I did not return as the same boy who left.
My body was my own, but my shadow stretched differently.
Deeper.
And Kadven—Kadven knew.
The stones whispered under my boots as I walked the halls. Runes shimmered faintly as I passed, as if recognizing something… or remembering. Students stared, but none dared speak. Not even the twins. My adopted siblings, once bold and sharp with questions, now avoided my eyes. Not out of fear.
Out of instinct.
Something ancient stirred in me. A presence half-dormant. Half-awake.
The Forgotten Fourteenth had returned.
The library should have been silent.
But on that night, pages fluttered on their own. Candles burned without wicks. A staircase moved where none existed before.
I descended.
Lower than the archives.
Lower than even the chamber where I'd seen Azraleth rise.
The spiral ended in a hall made of bone-white stone. Symbols from a language I did not know—yet somehow understood—coiled across the floor.
The center of the chamber was empty.
Except for one chair.
Black.
Unmoving.
Waiting.
A voice spoke behind me. Dry. Ancient.
"You should not have come here."
I turned.
It was the Archivist.
One of the oldest beings in Kadven. Not quite man. Not quite spirit. Cloaked in silence, crowned with dust.
"You remember," I said.
"I tried to forget," he replied. "As we all did."
He walked past me slowly, the floor trembling with each step.
"The Fourteenth Seat was never lost," he said. "It was hidden. Sacrificed."
"Why?"
"Because it knew the truth. And the others… couldn't bear it."
He raised a hand.
The stone rippled.
And the wall bloomed open like paper.
Behind it: a mural. Faded. Cracked.
Thirteen figures stood in a circle, cloaked in fire and glory.
And one more.
Outside the ring.
Bound in silver chains.
No face.
Just darkness.
Just me.
"The Fourteenth was not a traitor," the Archivist said. "It was a mirror. The part the Circle feared in themselves. Their flaw. Their guilt. Their cost."
"And now?" I asked.
"Now you are whole."
He handed me a blade.
But it wasn't steel.
It was shaped from silence.
Black as absence.
It hummed with truth.
A weapon not to kill, but to remember.
The blade of the Forgotten.
I left the chamber behind, climbing back into a world that still thought itself safe.
Kadven's towers still gleamed, but their light felt thinner. Weaker.
The bells had stopped, but the sky remained cracked.
And far across the realm, faint screams still rose from places that had no names.
The veil had been wounded.
It would tear again.
Soon.
That night, I stood on the Academy's southern wall, watching clouds move like smoke across the stars.
Behind me, footsteps.
It was her—my sister.
Or the girl who still called me that.
"You're not the same," she said.
"I was never the same," I answered.
Silence.
Then her voice—barely a whisper.
"Do you still care?"
I didn't answer.
I couldn't.
Because the Fourteenth in me remembered things no child should ever carry. Because the part of me that loved her also feared what I might become.
But I didn't walk away.
And that was something.
The wind howled that night.
Not cold.
Not wild.
But warning.
Because the Gate wasn't finished.
Azraleth had fallen for now, yes.
But others stirred.
And somewhere beyond the veil, another throne creaked open.
Not for a king.
Not for a god.
But for the one who remembered.
Me.