Kael drifted in an endless void—black, silent, vast. He hung suspended, prone, as if rising from some unseen depth toward a sky that did not exist. His arms and legs were limp—unresponsive. Though his eyes were shut and he couldn't move, he could hear. A voice echoed through the darkness—distant at first—calling his name every few seconds. Its voice was cold, hollow, and laced with a fury he couldn't understand. He tried to open his eyes, to move his body. Nothing obeyed. Panic bloomed. The voice grew louder, closer. Each repetition scraping against his mind like iron dragged across stone.
Kael managed to open his eyes but the world came rushing back in fire and ash. The stench of smoke, burning wood, and blood filled his lungs. Somewhere in the distance, swords clanged, metal shrieking against metal. The house around him was engulfed in flames. Timber cracked and splintered above, and heat pressed against his skin like invisible hands trying to tear him apart.
"This is… our house," he thought, the realization slicing through his mind like a blade.
"Why… Why am I here?" he stuttered. Confusion clawed at him.
"A dream?" he thought, but moments later his eyes widened, a painful forgotten memory opened in his mind.
"No… Not this again…"
Then he heard a voice; faint and fragile.
"Kael…" A whisper. A woman's voice, barely holding on.
He followed the sound below and froze. His mother lay in his arms, the corners of her lips wet with blood. Her moss-grey eyes looked up at him, filled with love and clouded by pain. One hand clutched her abdomen, desperately pressing down, a flickering green light of a failing healing spell pulsing weakly beneath her blood-soaked fingers. He could barely hear her whisper.
"It's alright, my son," she said as her other hand, slick with blood, shakily reached for his face.
"Please… go check on your brother," she said, turning her head weakly behind him.
Kael followed the direction of her gaze, and his eyes widened. Matthew was lying face down on the cobblestone floor, motionless. His injuries were far worse than Kael had imagined.
"Kael! Carry your mother and Matthew. Get out of this place!" his father's voice tore through the smoke.
Kael turned his head.
Through the haze of fire and ash, he saw his father's back—disheveled and bloodied due to slashed wounds. His father, barely standing four meters away from him, his armor was cracked, his stance faltering, and yet he held his ground, sword clashing against the intruder with fading strength. But Kael couldn't move. He was frozen in place, limbs heavy, his body unresponsive. Every bit of his muscle paralyzed by confusion, by the blood of his mother staining his skin, and by the intruder's intimidating glare fixed upon him.
Roger looked back and shouted, "Kael! Go!" which lowered his guard down, and the intruder made a move that would send Roger's sword flying towards Kael. Kael looked at the sword, accepting his fate as he closed his eyes.
Then came the sound—a grunt, followed by a horrible, wet noise, like steel tearing beneath flesh.
"Are you alright, Kael?"
Kael opened his eyes and saw the pommel's ornate and circular, scale-like engravings of the beast's coiled form behind is his father's disheveled face just a meter away from him.
Kael nodded slowly
"Thank the gods." He chuckled and coughed out blood to the cobblestone floor. Kael's eyes widened when he saw a dark blade sword tip lodged deep that pierced out below his chest.
"Kael, watch over your sister and brother for me my son."
Kael stood frozen, he wanted to say something, but couldn't. His words were stuck in his throat. The black-cloaked man twisted his sword cruelly, and then ripped it free with a sharp, wet pull. Blood gushed from his father's mouth, painting the floor in dark red streaks. Roger coughed blood again, and he looked up to Kael and smiled. Before collapsing on the floor. Kael stared at Roger's lifeless body, breathing heavily.
The black-cloaked killer glared at him as if he were the next target. Kael saw the blade that killed his father, dripping, trembling with his father's blood. The intruder walked closer and raised his sword slowly, deliberately, the killing blow meant for him. Then Matthew charged from behind Kael, picked up their father's sword on the cobbled stone floor, and charged at the man.
"Run, Kael! Run with mother!" he shouted. But before Kael could move, an unseen force slashed across Matthew and hurled him from the room like a ragdoll. His body crashed into the far wall and burst through it with a sickening crunch.
