Chapter 3 The soul that would not die

Before he was Kael the Hollow, before the urn and the broken blade, before the world forgot his name-he had been Sir Kaelion Vaern, youngest captain of the Dawnspear Order, sworn protector of Velmoria's royal line.

He had loved Elirya.

Not the queen-the girl. Before the throne, before the eclipse. They trained in the palace gardens with wooden swords, laughed at the old knights, read forbidden tales by moonlight. She once kissed him beneath a willow, a soft, secret thing that burned in his memory long after everything else turned to ash.

And then the mage came.

---

Lysarion, pale and perfect, with his serpent's tongue and hungry eyes, came to court bearing gifts-an ancient tome, bound in stitched skin, that whispered of power over death. Elirya, already grieving her mother's recent death, was enthralled.

Kaelion saw the change in her. She stopped laughing. Stopped meeting him in the garden. Her eyes began to shimmer like moonlight over deep water-beautiful, but cold, and fathomless.

He tried to confront her. She called him small.

"I don't need your protection," she said. "I need eternity."

The Dawnspear Order was disbanded within the month. Those who resisted were... repurposed.

Kaelion fled. He was hunted. Caught. Taken to the catacombs beneath the palace and thrown into the Soul Crucible-a pit that did not kill, but broke.

There, Lysarion worked on him.

And when Kaelion's screams finally stopped, the mage said: "He endures. Fascinating."

---

But Kaelion had not broken.

Not completely.

He made a pact.

Not with any god. The gods had long turned their faces from Velmoria.

He bound himself to the Rejects-souls that had resisted the queen's call, fragments too stubborn to serve, too twisted to be freed. They had no bodies. No will. Only hate.

He offered them one: his.

In return, they would give him what no man had: endurance beyond death, immunity to the queen's charm, and whispers-names, places, knowledge long forgotten.

They taught him to carve the urn from bone and skin. They guided his blade to the tomb of the first king, where he shattered a relic to forge a weapon that would never heal, never shine.

When he rose from the catacombs, the palace guards did not stop him. They looked into his eyes-and remembered their own deaths.

He walked the long road from the city, with ashes falling like snow behind him.

---

And now, standing once more before Elirya, his blade drawn, the urn pulsing, Kael is not a man.

He is vengeance, distilled.

And Elirya, even in her throne of power, feels a sliver of something she hasn't felt in decades.

Fear.