Chapter 3:
Chaos consumed the city.
Smoke clawed at the sky as flames surged through the rooftops of three districts. Screams echoed off stone walls, tangled with the clash of steel and the shrill wailing of temple bells. People ran, faces smeared with soot and fear, while the banners of the High Order burned above them.
From the cathedral steps, the High Priest raised his hands to the heavens, his voice thundering across the square.
"This is no tragedy. This is divine cleansing!"
But Kael knew better.
He had seen the flames touch the Archive Tower first. He had watched the robed enforcers hurl the ancient tomes into the fires—scrolls, ledgers, relics of history and truth, all reduced to ash. Not a cleansing. A cover-up.
Now, he ran.
The scroll pressed tightly to his chest felt hot against his skin, though it had nothing to do with fire. The parchment pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat. Down through the aqueducts he fled, feet splashing in ankle-deep water, the curved stone walls closing around him like the ribs of some slumbering beast.
Behind him, the city burned. Above him, a war of words and weapons.
And inside his head, a voice that wasn't his.
Return to the Cradle.
The whisper had come the moment he touched the scroll. It hadn't stopped since. Not threatening. Not kind. Just there—persistent, distant, old.
Kael didn't know what it meant.
But he was beginning to suspect the scroll did.
And soon, he would understand why.