Kael stood in the Vault of Truth, staring at the cracked mirror, its faint whispers still echoing through his bones. His hands trembled—not from fear, but from revelation.
Veyr Dallen.
The name struck like a thunderclap against the wall of silence he had built within himself. The man in the file wasn't just a founder. Not just another Warden lost to history.
He was Kael's father.
And possibly the first to break the Pact.
---
"You said he was missing," Kael muttered, still watching the reflection flicker.
Sera nodded slowly. "Vanished fifteen years ago. Same time your mother disappeared."
Kael's voice was tight. "They ran together."
"Not ran," she corrected. "They disappeared after the Mourning Sigil was fractured. After they split its power into shards and sealed them across the Dreamline."
Kael closed the file with shaking fingers. "Why?"
"To keep it from reforming," Sera said. "They knew what it was—what it could become if reassembled."
Kael turned to her. "Then why did the Pact hide it?"
Her answer came without hesitation.
"Because someone inside the Pact wanted it reforged."
---
> New Quest Branch Unlocked: Echo Shard Hunt
Objective: Locate and secure Sigil Shards.
Current Count: 1/7 (Status: Awakened – within Subject Kael Voss)
Trait Mutation Stabilized: Dreamroot Affinity (Lv. 1)
Warning: Echo corruption possible beyond Threshold 3.
---
Sera pulled down a screen from the side wall and activated a tactical projection. Seven points blinked across the continent—some bright, some fading, others pulsing erratically.
"These are the last known resonance traces of the shards," she said. "Your parents scattered them across fracture zones. Some have been claimed by others. Some are dormant. But they're all... calling now."
Kael stared at the pulsing lights. "If they come together?"
"Then what was once buried will wake," Sera said.
He pointed to one of the unstable shards, deep in a coastal region covered in darkness. "That one."
She tapped it. "Sector 6-D. The Hollow Shores. Once a Pact haven—now classified as 'Lost Territory'. It fell in the Second Rift Surge."
Kael narrowed his eyes. "That's where I'll start."
---
Later that night, Kael stood on the edge of the Hollow, the broken skyline of Dravemire behind him and the open scar of the Dream ahead.
He held his mask in one hand, the file in the other.
A family made of ghosts and secrets.
A legacy written in fracture and silence.
He didn't know if Veyr Dallen was alive.
Didn't know what side he had chosen.
But if Kael was going to uncover the truth—
He'd have to step into the places where the Pact refused to tread.
---
Before he departed, Sera found him one last time.
She handed him a blade.
Unlike his old one, this was forged from Dreamsteel and Memory Ore—materials that resonated not with the body, but with the soul.
> [New Weapon Acquired: Revenant Edge]
Type: Adaptive Dreamblade
Tier: Warden-Crafted (Unique)
Trait: Resonates with user's emotional core. Adapts form based on memory-bonded triggers.
Status: Unbonded.
Kael gripped the hilt. It felt cold. Heavy. Familiar in a way that unsettled him.
Sera's voice was low. "It was meant for you. Forged the day you were born. Elira hid it here in case… you ever came back."
Kael nodded once, his jaw set.
Then, for the first time since his awakening, he looked at Sera—not as a shadow, not as a handler—
But as a comrade.
"Tell the Pact this," he said, sliding the mask back onto his face.
"If they try to stop me…"
The silence surged through him like a storm, the Eye opening behind the Veil.
"…they better be ready to listen."
---
Far across the fractured Dream, in the Hollow Shores—
A man with eyes of burning white stood atop a ruined lighthouse, watching the sea boil beneath a sickening red moon.
He wore dark armor that pulsed with ancient glyphs, and on his chest—
The full Mourning Sigil.
His lips parted in a whisper.
> "So… the child awakens."
His name?
Veyr Dallen.
And he had been waiting a long, long time.
---