The moon rose over Elyndor like a blade—thin, cold, and sharp against the sky. In the catacombs beneath the palace, where only priests and royal dead were meant to dwell, a child no older than three walked barefoot in silence.
Raen.
His mark pulsed with heat, guiding him deeper through tunnels of stone and silence.
He shouldn't have been able to open the sealed gate.
But the flame in his blood answered to no key.
He came to a door—ancient, rimmed with rusted silver, and engraved with a warning in a language long dead.
He read it without hesitation:
"Here sleeps what should never wake. Turn back, soul unshackled."
He placed his palm against the door.
The mark on his hand blazed.
The chamber within was circular, lined with bones and runes, dimly lit by braziers that lit themselves as he entered. In the center stood an altar, and on it—a skull. Polished, silver-white, not decayed but preserved by time and magic.
"This was mine," Raen whispered, eyes narrowing.
He didn't know how he knew it. But he knew.
This was the skull of Zion Thorne, once buried in the ruins of Lurien Keep, now hidden in the depths of a kingdom that had no record of his name.
Someone had taken it, sealed it here—a piece of him, kept to bind his power.
The whisper returned.
"Break the seal… and remember everything."
Raen reached for the skull.
The moment his fingers touched bone, a shockwave erupted through the chamber. Runes lit like stars around him. His body trembled—not with fear, but with memory.
He saw flashes—Kael standing over him. The burning gates. His sword, his oath, his betrayal. A woman's scream. A child's cry. The throne, torn from under him.
And then… darkness. Fire. Rebirth.
When Raen awoke, he was on the floor of the catacombs.
But something had changed.
The mark on his hand was gone.
Because it no longer needed to be seen.
The flame had entered his blood.
The Seal of Bones was broken.
Above, in the halls of power, the Queen jolted awake from her meditation.
In a far-off tower, Lord Therion's wine cup shattered in his grip.
And deep in the mountains of the west, a creature once thought dead stirred in its slumber—drawn to the flame that had returned to the world.