Silence.
Not the peaceful kind.
This was the silence before a scream — heavy, suffocating, and ancient.
Kael stood at the edge of a fractured realm, where the sky had no stars — only shattered shards of memory drifting like broken glass. Time here… twitched instead of flowing. Each breath was like inhaling the past.
He had crossed the threshold —Out of the System.Out of Order.And into the place only gods remembered.
"This… is where it all burned down."
The voice wasn't his.
It came from the flames coiled inside him, the dormant whispers of Aeon — not fully awakened, but enough to stir the truth. His hand flexed instinctively, sparks curling from his fingertips, pulsing with a heat that didn't warm… it warned.
Suddenly, the world responded.
The floating fragments trembled.Rings of symbols — ancient and alive — ignited across the sky.
A name was spoken across the realm, without a mouth, without mercy.
"Aeon... returns."
Somewhere, deeper in the Broken Realms…
A figure cloaked in voidlight stood atop a skeletal temple.He felt it — the ripple in fate, the flame reigniting.
"The cycle shatters. The war restarts.""And the Scorchborne... must rise."
He turned, and behind him knelt seven warriors — realmwalkers clad in sigil-forged armor, marked by burn scars that refused to heal.
"Send word to the Relic Thrones. The Flamewalker has returned."
Back in the realm, Kael dropped to one knee.
He wasn't ready. The pressure of this place was overwhelming.His flame reacted wildly, memories he never lived flashing behind his eyes — wars waged under black suns, a sword that bled time itself, a throne made of screaming stars.
"You're not Aeon," a whisper hissed from the air, "but you carry his echo."
Suddenly, from the sky — a bolt of crystallized memory shattered the ground beside him.
A creature formed from it — a Guardian Echo, born from past pain and unfinished vengeance.
Its eyes locked on him.
"Initiating Trial: Flame Reclamation."
Kael stood, chest rising, flame unstable.
This was no longer about leveling up.This was about survival in a realm that remembered his sins before his name.
And he was about to face them.
"Then let this realm remember one more thing—""I don't kneel to ghosts."
His flame surged.
Let the second ascension begin.