The silence in Nocthel wasn't peace.
It was something heavier. Denser.
As if the very air knew it shouldn't exist there.
Kael moved forward slowly, with equal, mechanical steps, through a corridor carved into ancient stone. His bare soles touched the damp floor, cold as a corpse's tongue. He made no noise. Not a single sound.
He had learned from a young age not to leave traces.
He learned the hard way that when they hear you, they beat you. When they see you, they stomp you. When you cry, they laugh.
Now he didn't cry anymore. He had no tears left.
He lost them all the night his mother was burned alive for hiding a dream.
A dream.
That's all the woman said. That she dreamed of a bird made of smoke and a throne of bones.
They came at dawn.
Dragged her by the hair into the street, carved her chest with nails, and set her carcass ablaze in front of everyone.
Kael was twelve. He watched it all. Didn't make a sound. Just dug his fingernail into his palm until blood came out.
"If you don't have the courage to scream...
learn to burn better than they do."
The tunnel narrowed. The light of the lamp behind him was fading.
He didn't look back. He didn't want light. He didn't want rescue.
He only wanted to get there.
Where that voice had called him.
A voice that didn't sound human.
Not even like a living thing.
It was closer to... forgetting.
The walls began to pulse gently, like living veins.
The reddish, almost organic color made him feel like he was walking inside a creature that hadn't completely died.
He stopped in front of a crack in the stone, so thin only an arm could fit through.
And yet... he knocked three times.
That's what the voice had told him.
Three knocks. With the left hand. The blood must flow.
Kael bit his finger and let the blood drip onto the stone.
The fissure opened.
No sound.
No light.
Just a sensation: of tearing, of ripping, as if the world was being split in two.
A smell of burned flesh and old blood hit him.
He didn't flinch. His heart didn't skip.
If he had felt fear, he would have felt alive.
But he wasn't.
Beyond the crack was a round chamber, carved in layers of bone and rusted metal.
In the center, a throne. Broken.
Made of fused skulls and coiled ribs.
On the floor, a book.
As thick as a corpse.
Wrapped in black chains.
With a single eye, closed.
Kael stepped toward it.
Each step felt like a betrayal against the world.
Like an act of blasphemy.
And that's exactly what he wanted.
To scream in silence: "You didn't want me? Then I'll take myself — and everything else — with me."
He bent down.
Pressed his bleeding palm against the cover.
His eyes rolled back.
He saw an entire world burning.
He saw shadows bound in chains.
He saw a white-haired child screaming from a throne built from others' pain.
He recognized himself.
"You are not chosen. You are the Archivist. The throne belongs to you."
"Choose your first shadow."
Around him, silhouettes rose.
Dozens. Maybe hundreds.
All shaped by pain.
Some had been kings. Others, monsters.
All dead. All forgotten.
Only one stepped closer.
A woman with ink-black hair, broken armor, a sword bleeding from its own blade.
Her gaze wasn't that of a queen. It was that of a murderer.
— "Seraphine. The shadow of betrayal. Give me one reason not to tear you apart."
Kael looked at her without fear.
— "Because I hate you just as much as you hate yourself."
Seraphine smiled.
And her smile was a knife.
She extended the hilt of her sword.
— "Then we are bound."
Kael felt a part of him tear away.
Not physically. Not his soul. Something in between.
A memory — lost like a wisp of smoke vanishing under water.
He couldn't have said exactly what it was.
Maybe the name of a girl who once helped him.
Or the taste of warm soup.
Gone. Replaced by something else:
"The palace balconies smelled of raw meat on the last day. And everyone was silent. They were too busy dying beautifully."
— Seraphine, in thought.
Kael staggered.
Not from exhaustion.
From confusion.
He ran his hand across his temple.
He wasn't sweating.
But he could feel the blood rushing faster, as if every heartbeat was a strike.
[MEMORY LOST] — "The day you laughed for the last time."
[ABILITY GAINED] — "Shadow: Seraphine – Blade Storm (inactive)"
His skin turned to ice.
And in its center — where his chest was — there was an emptiness.
A new space.
A foreign organ.
Something that wants. That hungers.
That senses the blood in the stone walls, in the depths, in other bodies.
Kael rose slowly, with Seraphine's sword in hand.
It didn't feel heavy.
But it wasn't light either.
It had the exact weight of sin.
— "You take pieces of me, but you give me fire," he whispered, as if speaking to someone inside.
Seraphine hovered around him like mist.
She said nothing.
She only watched.
With those empty eyes of a dead queen.
When he stepped back toward the stone fissure, the tunnel was no longer the same.
It was alive.
Every wall pulsed.
The stone was warm.
And a voice from the darkness, buried deep, began to call him.
"Kael... Kael... don't you miss screaming?"
He didn't know if it was his own voice.
Seraphine's.
Or a memory he had already lost.
He exited the chamber.
The lamp was off.
The world above seemed far too quiet. Too clean.
And suddenly...
Something flashed through him.
An image.
A visceral reaction.
A hand.
His mother's hand, on fire.
Screaming his name.
Skin cracking. Eyes melting. Screaming while they all watched.
All of them.
Smiling.
Kael placed his hand on his chest and laughed.
A short laugh.
Soundless.
Lifeless.
— "Let them scream now."
In the tunnel above, a silhouette was descending with a lantern.
A soldier.
Young.
Bored.
Stingy with movement.
Kael didn't move.
He just watched him.
"Huh..." he thought.
"Let's see how easily human flesh tears."