The moon had risen high, cold and indifferent above the trembling academy towers, by the time Aeron returned to the old training grounds. He couldn't sleep—not after what Liara had said. Her eyes, her voice, the weight of Kael's name on her lips—it all clawed at something deeper in him. Something buried.
He sat beneath the ruined stone archway, the one that hadn't been used in years.
And then it began.
A cold pulse through his chest—then a voice that wasn't his own.
"You were the sword. I was the seal."
Aeron gasped and clutched at his shirt, breath ragged. The air around him shifted. Silver light flickered at the edge of his vision. And suddenly, the world tilted.
He wasn't sitting on cracked stone anymore.
He stood in a burning hall.
Mirror-shards floated in the air.
And before him stood a man who looked just like him, only older, cloaked in white fire, blade drawn, eyes full of pain.
"Kael chose to fracture himself. I chose to guard the cost."
*"She—*Syeralyn—bound us to the seal with a kiss and a curse."
"But no seal holds forever."
The image faded—ripping Aeron back into the present like a wave crashing on rock.
He fell to his knees, drenched in sweat.
But now, he knew.
His soul was the echo of the Warden.
The one who stood with Kael at the end.
The one who made the final sacrifice.
Aeron stared at his shaking hands.
That's why he felt drawn to Liara—not just from love, but from loyalty older than memory.
That's why he'd always sensed something watching, waiting—like his shadow had lived a life before him.
Kael wasn't just a threat to Liara.
He was a brother-in-arms once. A friend. A rival.
A wound that had never healed.
And now?
Now Liara was caught between them.