A vibration shudders beneath my feet, a low hum that isn’t sound but something deeper—a feeling, a force. The air tightens, drawing inward as if the world is holding its breath.
Then, the stillness shatters.
The sky exhales.
A gust of wind tears from the heavens, cold as death, sharp as a blade, swirling into a tunnel of churning turquoise light. It comes for us—not with violence, but with purpose, rippling with something ancient, something alive.
Magic.
I stagger as the wind wraps around me, pressing against me like a second skin. The world beyond disappears—no sound, no movement, just Kael and me, suspended in the tunnel of light.
And then, the sighing begins.
Not words. Not music. Something else. Something that crawls into the spaces between thought, between breath.
It is not heard—it is felt.
It moves through my ribs, my spine, my skull, shifting and curling,as though a thousand voices speak over one another, tangled in an ancient, haunting chorus.
And then, the heavens speak.
The sighing twists, shifts, and makes itself known. The whispers do not speak, yet they fill me, surround me, weave through me like threads of silver light.
The words are not my own. They are not spoken.
They simplyare.
“Before the fall, before the flame,
The gods walked where mortals reign.
Light unbroken, power untamed,
Until the world is bound in chains.”
A pulse of magic rushes through my veins, burning like fire, like memory. I stagger, the truth curling around me, seeping into the marrow of my bones.
“The gods did not fade. They were taken.
Torn from this realm by hands unclean.
Bound, broken, cast aside.
Not by time, nor fate, but greed.”
A flicker of something—a face, a hand raised in power, a shadow swallowing the sky.
King Thalmyr.
A sorceress cloaked in darkness.
A sudden weight crushes my chest.
It was him. He did this.
“A ruler’s hunger, a sorceress’s hand,
Banished the gods, unmade the land.
