Time moved differently in the parallel world.
A month had remade him into something different. Now, as Kai woke up, the actual world stormed in like a tsunami—faster, noisier, harsher. Only one day had gone by outside, yet he was not the boy who had wandered into the Temple of Echoes anymore.
He was Wyrm-Bonded.
His breath misted the chill morning air of the Academy training grounds. A dull pain pulsed deep within his muscles, runes glimmering weakly across his bare arms and chest before fading under his worn tunic. The world around him was. smaller. Slower.
Stronger.
Kai curled his fingers, sensing the dragons' strength still wound around him—a living tempest beneath his skin. He was different. Every pulse of his heart told him so.
Across the courtyard, the apprentices were sparring with awkward swings and poorly formed spells. Masters were yelling orders. They did not notice the boy who had come from another world.
None except one.
At the other end of the grounds, a figure stood observing him: Elder Veylan, a hunched man covered in layered robes that glimmered with shifting stars. His hair was white, his eyes cloudy with age—but when they focused on Kai, they became something hard and calculating.
Kai walked away, pulling his hood up over his head against the wind. He didn't want the notice—not yet. There were still things he had to learn. About his abilities. About the war that was coming.
About himself.
The call came that night.
Kai sat in the empty wing of the library, reading through a worn book on elemental convergence, when a gentle clanging of a bell from the entrance was heard. He looked up to see a messenger—not even as old as him—standing, holding a scroll with black waxed seal.
The boy didn't say a word. Only bowed, passed it on, and departed.
Kai broke the seal.
Kai of the Twilight Mark,
You are hereby summoned to the Grand Conclave at first light. The Council of Cosmic Stone Masters will preside. Attendance is not optional.
- Veylan of the Third Seat
The parchment trembled slightly in Kai's hands.
The Grand Conclave. Summoned not as a student, but as something more.
Was it because of the trial? Had someone sensed the change within him?
He folded the scroll gently. He would stand against them. Whatever was to come.
The Hall of Stones predated the Academy itself, cut into the mountain's bones. Its walls throbbed with the latent energy of a hundred relics of the cosmos, older than memory. High overhead, an oculus broke into the star-streaked sky, dropping silver light like judgment upon those who entered.
Kai walked by himself along the infinite marble floor, his footsteps ringing out like shots.
At the far end, the Council sat in wait—seven Masters on thrones of crystal and stone, each of them robed in garments embroidered with runes that rippled when he attempted to stare too hard.
Elder Veylan stood in the middle, resting upon a staff topped with a fragment of frozen lightning.
"Kai of the Twilight Mark," Veylan recited, his voice holding an unhuman timbre, "you have emerged from your hiding. altered."
Kai was silent. He could sense their eyes examining him, judging him, comparing him to a scale he didn't recognize.
"You have reached a forbidden state," Veylan went on, pacing him like a hunting bird. "A parallel plane of your own making. Such things are rumored only in the oldest legends. The last one to do so was—"
He hesitated.
The Council stirred uncomfortably.
"The last to do so," Veylan said with greater caution, "was a soldier who became lost in the Obsidian Wars."
Something twisted inside Kai's belly.
He opened his mouth to demand—but a second voice pierced the hall, high and keen.
"The boy wears the Wyrm-Sigil," declared Mistress Selene, the Council's historian, leveling a shriveled finger at the thin rune burning on Kai's exposed forearm. "Mark of the First Wyrm-Bonded. You all see it."
The room grew silent.
A silence pregnant with terror.
Kai clenched his teeth. "What does it mean?"
Veylan tapped his staff once. The floor beneath Kai shimmered, and an image flared to life—an armored figure standing alone against a horde of shadowed warriors, cosmic stone blazing at his chest.
The figure turned.
And Kai's heart nearly stopped.
He had never seen the man before. But the shape of his jaw. The set of his eyes. The fierce determination carved into every line of his face.
It was as if he was peering into a future he hadn't yet lived.
"My father," Kai whispered.
Veylan's expression was grim. "You weren't told. Your father was Aeron of the Wyrm-Sentinels. He died in the first siege of the Obsidian Claw."
Kai took a step back, the world spinning.
Why? Why had no one ever informed him? His entire life, he had thought he was an orphan of no significance. A nobody. A mistake.
But here—here was evidence that he bore the blood of legends.
Selene's voice relaxed a little. "We kept the truth from you to keep you safe. If the Claw had realized you were alive."
"Then bring them on," Kai snarled, his fists curling. "I'm not hiding anymore."
Veylan regarded him for a long, thoughtful moment. Then nodded, slowly.
"You will have your turn," the Elder said. "The Obsidian Claw stirs once more. Rumors whisper of tainted Superstones being crafted in the shadows. We require warriors who can face the darkness. You, Kai, might be our last hope."
Kai held their eyes without blinking.
"Then inform me where they are," he said.
Sleep did not come easily that night.
Kai stood atop the highest tower of the Academy, looking out over the boundless black hills. His mind was tempest-tossed—pieces of his father's face, the burden of his own fate, the searing hunger for revenge.
The dragons in him stirred, sensing his conflict.
A distant growl of thunder boomed across the sky.
And in the darkest recess of his heart, something else stirred—a memory that was not his own, bestowed by the relic he'd handled in the Hall. A battlefield filled with ash. A last stand. His father's voice, a whisper on the wind:
"Strength without purpose is a blade without a wielder. Find your reason, my son. Fight not to destroy—but to protect what cannot protect itself."
Kai shut his eyes, took a deep breath.
A storm was brewing.
And he'd face it head-on.