Askarin stood, eyes wild with purpose.
"The time has come," he growled. "To awaken the exiled bloodlines."
And the old world began to stir.
In the depths of the Whispering Hollows, where arcane winds whispered secrets long forgotten, Askarin stood before an ancient mirror carved from obsidian and shadowglass. The surface shimmered, not with his reflection, but with visions—memories of a bloodline erased from history.
The exiled bloodlines. Those deemed too dangerous, too powerful, or too unruly for the structured hierarchy of the Empire. Bloodlines capable of rewriting fate with magic too wild and potent to control. They had been scattered, cursed, hidden—but not destroyed.
Not yet.
Askarin raised his hand, the runes along his skin igniting with pale violet fire. A sequence of reversed incantations fell from his lips—words meant not to create, but to unravel. The mirror groaned as the veil between past and present trembled.
A voice hissed from the glass. "You call upon ruin."
"I call upon justice," Askarin replied. "And a throne that was never yours to give."
The runes on his arm expanded like veins, creeping toward his chest. His eyes flickered with ancient memory—faces of those exiled, powers unshaped, names unspoken.
A pulse of energy exploded from the mirror, knocking Askarin back.
When the light cleared, a sigil burned into the ground: the Mark of the Forgotten Flame.
He smiled. It had begun.
---
At Crescent Academy, unrest was growing. Students whispered of strange dreams, bloodline visions, ancient magics awakening. Headmistress Rhaelyn convened an emergency meeting with the Circle of Nine—the academy's oldest and most powerful instructors.
"The boy from House Veiloris," she said grimly. "He's disrupting the weave. Something deeper stirs beneath his rise."
Master Eron, the Reconstruction Specialist, narrowed his eyes. "His power doesn't just bend spells. It rewrites their existence. If he continues—"
"He will unmake our history," another snapped.
But not all were displeased.
From the shadows, someone smiled.
---
Far to the east, in the obsidian canyons of Ruvaleth, the slumbering remnants of the exiled clans began to twitch. Sigils long dark flared to life. Cries rang through the stone halls as children were born with glowing marks, voices chanting spells no one had taught them.
And in the great chamber of House Maruusk, a thousand-year-old bell tolled for the first time in centuries.
---
Back at the academy, Askarin stood before a sealed door beneath the oldest wing—the Forbidden Archives. He pressed his palm to the runic lock, whispering a reversed incantation.
The door screamed open.
Inside, wrapped in chains of nullsteel, floated a tome—The Codex of the Exiled.
He stepped forward.
"No more lies."
The air trembled.
"No more kings of silence."
Askarin opened the book.
The world shifted.
And the war for truth began anew.