A heartbeat later, something sliced through the smoke. A sword, slick with blood, spun end over end, hurling toward him with terrifying speed. It crashed and slip through the cobblestone floor just inches away from Kael's feet. Kael flinched. His breath caught in his throat. He couldn't scream. He couldn't even blink. Kael staggered back with Emily in his arms, eyes wide and heart pounding in his chest like war drums. He followed the direction Matthew had flown, then quickly turned his gaze back to the intruder. Something was stirring behind the man, a terrible, ancient shape beginning to emerge. It hovered in the air: a hexagram star etched in glowing lines of blood and fire, pulsing with dark malevolence. At its center, a single eye opened. It was unnaturally red, and its pupil was jagged and wrong, like a wound torn into the very fabric of the world itself. It stared directly at Kael.
"Sanguis Ille Qui Arborem Ussit!" (Latin for "Blood of the one who burned the tree.)
The voice crawled into the room, old as the crusts of the earth. It cracked with the weight of millennia, reverberating through the walls and echoing inside Kael's body, which chilled in him to the bones. Kael's heartbeat thundered in his ears as the intruder raised his sword and struck at Kael.
He blinked, and the morning sun flashed across his vision, blinding him. He raised his right arm to shield his eyes, squinting as they struggled to adjust. A gentle weight clung to his left arm like a lover's embrace, and when he turned his head, he saw his sister, Tania, dressed in a black vigil gown, a charcoal veil draped over her red-chestnut hair.
"Tania?" He was bewildered.
She looked up at him with eyes swollen from grief, a white handkerchief, handmade by their mother, clutched tightly in her trembling hand. It was then that Kael noticed his own attire: a black long-sleeved shirt and matching trousers. When he looked forward, three coffins stood before him, carved from the finest oak, each one engraved with their names: Roger. Emily. Matthew. Atop their father's casket rested Durandal, the family's ancestral sheathed blade, encircled by a wreath of roses the size of a wagon wheel. The other coffins bore similar floral crowns.
The priest stood solemnly at the head of the three coffins in the public cemetery, which is located behind the church of Nebo. Draped in flowing vestments of deep red that stirred gently in the wind. Beneath the outer layer, the symbol of Orpheus shimmered faintly in the morning light. Around his waist, a cincture. A narrow stone hung from his shoulders and fell straight down in front of his chest. Its edges are embroidered with a red creation orb at the center and encircled around it are rays of the sun. Over it all, the priest wore a cope, clasped around the priest's neck is the Amulet of Orpheus. In one hand, he held a silver aspergillum, still wet with the holy water; in the other, a ritual book.
Kael couldn't believe what he saw, though something primal stirred within him. Tremor in the soul, a whisper coiled in the pit of his mind. It slithered through his thoughts, a voice like smoke and fire, feminine yet inhuman, dripping with wicked delight.
"Why chain your wrath, my sweet little flame?" it hissed.
"Forge a contract with me, and I shall deliver their killer's head to your feet."
At the sound of the voice, Kael could think of nothing else but the rage boiling and churning in his soul. Vengeance consumed him. He wanted blood. He wanted the intruder who had slaughtered his parents and brother to suffer. Dark Baybayin runes of kamatayan (death) began to slither up his arms, glowing faintly, followed by ethereal lines that traced their way toward his eyelids like serpents of light and shadow. Then time seemed to halt. Darkness then slowly engulfed the world around him. The hooded priest, once solemn, now grinned with malevolent delight. His voice was the same as the one in his head, louder and unmasked.
"Yes, my sweet little flame… Let it boil. Let your rage rise!"
The priest extended a snake-scaled hand, its palm soft and delicate, like that of a woman, toward Kael.
"Take my hand," she said, her eyes similar to those of a cobra, gleaming like dying stars.
"With my power, I, Medusa, Mordren of Snakes, shall place his head in your arms, and drink his blood with you."
As Kael was about to extend his hand, a lion-like roar echoed, shaking the world around them and shattering like glass.
Kael's eyes snapped open, and the first thing he saw was the night sky – vast and endless, its stars flickered like scattered diamonds. Vying against the calm and steady glow of the moon. A strange sense of weightlessness settled over him, his body adrift in open space. But as his thoughts sharpened, so did the realizations that he wasn't floating in the sky. But was above the ocean, floating horizontally. A vast endless stretch of dark water surrounded him. Swallowing the horizon in every direction, no land and no landmarks. Just him and the void beneath. Panic struck like a lightning bolt. His chest tightened and his breath hitched because he couldn't swim.
