The air was already hot when Kael stepped into the Runeforge.
It was not the kind of heat one could sweat away. It pressed against the skin like a second flesh, dense with elemental tension and latent power. The floor beneath him was alive—etched with an intricate lattice of glowing sigils that pulsed in slow rhythm, like the heartbeat of a slumbering giant.
There were no greetings this time. Aethros Ven'Calen stood at the edge of the Array, his expression hard and unreadable.
"You will imprint a Living Sigil," he said. "No warming of the hands. No runic sketches. No failsafes."
Kael blinked. "A Living Sigil?"
"It weaves itself," Aethros replied. "It draws from your intent and binds itself to elemental flow. It grows. Changes. Learns."
Kael hesitated. The gloves on his hands shimmered faintly, the runes inscribed into their fabric twitching like restless ink. The Void Crest pulsed, a heartbeat that didn't belong to him.
Aethros saw it. His eyes narrowed. "Whatever's inside you... it wants out. But if it bleeds into the Array, it will consume more than just sigils."
A flare of pain knifed through Kael's side—brief, sharp, and unmistakably Crest-born.
"What elements?" Kael asked, his voice strained.
"Wind and flame," Aethros said, motioning to two elemental glyphs that began spinning above the Array. "And an anchor rune to hold their union."
Kael stepped forward. The sigils flared under his presence. The runes on his gloves reacted instantly—sparking, absorbing, twitching like they hungered.
He began the weave.
Wind—graceful, fast, elusive.
Flame—raging, wild, defiant.
To bind them was like trying to braid a storm with a volcano.
The Array sparked violently as Kael reached for both. A rush of heat surged under his boots. The glyphs pulsed out of sync. The flame began to hiss violently, and wind spun into a chaotic spiral.
He muttered the anchoring lines.
Too late.
The Void Crest pulsed.
And everything broke.
The Array shrieked. Flame spiraled into black. The wind turned into a keening scream. A portion of the floor warped, charred and steaming. Kael fell back, his gloves smoking, breath caught in his chest. His vision tunneled—darkness creeping at the edges.
Aethros moved swiftly, striking the ground with a single rune-marked staff. The Array calmed instantly, the sigils reverting to inert silence.
Kael gasped, clutching his side.
Aethros loomed over him. "You let it touch the weave."
"I didn't mean—"
"It doesn't care what you mean," Aethros said sharply. "Control is not about denial. It is about acknowledgment. You cannot suppress the wind—it only turns violent. Nor can you cage flame—it will burn through everything to be free."
Kael nodded, trembling. The words felt seared into his mind like the scarred Array beneath him.
---
They sat in silence within a curved alcove off the main chamber. The aether-torchlight flickered along the crystalline walls, casting fractured shadows.
Kael sipped water, his hands still shaking slightly. Aethros sat across from him, staring into the torch's blue heart.
"I once trained someone like you," Aethros said at last.
Kael looked up. "A Soulborne?"
A pause. "No. Someone… touched by something ancient. Something that did not belong to this world."
"What happened to them?"
"I buried what was left."
Silence again. The kind that wasn't empty, but too full.
Aethros didn't blink. "During the Soulweaver purge, I saw what it meant to chase power without clarity. The truth is that power doesn't corrupt. It reveals."
He turned to Kael. "The Crests, the Vein, the Strings—we were taught they were divine gifts. But what if they weren't?"
Kael's breath caught.
"What if they were cages?" Aethros continued. "The gods fled this world, Kael. And they left their prisons behind. The Crests weren't born from them—they were left to hold back what was inside them."
Kael stared at the torchlight, his mind reeling. Could that explain the Void Crest's hunger? Its pressure? Was it not a blessing, but a leak in the lock?
"I can't choose this," Kael whispered. "But it's choosing me."
"Then make it cost something," Aethros said. "Make it earn you."
---
The crack of armored boots echoed through the chamber. Arien's presence always carried weight, but now it felt amplified by the sand still clinging to his cape and the dusk light that filtered behind him.
He approached with two sealed items in hand.
"Your summons," he said, offering a rolled parchment bearing the Queen's insignia.
Kael took it, breaking the seal. The paper smelled of incense and iron. The script was elegant, yet impersonal.
You are hereby requested to attend the Royal Crest Exhibition as a provisional candidate of special training, under supervision of Imperial instructors.
No mention of his status. No Crest. No mention of his title as Soulborne.
Kael looked up, frowning.
"It's intentional," Arien said, already unrolling the second item. "An invitation for a prodigy, not a ghost."
The second item was more elaborate—a scroll crafted from feathered parchment, ringed in gold filigree. The Exhibition's crest blazed at the center.
Aethros examined it, then handed it back with a grunt.
"This will burn away the rest of your silence," he said.
Kael exhaled. The weight of the words settled like a stone.
"Senn left a message," Arien added quietly. "'If you're going to stand in the light... remember how long the shadows have watched you.'"
Kael looked up sharply. "He said that?"
Arien nodded. "Word for word."
Kael held the summons tighter.
---
The chamber was silent again. Arien and Aethros were gone. Only the torches remained, flickering gently—no longer angry, no longer wild.
Kael returned to the Array.
He stood in the center, staring down at the runes.
He breathed in. Then out.
Then… he let go.
Not fully. Just enough.
A sliver of the Void Crest stirred—not in dominance, but in guidance. It didn't surge or lash. It whispered. Coiled within his palm like a shadow eager to be shaped.
Kael channeled it into the runes.
Wind responded first—twisting in unnatural curves, bending with elegance.
Flame followed—slower this time, as if wary, but it too curled into the forming sigil.
Kael added the anchor rune. It bound not as a shackle, but as a dance partner.
The Living Sigil pulsed.
For a moment, it stabilized—radiating colors unseen in natural flame: violet at the edges, gold at the center, a black shimmer that danced between.
Then Kurozan's voice echoed in his mind.
"You are learning. But learning has a price."
A sharp image bloomed in Kael's thoughts—a corridor of black stone, silent and infinite.
Abyss Library. But a wing he never entered.
He saw the name engraved above its arch:
Aetherflare.
His pulse quickened.
He blinked—and the sigil vanished.
But the word remained burned behind his eyes.
---
Kael was given forty-eight hours to prepare.
Forty-eight hours to choose who he would be when he stepped into the Empire's greatest spotlight.
Crestless orphan.
Soulborne prodigy.
Or something far more dangerous than either.