"Time is the armor I wear, and suffering is the metal it's forged from."
—Caldran, upon his first emergence
Lirael's Divide – Depths of the Riftscar Barricade
The earth screamed here.
Not from pain, but exhaustion—centuries of battles, seals, and aura experiments had scarred the very bones of the continent. Ruined watchtowers jutted from the canyon walls like broken teeth. The once-sacred land was now just a husk... yet beneath it, something stirred.
A heartbeat.
Slow. Relentless.
Thud…
Thud…
Then—silence fractured.
The ground exploded.
Out rose a titan of iron and agony: Caldran the Everworn.
He wasn't merely clad in armor—he was the armor. Towering over twenty feet, his body was fused with rusted plating, cursed chains, and shattered relics embedded into his limbs. Screaming faces of fallen warriors flickered across the metal, their souls bound within the seams.
From his chest, a furnace-like glow pulsed with each breath. A constant hum of grinding gears and echoing screams followed him.
His voice was thunder buried in centuries of regret.
"I was forged to suffer."
"Now I rise… to make the world remember."
Elsewhere – Ashvault Monastery, Aurenya
A hidden monastery deep within the Elarith Peaks crumbled as bells tolled with no hands. Dozens of monks fell to their knees, weeping blood. The high priest muttered, "The Chain of Time has broken… the Everworn walks again…"
Sunspire Vanguard – Mobile Operations Command
Kael stood with arms crossed, eyes narrowed at the seismic readings. Mountains had shifted. Fault lines rewritten. Survivors spoke of a "walking relic made of pain and time."
Drayke slammed a gauntlet on the map table. "This one doesn't just kill—he curses everything he touches. Cities, bloodlines, even memories."
Lyra's voice was low. "One survivor said something strange. Said the Eternal kept whispering a name…"
Kael turned. "Whose?"
Lyra hesitated.
"…Arclight."
Back in the Riftscar
Caldran knelt beside a crumbling grave—his own.
The name was eroded from the stone, but he remembered.
Not his human name.
But the name whispered in his final breath… before he was made to wear eternity.
"Arclight… You left me to rot at the edge of the Rift."
"Now I will wear your name as my final warcloak."
He stood.
Chains erupted from his back like serpents. The sky dimmed. Trees aged in seconds.
His next step cracked the land—and every creature nearby felt the weight of centuries crash down on them like iron.
Unknown Location – Whisper Vale
Zera Vaelith met with an old veinguild warseer, her Wraith Bell pulsing dimly.
"Serethis threads the story," Zera said, "but Caldran burdens it. He doesn't alter fate. He makes it heavier."
The warseer turned pale. "He's not an Eternal…"
Zera narrowed her eyes.
"He's a grudge given form."
Kael – Final Panel
Standing atop a cliff as a blood-orange sunset bathed the world in ember light, Kael tightened his grip on Ashenflame.
"The past wants me to kneel," he muttered.
Drayke grinned beside him. "Then let's make it bow instead."
Far below, Caldran's shadow crossed the horizon—each step louder than thunder.
"The living speak in lies. The dead? They whisper truths the world fears."
—Ma'urak, to the last mournkeeper of Duskar Wastes
Noctheron Marsh – Blackbone Hollow
It was silent.
No birds. No wind. No time.
In the center of a mire so ancient that maps dared not name it, a tomb cracked—not from force, but will. It had been waiting.
Buried beneath rot, bone, and the forgotten screams of war, the ground bloomed with black lilies—flowers said to only sprout where the line between life and death was blurred.
Then came the laugh—soft, dry, like breath over parchment.
A hand emerged. Pale gray. Skeletal, yet cloaked in flowing aura threads made of grief and memory.
The earth shuddered.
From beneath, a cloaked figure rose—draped in burial garb from a hundred fallen ages, stitched together by aura-sinew and bound to a spine-like staff adorned with funerary bells that never rang.
Ma'urak the Graveweaver.
The Eternal who did not fight the living…
He recruited the dead.
Meanwhile – At Zenith's Reach
Kael stared out from the shattered watchtower, his breath fogging in the morning frost. He hadn't slept.
Zera stood beside him, her Wraith Bell trembling.
"He's stirring now," she whispered.
"Ma'urak," Kael muttered. "The Graveweaver."
"He doesn't want land or glory," Zera added. "He wants remembrance. And he'll take it… one corpse at a time."
Duskar Wastes – Abandoned Battlefield
Once a graveyard of titans, now a living altar.
Bones rose from the sand, rearranging into effigies. Fallen Wyrmkin skeletons crawled from the dunes, eyes lit with violet flame. Echoes of forgotten generals shouted in silent formation.
Ma'urak walked through them, humming a lullaby not heard in over a thousand years.
As he passed a shattered sword, it reformed and hovered beside him—carried by the soul still bound to its metal.
