form changed with every blink—one moment a crowned woman of galaxies, next a bleeding knight with three swords pierced through his own chest, then a child holding a dead sun in her arms.
And then, it stabilized.
It—they—became something vaguely humanoid. Skin like prism-shards. Limbs like orbiting fragments. In its chest, a hollow black sun spun counterclockwise.
Its voice carried across dimensions.
"Ashenborn. Do you know what you erased?"
Kael's eyes burned silver and ember-orange, the molten void within them flaring as he spoke his line—
"Haaah... what a strong aura."
Name: VASHTRIEL – The Cradlebroken Echo
Title: The Forgotten Seed
Domain: Lost Futures, Inverted Time, Unborn Gods
Aura Type: Chrono-Eldritch / Existential Memory
Relic: "The Bell of Never-Born" – a fractal, ringing sigil that causes timelines to rupture with each toll
Vashtriel didn't attack.
Instead, the air folded.
And Kael's past self stepped out from behind him.
A version of Kael—before the Revenant fusion, still mortal, still afraid.
"Wha...?" the younger Kael muttered, eyes wide.
But he faded before he could speak again.
Zera gritted her teeth. "They're... weaponizing memory against you."
Vashtriel's laugh was like distant thunder echoed in reverse.
"I am the cradle you crawled from, Kael Arclight. You do not know your origin... but I do."
Flash: Lyra, Drayke, and Veyl (across regions)
Each of them felt it—a fracture. A deep echo through their aura.
Drayke's flames flickered into white. Lyra's relic wept golden light. Veyl's eyes darkened like an eclipse.
All of them whispered the same name—
"Kael..."
Back in the Riftvein
Kael floated forward, his aura cloak rising like wings behind him. Ashenflame ignited. Not just with flame—but with defiance.
"You're from before time," Kael said quietly. "You think that makes you untouchable."
Vashtriel hovered above the broken earth. "No. It makes me inevitable."
Kael's foot touched the fractured sky beneath them.
He smiled.
"Then I'll burn inevitability itself."
The storm began.
"Let's see if your future can survive mine."
The Riftvein – Time-Folded Battlefield
The sky didn't fall.
It looped.
Kael and Vashtriel collided midair, but every strike rippled in reverse—blades clashing seconds before they moved, wounds appearing before the cuts, steps taken before the decision was made. It wasn't a battle of power. It was a war against what could have been.
Kael's Ashen aura surged, burning holes in causality itself. Ashenflame split into afterimages, phasing between strikes he hadn't made yet.
And still, Vashtriel stood untouched.
Not because he was faster—
But because he had already seen the fight end.
Vashtriel's Voice (across a thousand moments):
"You burn beautifully, Ashenborn. But you are still linear.
I am what the world regrets creating."
Kael gritted his teeth, scarred right hand glowing.
His fingers flickered with elemental fragments—remnants of the Eternals he had already consumed.
Cursed Mist. Celestial Light. Beast Flame.
They sparked across his fingertips.
"I'm done being your memory," Kael growled.
Zera's Perspective – Hidden Behind the Fold
Zera watched from a shattered time-rift, hand pressed to her relic, the Wraith Bell, trembling. She whispered into the veil:
"Kael… he's resisting Vashtriel's weave. That should be impossible."
From the corner of her vision, a second version of herself stared back.
Future-Zera.
Her eye socket missing. Bell cracked.
But smiling.
"Not impossible," Future-Zera said. "Just Kael."
Flashback Fragment – Kael's Childhood
A whisper.
"Your name will scorch history, my child."
Kael's mother. Face unseen. Voice erased by time.
But the intent—unmistakable.
Present
Kael dashed across collapsing platforms of reality, aura trails bending the world's rules. He appeared behind Vashtriel—but Vashtriel was already there.
A mirrored Kael stood before him—an echo twisted by the Eternal.
"Is this who you were meant to become?" Vashtriel asked, gesturing to the echo. "A soul without shape. A name without origin."
Kael stabbed forward.
"I made myself."
The blade met memory. Shattered it.
Vashtriel REACTS
His hollow sun core began to bleed starlight.
"I see now," he said softly. "You are not from this timeline, are you?"
Kael froze.
A tremor ran through the fabric of the Riftvein.
"Another version of you broke the Cradle," Vashtriel continued. "And now this world... is paying the price."
Meanwhile – Across Aurenya
Lyra feels her relic fracture.
Drayke sees visions of Kael surrounded by collapsing galaxies.
Veyl Solane kneels before the Horizon Spire, whispering: "It's begun again."
Final Sequence – Vashtriel's Revelation
Vashtriel raises the Bell of Never-Born.
"Time is a spiral. But there is a name that exists in all versions of it. A singular anomaly."
Kael narrowed his eyes.
"Speak it."
Vashtriel pointed at Kael.
"Arclight. You are the seed of the multiversal wound."
"Let me show you what happens when the wound remembers its pain."
Location: The Cradle of Silence – Buried Heart of Aurenya
Once, it was a nursery for aura-bearers.
Now, it's a tomb of unborn gods.
Black spires jutted from the soil like the ribs of a sleeping behemoth. The wind didn't howl—it whispered, like lost children crying beneath stone.
The Cradle of Silence stirred.
And the being buried within… remembered it had a name.
Cut to: Acolyte of the Wyrmkin Accord – Selsir of the Hollow Tongue
Kneeling at the edge of the Cradle, chanting in broken syllables.
Selsir's eyes rolled back. Blood oozed from his ears.
The glyphs on his spine glowed green, then gold… then black.
"It is time," he gasped, convulsing. "Let the cradle weep…"
He drove his relic-spear into the stone.
The Cradle Split.
Not with force, but with silence.
Reality refused to record the sound it made. Language collapsed. Light hesitated.
From beneath it rose a figure not born, but withheld.
Eternal Awakened – SOVRYN, THE VOID-INHERITOR
Genderless. Faceless. Cloaked in layered veils of unwoven time.
They hovered above the world—no feet, no voice. Only presence.
Their body was a lattice of translucent bones and shifting constellations, as if stitched from the gaps between stars.
From their chest grew a tree-like cage, inside which pulsed a crystalline fetus—a being that would never be born, its existence paused mid-creation.
Sovryn's Aura:
Concept: Stillbirth of Time
Effect: Unbirths nearby history. Erases outcomes, breaks memory, distorts cause-and-effect.
Visual: Wherever they move, plants un-bloom, sunlight dims, and people forget what they were about to do.
Back to Kael
Still recovering from the fractured battle against Vashtriel, Kael lands on a warped plain. His body is covered in slashes of paradox energy—still bleeding aura despite his suppressed state.
Zera appears beside him, silent. Her lips tremble.
"Something worse just woke up," she whispers.
Kael slowly stands. Breath ragged.
His silver-cracked eyes flick toward the horizon, where the skies ripple like liquid glass.
He senses it.
That stillness.
The silence of a name that never should have existed.
Kael's Line (soft, cold):
"Haaah… what a strong aura."
Final Panel:
A single ash flake falls upward as Sovryn turns their veiled gaze toward Kael.
Behind them, entire cities forget their own names.