Rain lashed against the roof of the crumbling watchtower, thunder splitting the night sky like an omen. Kael sat cross-legged in the candlelit chamber, the faint glow casting elongated shadows along the damp stone walls. Before him, a circle of blood shimmered—precisely drawn, infused with spells of silence, concealment, and invocation. The scythe rested across his knees, its edge slick with a crimson sheen from a ritual earlier that evening.
He didn't flinch as lightning cracked again. His breathing was steady, mechanical, eyes fixated on the flickering candlelight that danced within the bowl of his reflection. He was beginning to realize something strange. The voices that had guided him for weeks now spoke more clearly. They weren't just fragmented thoughts or intrusive instincts. They had names.
"You've stalled long enough," one voice growled within.
"No," another whispered gently. "He hesitates because he fears becoming what he hates."
"But hate is the only thing that makes him strong," a third said, laughing with madness.
Kael raised his head, eyes distant. The personalities had become clear in his mind. One called itself Veyr, sharp and calculating. Another, softer, named Nhalia, protective but always weeping. And the cruelest of them—the voice that came when blood spilled freely—called itself Mordrath.
He knew they weren't real. He knew. But in the silence of the forgotten watchtower, they were the only ones who truly understood him.
Earlier that day, Kael had returned to Asael's Vigil. The village, built in the lingering shadow of Azkaris, had changed. Amethyst crystal lanterns hummed with quiet power, and the villagers whispered about the blood-eyed boy who passed like a ghost through the markets, never speaking unless spoken to. They feared him. Revered him.
The girl he had once protected no longer stood at his side. Lirael had grown distant, afraid even. She didn't understand what he was building.
He had begun recruiting, but not with speeches or banners. Kael offered purpose to the lost, whispered salvation to the broken. He found orphans, deserters, mages cast out for forbidden research, and knights disgraced by politics. He gave them a place. A cause. A leader.
The name they called themselves was "The Crimson Vigil."
A knock echoed against the heavy wooden door of the tower. Kael rose slowly, drawing his long cloak over his lean frame. The scythe disappeared in a swirl of bloodmist, vanishing into the tattooed sigils along his spine.
He opened the door to reveal a familiar face.
"You're late, Rael," Kael said.
The man bowed slightly. Rael was a former knight of the Hollow Crown, now wearing scavenged armor with the Vigil's crimson mark etched over the sigil of his former order.
"Forgive me. The southern scouts returned. There's movement near the old temples. Mages from Eldrinthia, likely preparing a cleansing."
Kael nodded, stepping back. "Bring them in. Let the others hear it."
Within the hour, seven figures gathered in the chamber: a mage whose face was half-burned, a rogue ex-priestess, two twin assassins from Nyxport, and a boy no older than thirteen who had already taken five lives in Kael's name.
He looked at them and felt... nothing.
No camaraderie. No fear. No guilt. Only function.
"They call us heretics," Kael began. "Madmen. Cultists. And yet, who among us would kneel to those who chain thought? Who define right and wrong by bloodline or spellbook?"
The room was silent. They watched him with reverence.
"Eldrinthia fears what we represent. Not chaos, but balance. The breaking of their mirror. So let us give them reason to fear."
He raised a hand. A map unrolled, revealing routes into the ruins beneath the floating city of Nevaris.
"In three days, we strike. We won't kill unless necessary. But we will take what they guard: the Eye of Aranthil."
Gasps. Whispers. The Eye was a relic of prophecy, a surveillance artifact said to reveal hidden futures.
"Are we ready for this?" the burned mage asked.
"No," Kael said. "But readiness is a luxury. And we gave that up when we chose truth over comfort."
That night, as the others rested or prepared, Kael stood atop the watchtower, gazing across the lightning-lit horizon. The rain had ceased, but thunder still rolled like an angry god.
He thought of Lirael. Her smile. Her tears the last time they spoke.
"You're losing yourself, Kael," she'd said. "This... resistance? It's not about justice anymore. It's about you proving you matter. To someone. To anyone."
She wasn't wrong. But she wasn't right either.
He summoned the scythe again and held it up to the sky. Blood dripped from the edge, vanishing before it struck the stone. The weapon had become an extension of him. A vessel.
"If I am a weapon," Kael whispered, "then let me be sharp enough to carve meaning into a meaningless world."
Behind him, unseen, the shadows whispered agreement.
In the dreams that followed, he walked through halls of crystal. He saw versions of himself, hundreds, each in different armor, different expressions—some laughing, some weeping, some screaming at nothing.
One turned to him.
"You can still stop."
Another.
"You're almost free."
And a third.
"You were never real in the first place."
He awoke with a nosebleed and a deep, gnawing hunger. Not for food, but for proof. For touch. For her.
By morning, the Crimson Vigil had vanished into the forests beyond Asael's Vigil. They left no trail, only signs of ritual and whispered madness. Kael led them forward, his voices guiding him.
One for mercy. One for vengeance. One for vision.
And at the center, Kael himself—a boy with a broken heart, seeking revenge in a world that no longer remembered the crime.