He fell for a long time.
Not down.
Not sideways.
Just… away.
Colors didn't follow him. Neither did sound. Only that pressure—that ancient, steady pull, like he was being reeled in by something beneath language.
When Kael woke, he wasn't lying on stone.
He was floating.
Above a lake of black glass.
The sky above him was a spiral—clouds folding into each other like ink mixing in water. Stars blinked and vanished between blinks. There was no wind. No breath. No sun.
Yet Kael could see everything.
His reflection floated beneath him. But it didn't mirror his movements. It stared back. Still. Waiting.
He sat upright—floating still.
The ripple from his movement never reached the surface below.
This wasn't a real place.
This was something older.
Then the voice returned.
Not outside. Inside.
Like memory carved into bone.
"One gate for the mind, one for the soul, one for the name."
Kael stood.
His feet found surface where none existed.
The spiral sky above him pulsed—and three doors shimmered into being around the edge of the lake, equidistant. Each looked different.
One was made of light, painfully bright and humming with pressure.
One was made of roots, tangled and old, with symbols carved into the bark.
And one was made of shadow, plain and sharp like obsidian cut into a perfect rectangle.
Kael didn't hesitate.
He walked toward the last.
The shadow gate.
It felt cold. But not cruel.
Familiar.
Like a wound you stop noticing until someone touches it.
The moment his hand reached for the gate, a chain of symbols lit up across its frame. Not in flame. In something colder than fire. Letters that hissed and bent as he looked at them, as if refusing to be read.
"I don't understand you," Kael muttered.
His palm touched the center.
The door didn't open.
It devoured itself.
Folding inward like paper in flame—except it left no ash. Only space.
Kael stepped through.
And the lake disappeared.
He now stood in a hall of stone so dark it reflected no light.
And yet he could see.
A corridor stretched endlessly in both directions.
Walls pulsed faintly, like veins of obsidian were breathing.
In the middle of the corridor—a throne.
Not large. Not regal. Just ancient.
It was empty.
But the moment Kael saw it, his knees buckled.
He caught himself, panting.
Because sitting in that throne—even empty—felt like being seen by something that had no eyes.
"Why am I here?" he whispered.
The silence responded—not in voice, but in weight.
Pressure settled on his shoulders like a hand.
And then—behind him—footsteps.
Kael spun.
There was no one.
But something had walked there.
The stone was cracked where it had stepped.
Kael turned back to the throne.
And a figure now sat there.
Cloaked in shifting dark.
No face.
Just a smile—barely visible beneath the hood.
"You survived the silence," it said.
Kael gritted his teeth. "I didn't come here to survive. I came to understand."
The figure tilted its head. "That is why you will suffer."
Kael stepped forward.
"No more riddles."
He clenched his fist—and the mark on his palm blazed to life.
The throne room shook.
The mark split open, revealing a second ring of symbols beneath the skin. They burned cold. Left no wound. But Kael's eyes widened.
Because the glyphs looked like the ones he saw in the Mirror's crack.
"Who… am I?" he whispered.
The figure stood.
The hood fell back.
There was no face.
Just Kael's own reflection, shadowed and incomplete.
"You are the mistake the world buried.And the key it left behind."
The figure raised its hand.
A blade of shadow formed in the air—not sharp, not steel. Pure concept.
The echo of a weapon.
The silhouette of something meant to destroy, but never given permission to exist.
The blade sank into Kael's chest.
Not with pain.
With clarity.
And in that moment, Kael saw it.
The first gate.
A city swallowed by night. A crown of chains. A war that broke before it began.
And a name.
His name.
But older.
Spoken in a tongue that should have never been heard.
"Primarch of Shadow," the figure whispered.
Then everything broke.
Kael jolted awake, gasping.
He was back in Shack #6.
The room was cold.
The mark on his hand was no longer faint—it glowed like a coal carved from void.
The shadows on the wall stirred.
And somewhere, far off in the heart of the Academy, a tower bell cracked in half.
No wind. No warning.
Just—
CRACK
Like the world had flinched.
Kael sat still for a long time.
The gate had opened.
And it was only the first.