The boy grew among whispers.
In the deepwood, where the pines clawed the sky and the rivers sang in forgotten tongues, Kael's small world was stitched together with secrecy and steel.
Lysenna's two chosen — Ser Jorren, the broken knight, and Maerin, the ink-scribe — became his guardians, his mentors, his silent priests. No banners hung above their hearth. No prayers were offered to the gods. Only lessons, sharp as flint.
Jorren taught with fists, sword, and scars.
"Hold your stance, boy," the knight barked, circling Kael like a hawk around a wounded hare. The boy, no more than six winters old, lifted the practice sword again, knuckles raw, arms trembling.
"Again," Jorren said, voice like gravel sliding down a mountain.
"Fall a thousand times. Rise a thousand and one."
Kael fell. He rose. Fell again. Rose again.
By nightfall, his breath rasped from his throat like a blade dragged across stone. He did not weep. Not anymore.
Pain was part of the earth now — something beneath the skin, beneath the bone. A seed, growing.
Maerin, softer but no less relentless, shaped Kael's mind.
By candlelight, hunched over ragged scrolls salvaged from dead empires, Kael learned the weight of forgotten names: kings and queens, rebels and monsters, poets and betrayers.
He learned that the world had once been whole — and that men's pride had shattered it like a wineglass dashed against stone.
"Remember this, Kael," Maerin whispered one night, ink dripping from his tired hands. "History is a battlefield. One day, you must choose which truths you carry into the fire — and which you leave to burn."
Outside, the winter howled through the branches like wolves gnawing at the edges of the world.
Kael listened. And learned.
He was not allowed beyond the woods.
Not yet.
The kingdoms beyond — Elanda of the Mind and Vaeren of the Blade — would tear him apart if they knew he lived. The old kings' sins ran deeper than Kael would yet understand, and their fear was a hungry thing.
But still, whispers drifted into the forest, carried on the backs of traveling merchants and half-mad pilgrims:
— A blood moon had risen the night of a great betrayal.
— A prophecy spoke of a child who would wear no crown but would break the world to heal it.
— The gods had blinked, just once, and a mortal had slipped through the cracks of destiny.
The world was watching for him.
It simply didn't know his face yet.
In the cold hours before dawn, Kael would sometimes climb the tallest tree he could find, until the air grew sharp and thin, and the ground was a memory far below. From there, he would watch the horizon — watch the mountains crouching like sleeping beasts, the rivers flashing like broken glass, the clouds boiling over unseen cities.
He did not know why his chest ached when he looked at the vastness beyond the woods.
Only that it did.
"I want to build a house," he told Jorren once, voice small. "When I'm old enough."
The knight grunted. "A house?"
"With walls that don't fall. And a tree at the center. A big one. Where no kings or gods can tear it down."
Jorren said nothing for a long time. Only stared at the boy with an expression Kael would not understand until much later — a mixture of sorrow and hope, bound together by grief.
"A house, then," the knight said at last, placing a heavy hand on Kael's shoulder. "You'll need strong hands for that. Strong heart, too."
Kael nodded, not knowing that the house he dreamed of was a thing built not of stone or timber — but of choices, blood, and sacrifice.
But elsewhere, beyond the mountains, across the dying rivers, across thrones that grew brittle with fear — forces moved.
Seric Blackthorn, the warlord of the Third Army, rose from the smoking ruins of old Vaeren. His banners were not stitched with sigils of lion or hawk or blade — but with a black sun swallowing the world.
Priests whispered prayers meant to be heard only by dead gods.
Kings sharpened their crowns like weapons.
And somewhere beneath the Drowned Temple — where no man dared tread — something ancient stirred in its sleep.
The blood moon was only the beginning.
The child beneath the roots had not been born to hide forever.
Soon, Kael would leave the woods.
Soon, he would be forged — not into a king, nor a god, but something rarer still.
A mortal who chose, again and again, to carry the unbearable.
And never lay it down.