He touched the skull of a long-dead king.
"You were betrayed… Serve again. This time, I shall remember your name."
The king's skeleton knelt.
Sunspire Vanguard Emergency Summit
Drayke paced like a caged beast. "We're not fighting monsters anymore. We're fighting history."
Lyra stared at the growing reports of graves opening worldwide. "He's not summoning the dead... he's waking them up."
"Then we silence them again," said Kael. But his voice… was colder than usual. Not fear.
Recognition.
Flashback – Unknown Memory (Kael's Past Life?)
In a war long erased from books, Kael stood atop mountains of the dead. At his feet, Ma'urak—once a general, once a friend—bled out.
Kael whispered, "Forgive me…"
Ma'urak only smiled.
"Just… remember me."
Then darkness.
Present – Noctheron Marsh
Ma'urak raised his staff. The bells rang—not by wind, but by will.
Across Aurenya, corpses flinched.
Warriors.
Lovers.
Heroes.
Villains.
All remembered.
And all heard his call.
Final Panel – Kael's Reflection
He stood alone under moonlight, Ashenflame humming softly.
"One wore the past like armor…"
He looked to the south, where the dead now marched.
"…and one… wove it into war."
The world trembled, not from war—but from silence.
In the aftermath of Nytheris's awakening, the skies above Aurenya seemed permanently dimmer. Moonlight shimmered not as illumination, but as a warning. Across the seven regions, high-tier Resonants stood restless. The atmosphere crackled with something that had no name. Not dread. Not awe. Something worse—anticipation.
Lirael's Divide – Sunspire Vanguard's Inner Sanctum
Veyl Solane stood beneath the shifting banners of the Sunspire Keep, eyes narrowed at the celestial map flickering on the dome above her. Lines of constellation-thread blinked in and out like a faulty heartbeat.
"Two awakened... three distortions... and one breath waiting to fall."
Her words echoed across the marble chamber.
Lyra, now fully recovered, entered quietly. "Kael's silence is worrying."
Veyl nodded. "He senses it too. The world is holding its breath."
Before Lyra could respond, the floor beneath them cracked—only slightly. Barely noticeable. But for two high-ranking Resonants, it was enough.
The worldline was thinning again.
Noctheron Marsh – Edge of the Riftveil Basin
Kael Arclight stood at the edge of a reflection that wasn't his.
A pool of obsidian water shimmered beneath a hollow sky. His distorted reflection no longer wore flesh—it was aura, drifting in controlled fragments, surrounded by fallen glyphs and haloed fire.
But this wasn't his Absolute Ashen form. This was something deeper—an echo.
"This isn't me," Kael muttered. "...but it was."
From behind, Zera Vaelith approached with uncharacteristic hesitation. "What you're seeing... might be a remnant of a timeline Nytheris erased. Or one you're yet to create."
Kael's grip on Ashenflame tightened.
"You think I care about timelines?"
"No," Zera whispered. "But the one watching us does."
Interlude – Hollow Lyricum (Elsewhere)
Nytheris stood atop a stage of broken obsidian, where musical notes floated like dying fireflies. A harp made of fractured bone and comet-thread rested in her arms.
Behind her, the curtains of time pulsed like lungs.
She plucked a single note—
—and across Aurenya, a mountain exploded into memory.
Elarith Peaks – Mid-Ascension Tier Dungeon Collapse
A team of high-level Vanguard elites—led by Warden Kavra—was suddenly engulfed in a storm of sound. Reality reversed for a split second. Time played backward, then forward again—leaving only one survivor. Kavra stood in stunned silence.
The dungeon didn't just collapse.
It never existed.
Elsewhere – Zenith's Reach
Drayke Norr, resting near a fading flame shrine, opened his eyes as his Infernal Gauntlets flickered.
"Something's wrong with the sky," he muttered.
He stood. The clouds above rippled.
Something else was coming. Something far more violent than Nytheris's erasure.
Emberdeep – Chamber of Echofire (Sealed for 900 Years)
At the lowest depths of the Emberdeep Chasm, a shrouded vault pulsed for the first time in centuries.
Cracks webbed across the obsidian gates, and an ancient heartbeat returned.
It was not Nytheris.
Not Serethis.
Not Ma'urak.
Not Caldran.
It was older.
And it was angry.
Kael's Vision
In a dream-like trance, Kael stood before a throne made of black stardust, orbiting shards of planets long forgotten. A being of fragmented geometry and endless eyes stepped forward—its voice the collapse of constellations.
"You've slain Eternals, little revenant. But now you stand at the edge of origin."
Kael narrowed his gaze.
"Who are you?"
The being's face split into three—one smiling, one screaming, one weeping.
"I am not named. I am what even the Eternals feared."
The stars behind it collapsed inward.
"Come, Kael Arclight... and learn what your ashes truly burned away."