In the thirty-eighth hour of the eighth sun-cycle, Kael of Irides remained utterly still.
He was not meditating, nor sleeping. He was listening.
The mana in his tower had shifted.
Not like wind, not like the pull of gravity or the subtle changes in heat and pressure that an archmage learned to read over centuries. No—this was different. This was foreign.
Unnatural.
Kael opened his eyes.
The glyphs etched into the stone above his head were glowing. Not his glyphs. Not the runes he carved, not the sigils he'd bound in dragonbone ink.
This was a summoning circle—and it was forming by itself.
"…They're trying again," Kael muttered, voice gravelled by disuse. "Another world. Another desperate hand, reaching through the veil."
A low hum filled the air. The stones of his tower trembled. Dust fell in slow, hypnotic spirals.
He could see the shape now—nine concentric rings, each inscribed with symbols he'd never taught, yet somehow understood. Words not spoken in Irides. Not even in this realm.
But they had meaning.
"OBEY."
"SERVE."
"COME."
Kael's lip curled. "You demand a god, but summon a monster."
He stood, brushing the dust from his longcoat. His boots cracked as they touched the floor—the warding stones reacting violently to the spell above.
Another tremor.
His library shelves groaned. Spell scrolls rolled from their slots, books shuddered as mana buzzed along their bindings.
The ceiling began to open.
No trapdoor. No mechanism. Reality peeled.
Beyond it, Kael saw nothing—no sky, no stars, only a blinding circle of violet light and a thousand chanting voices, calling a name they could not pronounce.
His name.
"Pathetic," he whispered. "You tear through the walls of your world and mine, and you still think you're in control."
The summoning took hold.
He felt his feet lift, his essence begin to fracture, pulled strand by strand into the howling void.
He didn't resist.
He never did.
Instead, Kael smiled.
"Fine. Let's see who summoned whom."