Darkness.

Not the soft kind that came with sleep, but the kind that swallowed all things. A void where time had no meaning, where magic did not flow, where even thought flickered and faded.

Then—pain.

A deep, twisting ache that pulled Cael back into existence. His first breath in centuries rattled through his lungs, thick with dust and stagnation. His body felt foreign, stiff as if stone had settled into his bones. His magic—his essence—felt muted, wrong.

Something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.

He forced his eyes open.

A ceiling of cracked stone loomed above him, sigils carved deep into its surface. The markings should have glowed with sacred power—wards meant to protect this place for eternity.

But they were dead.

The sanctum was in ruins.

Cael gritted his teeth and forced himself upright. His vision blurred, but he pushed through it, scanning the space around him.

The chamber was a tomb.

Once, this had been a place of power—the heart of the Hierophants’ knowledge. Grand pillars had stood like guardians, ancient scriptures lined the walls, enchanted light-crystals had bathed the space in golden radiance.

Now?

Now it was nothing.

The pillars lay shattered, their runes broken. The sacred scriptures were charred beyond recognition. The air, once thick with magic, felt thin, fragile—like a dying breath.

Cael’s pulse quickened.

Where was everyone?

His mind clawed at fractured memories, but they came scattered, like the aftermath of a storm. He remembered the warning. The battle. The great collapse of the sanctuaries. And then—

The Sealing.

A desperate act. A last effort to preserve something—himself? No, it hadn’t been about him.

It had been about the world.

A deep unease settled in his chest. He had been sealed away for a reason. But the fact that he was awake now meant that reason had failed.

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His hand clenched into a fist.

Slowly, painfully, he pushed himself to his feet. His body felt weak, but his will did not. He was a Hierophant. The last of the sacred order. A guardian of magic, entrusted with guiding the world through the flow of time itself.

And now, his world lay in ruin.

No.

His teeth ground together as anger surged beneath his skin. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

The Hierophants had ruled for a thousand years. Their knowledge had shaped the very foundations of civilization. Their mastery of magic was unparalleled—they had been gods among men.

So how? How had it all collapsed?

His breathing was harsh, uneven. He should have woken to victory. To a world rebuilt from the ashes of that final war.

Instead, he had woken to dust.

His footsteps echoed as he moved through the broken sanctum, the weight of ages pressing down on him.

He reached the remains of the grand hall—or what was left of it. Massive doors lay torn from their hinges, their once-gleaming inscriptions now little more than faded remnants. The central dais, where the Hierophants once gathered to weave their will upon the world, was now a hollow pit.

A grave.

A pit formed in his stomach.

Where were the others?

His mentors, his fellow Hierophants, the warriors and scholars who had once stood at his side?

Gone.

Had they died in battle? Had they been wiped from existence?

Or… had they been erased from history itself?

A bitter taste filled his mouth.

Magic still existed—he could feel it, faint and struggling, like a flickering candle. But it was weak. Broken. The way it twisted in the air, sluggish and disconnected, sent a chill through him.

Magic was supposed to be absolute. A force beyond decay, beyond corruption.

Yet now, it felt fragile.

Like something had tampered with the foundation of reality itself.

His fists clenched.

Who had done this?

Who had dared to steal his world from him?

The thought barely had time to settle before he heard it.

A whisper.

Soft. Ancient. Not in his ears, but in the air itself.

Cael froze.

His muscles tensed, instinct sharpening his mind. He had spent his entire life studying the arcane, and that sound—**that presence—**was not natural.

It came from deeper in the ruins.

From somewhere beneath him.

His breath shallowed.

Something was still here.

The whisper curled through the air again, slithering through the cracks of the fallen temple.

Calling.

Waiting.

Cael’s fingers twitched. The old instinct, the urge to reach for his magic, flared within him. But when he tried—

Nothing.

A spike of alarm shot through his chest.

His power.

It was still there, still inside him, but it was tangled—like a rope frayed at its edges, unraveling at the seams.

No.

Not now.

He took a slow, steady breath. He could fix this later. Right now, there were more pressing matters.

He stepped forward, following the whisper’s pull.

The ruins grew darker as he descended, the remnants of light fading behind him. The deeper he went, the more the air changed. It grew heavier, thick with something old, something untouched by time.

Then, at the very end of the corridor, he saw it.

A doorway—half-buried, its frame cracked, its inscriptions faded but still recognizable.

A Hierophant’s Seal.

Cael’s heart slammed against his ribs.

This was not just any chamber.

It was a Vault.

A place where forbidden knowledge had been locked away—where only the most powerful of his kind had dared to tread.

He had seen the Seals before. He had placed them himself.

But this one was broken.

The whisper stirred again.

“Enter.”

Cael didn’t hesitate.

He stepped forward—and the door opened.