Leiya sat alone on the rooftop garden of the western ward, knees drawn up to her chest. The wind tugged at her hair. Below, Elandor buzzed quietly with activity — smiths reforging armor, alchemists bottling last batches of elixirs, and citizens praying in hushed corners of temples. The calm before annihilation.
But Kael was nowhere to be seen.
He hadn't been seen much at all.
Not by her.
Not since the moment he broke through to Ethereal — or whatever he claimed was his rank. Something in him had shifted since then. Like every hour, every breath, was bent toward one goal: holding the world together before it crumbled.
Leiya tried to understand. She did understand.
But it didn't make the silence easier.
They used to talk every night, even just for a few minutes. Laugh, tease, rest their foreheads together like they had all the time in the world. Now… days passed. A flash of his cloak overhead. A wordless nod before he disappeared into stormlight.
Even when she found him — in the deep halls of the Grand Vaults or outside the cratered walls where he trained his recruits — there was always a barrier. Not Essence. Not power.
Duty.
Leiya gripped the railing.
She remembered how his hand had lingered on hers after the last strategy council. Just briefly. A moment where his guard dropped — where the weight crushed him — before he turned away again, cloak flaring.
She had said nothing.
But tonight, as the third star rose above Elandor, she whispered to the wind, "I miss you, Kael."
A faint shudder trembled through the air.
Her eyes narrowed.
That wasn't wind.
She rose to her feet.
The first sign was the light. A fracture in the sky like a violet crack ripping through the heavens. A pulse of inverted gravity followed, bending the clouds toward a point high above the southeastern plains.
And then…
The Gate began to open.
It didn't tear — it peeled. Like a wound slowly revealing something festering beneath.
A vortex of black-violet light spiraled outward as the dimensional seal thinned. Screams echoed from the air itself — not human, not Varnok. Something older. Something vast.
In the streets of Elandor, panic flared before the guards calmed the masses.
Inside the high towers, generals barked orders.
In the central spire, Kael stood motionless, his cloak hanging still despite the winds ripping through the open air.
He had felt it the moment it started — the shift in reality.
The Gate was real now.
The war had begun.
He didn't move yet. Just watched. The sky burned with symbols that had no meaning in any human tongue.
Behind him, Arkzen watched too — from another peak, another place — cloaked in darkened light.
And somewhere deep below the world, the Sovereign stirred.