The world fell silent as his heartbeat stilled.
In the final moments of his life, the High Sovereign Caelum Alarion, Warden of the Nine Realms and Master of the Astral Sigil, stood upon the battlefield strewn with ash and shattered bones. His once-gleaming armor was fractured, painted in the blood of a thousand victories. Around him, the last vestiges of the Dominion burned, its spires collapsing into the earth, undone by his own hand in a desperate attempt to stall the tide of oblivion.
The sky cracked like glass above, the stars falling in a slow, mournful cascade. He had bought them time—the realms he had sworn to protect. But he knew, as the breath rattled in his throat, that time was all he had offered. A delay, not salvation.
Caelum smiled bitterly, the gesture painting a line of blood across his lips. "So ends the tale of the last Sovereign," he whispered to no one.
And then the world unraveled.
---
He awoke not to the crash of war, but to the soft patter of rain.
Caelum's breath caught as warmth flooded his chest, the rhythmic thud of a newborn heart beating within a fragile, foreign shell. His lungs burned with the taste of air too pure, too full of life. He tried to open his eyes, but the effort overwhelmed him. His limbs were bound, swaddled. He was an infant—reborn.
He tried to speak, to reach for the power that once sang through his veins, but nothing answered. No sigils. No call of the Aether. Only silence.
His mind reeled. This was not death. This was… something else.
A soft voice cooed above him. The language was unfamiliar, a lilting dialect that echoed with ancient cadence and soft consonants. A woman—young, warm, and deeply afraid—held him close, whispering words he could not yet understand. Her hands trembled, but her eyes were fierce, protective.
His mother.
Again.
Caelum, now nameless in this new shell, stared up at her face and felt something alien stir within him—vulnerability. In his past life, he had commanded armies and forged peace from the chaos of empires. But now, he was helpless.
And yet, even in this frailty, his soul pulsed with the spark of purpose. He had not been brought back for nothing. The gods, or whatever force lingered beyond the veil, had carved him from death and returned him to a world unknown. This world—this new world—held secrets.
He would uncover them all.
---
Years Later — Age 5
He was called Eryndor now. Eryndor Vael, son of a humble weaver and a traveling scholar in the village of Varnhollow. The land was ruled by the Kingdom of Thalor, a realm where mana breathed through the soil and the stars were said to be the eyes of old gods.
Even as a child, he learned quickly—frighteningly so. He spoke in full sentences by the age of one, walked by ten months, and was reading the town's scrolls by age three. His parents dismissed it as a blessing of the gods. Villagers whispered of him in reverence or quiet unease, calling him "Starborn."
What they did not know was that he had once been a Sovereign.
But that life was gone. Now he was a boy in a world that did not yet know him.
And this world was… different.
Mana here was alive. It shimmered in the trees, thrummed beneath the rivers, and flickered in the eyes of mages who could shape lightning and bend shadows. But unlike his past realm, where power came from sigils and divine runes, this world's magic was symbiotic. It responded not just to will, but to emotion, to harmony.
And he had none of it.
No matter how long he meditated, no matter how he traced the streams of energy in the wind, the mana refused him.
It mocked him.
"Not yet," he murmured under his breath, staring at the glade where fireflies danced between glowing mushrooms. "I'll find the key. I always do."
He was alone in this pursuit. His father believed in discipline, not daydreams. His mother feared what the villagers would do if they knew he was trying to awaken magic already. Children were tested at age ten. To awaken earlier was a sign of an unstable core—or worse, a cursed lineage.
Eryndor didn't care.
The memories of his old world clawed at him each night. Visions of kingdoms he had failed to save. The haunting voice of the Void Wyrm that had whispered in his dying moments: We are not finished, Sovereign.
What did that mean?
Why was he here?
And why did this world feel so… fragile?
---
That night, the stars wept.
Eryndor was jolted from sleep by a pulse of energy that rolled through the hills like thunder. He ran from the cottage in his nightclothes, barefoot and wild-eyed, until he reached the edge of the forest.
A stone had fallen from the sky.
It glowed with a soft indigo hue, embedded into the earth like a divine seed. Around it, the grass was crystallized, and the air hummed like a song half-remembered.
He reached toward it—and for the first time since his rebirth—he felt mana respond.
It coursed into him like a flood, searing through his veins, branding his soul with something old, something hidden. The stone cracked, and from it emerged a symbol—a star pierced by a serpent.
He fell to his knees.
The world tilted.
And a voice—familiar and terrible—echoed through the glade:
"Sovereign Reborn. The Pact has begun."
---
To Be Continued…