The world was quiet after the storm.
The land where a god had stood was now a scar. Forests had turned to soot. Stone melted like wax beneath divine fire, and nothing living remained — nothing but two figures.
Vaeren Tenebris stood at the center of the devastation, silent as ever. His cloak stirred gently in the unnatural wind. His eyes, pale white and hollow, scanned the horizon not in awe or triumph, but in judgment.
Lyssara trailed behind him. She walked carefully over the glassy, blackened earth, hugging her notebook close to her chest.
She had stopped asking questions for now.
He finally spoke.
"You still follow."
It wasn't a compliment or complaint. Just observation.
Lyssara paused. "Yes."
"You saw what I did."
"I did."
"And?"
She hesitated.
"He tried to kill you first," she said. "And… I think he was afraid."
Vaeren turned to look at her. Not sharply — more like someone turning toward a noise they've heard before. Familiar. Distant.
"Fear," he said, "was the correct response."
They walked in silence for a time. Cinders still fell from the sky.
Then Vaeren said something unexpected.
"You remind me of someone."
That made her stop.
He had never compared her to anything. Never mentioned a past. Never acknowledged a before.
"Who?" she asked carefully.
"Someone who also walked behind me once."
He looked ahead.
"Before they tried to bury a god."
They made camp in a shallow cave beneath a ruined watchtower. Lyssara sat near the fire, small and flickering. Vaeren did not sit. He stood at the edge, staring into the night like he was daring it to come closer.
"You were sealed for seven million years," she said softly. "But you said you remember it all."
"Every moment."
"Then… why don't you talk about it?"
He didn't answer.
But after a long silence, he said:
"Because remembering is not the same as speaking. One is pain. The other is weakness."
She didn't argue. She just wrote it down.
As the fire died and stars emerged behind ash clouds, Lyssara looked at him again. Not with fear.
With wonder.
"You never told me your name," she said.
Vaeren didn't look at her.
"I never needed to."
"But I want to know it."
He was quiet for a long time.
Then:
"Vaeren."
"Vaeren… what?"
A pause. A shadow crossed his face — something like grief, or fury, or both.
"Tenebris."
The name cracked the air like a curse.
Lyssara whispered it to herself, committing it to memory.
"Vaeren Tenebris," she repeated.
"The First Calamity."