The First Flame—now manifest as the silent child of memory and void—did not age, did not speak, did not sleep. It simply was.
And with every passing moment, it remembered more.
Not words or places. But threads—those unseen filaments of connection between realities, emotions, lives. The rebels quickly realized the danger: if the child awakened too soon, the First Flame might ignite not just against the Nameless King... but against the entire pattern of existence.
Ashira proposed a pact. A sacred binding to temper the flame and guide its evolution. But the Accord could only be forged with a relic thought lost in the unspoken wars:
The Nidus Veil—a god-forged tether woven from the essence of forgotten divinities. Said to be sealed within The Atrament Vault, a place where the Loom itself had once refused to weave.
Krael, Ashira, and two companions—Naira and the scar-born seer Joryn—descended into the black folds of existence to find the Vault.
To reach it, they passed through:
The Bleeding Hollow, where sentient regret coalesced into beasts.
The River Silex, which flowed with time in reverse, forcing each traveler to confront their origin.
And finally, The Vale of Shrouds, where every path forward was made from a lie once spoken.
It was there Krael faltered—when he saw a vision of himself offered peace, love, and a mortal life by a woman he once failed to save.
But the Severance Edge thrummed.
And he remembered who he was: the blade that walks where memory dies.
At last, they reached the Atrament Vault.
It was not a door, but a wound—a tear in the underside of reality. A seal of living ink, marked with thirteen names erased from the Codex of the Loom. They spoke none of them.
Instead, Ashira offered her blood. Naira offered her song. Joryn, his eyes.
The Vault opened.
Inside, silence reigned. The silence of gods that had never been born. Statues of eyeless beings lined the inner sanctum, their mouths open in eternal screams of reversal.
And in the center: the Nidus Veil, cradled by living shadow.
But as Krael stepped forward, the darkness hissed and rose—taking form.
It was him.
No—something worse.
It was a version of Krael that had fallen—a shade of the Nameless King's design. A future that could still come to pass.
This Mirror-Krael held a twisted version of the Severance Edge, forged not to sever threads but to bind them eternally.
"You should not resist," it said, voice soaked in sorrow. "We were meant to end the lie of the Loom. Let everything rest."
The clash between them shattered the Vault.
Blade met blade, memory met shadow. Krael fought not just for survival—but to defy what he could become. Each strike rewrote a fragment of who he was. Each parry risked his mind unraveling.
Until Ashira, clutching the Veil, channeled its divine filament into Krael's heart.
In that moment, Krael remembered his true name.
Not the one he was given.
But the one the Loom had written in silence before he was born.
And the Mirror-Krael screamed—splintered—and dissolved into ash.
They emerged, veiled and victorious.
The Nidus Veil wrapped around the child of the First Flame like a second skin of starlight and bone. It calmed the being, slowed its awakening—but did not stop it.
Krael, now bearing the name once stripped from him, became the child's Warden.
Ashira called it the Godseed Accord.
For now, the Hollow Flame's unraveling was slowed.
But in the distance, the Nameless King stirred.
He had felt the Vault's breach.
And his True Name had begun to reassemble—fragment by fragment—in the cracks of reality.