A sharp instinctual fear gripped him, and he thrashed wildly. Arms flailing as he struggled to stay afloat. The water should have been pulling him under, dragging him into the depths. But it didn't, something was wrong. His movements slowed and the realizations dawned on him like a creeping shadow. He wasn't sinking, and wasn't wet. The ocean beneath him was solid. As he stood up it gave beneath his weight, but didn't break, as if he were standing on a rippled glass.
His breathing steadied, but his pulse remains unrelenting. Slowly, he knelt and bent forward, peering into the water's surface, illuminated by the soft glow of the moon. His reflection stared back at him; eyes wide with confusion. He made a few funny faces at himself, a brief flicker of amusement in the surreal moment, before quickly composing himself.
The ocean shimmered like liquid silver, yet it did not consume him. He straightened himself and turned his gaze outward, scanning his surroundings with growing bewilderment.
"Where am I?"
Then, a voice – soft, serene, undeniably feminine – called his name. Kael snapped upright, his breath catching in his throat when he saw it. Suspended in the before him, drifting as if carried by an invisible current was a creature unlike anything he had ever seen. A long serpentine form wove effortlessly through the sky, its body undulating in slow, mesmerizing arcs. It had no wings, yet it floated with an elegance that defied reason, as though the very air bent to its will. Its scales shimmered in the moonlight, an oceanic blue that deepened at the top of its sinuous frame before fading into an ethereal, bluish – white mist along its underside.
Then he met its gaze.
Piercing, blue-hued eyes locked onto him and Kael stood frozen. The dragon's upper body was adorned with shimmering ocean-blue scales, each one catching the moonlight like the surface of the sea during night time. As he gazes traveled downward, the deep blue serpentine like body slithered on a mist of ethereal bluish – white. Four powerful limbs flexed on its body, each ending with sharp curved talons. A pair of sleek, silver-swept horns crowned its head. Long, flowing whiskers trailed around its muzzle-like mouth, it had fines above its spine trailed down to its tail. Wisps of glowing energy drifted from its form, curling and twisting in the night air.
The dragon's gaze bore into him, as if it could see through the very fabric of his existence. Kael felt impossibly small beneath that piercing blue stare. Its blue eyes moved downward and looked at the amulet hanging around his neck. Then the creature spoke as she moved her head back away from Kael slithered its body coiled while its head still locked on Kael.
"I have been with thee since the hour of thy birth, Kael."
Its voice was deep and resonant, layered with something beyond mere sound. An echo that rippled through the very air, vibrating in Kael's bones
"But this meeting was never fated to be... and yet, were it not for my intervention, thou wouldst be bound to chains to the Mordrens for all eternity."
A gust of wind, though no wind had stirred before the dragon came but it rushed past him carrying whispers repeated the words of the dragon.
"The threads of fate hath not yet been woven, and Chronos doth watch with wary eyes. Thy presence here is an anomaly. A fracture in the sacred order of Time."
The dragon ascended with its massive form cutting through the sky as powerful gusts of wind erupted from its movement. Kael stumbled back, shielding his face from the force. Higher and higher the dragon soared, until her vast silhouette eclipsed a part of the moon's glow. Suspended in the celestial light, she tuned to face him once more, her piercing gaze locking on to Kael's.
"Return thee to thy world before He doth intervene. Lest fate unravel, and that which is meant to be... be lost forevermore."
Kael's lips parted. His mind racing with a lot of questions, but before he could utter a single word. The world, ocean, sky and the dragon – everything twisted and melted into a swirling tide of silver and blue. A sudden force pulled him downward, dragging him into the ocean's depths.
As he sank, he lifted his gaze one last time. Kael could see the blue-hued eyes of the dragon still watching him as the ocean drags him into the abyss. Then, in a voice that echoed through the ocean water, she spoke.
"Until we meet again, Kael, Blood of Vaeryn"
Darkness consumed him.