The VoidBorn Ascension

011

“Kai.”

Her voice was soft,too soft.

He froze at the threshold of the ruins, eyes locked on the figure kneeling beside the black-glass pool. She wasn’t a memory.

She was real.

Her silver-white robes shimmered like faded starlight. Her hair was shorter than he remembered. And her eyes,gray, distant, detached,looked through him like he was a story someone else had told her.

He took one step forward.

Then another.

“…It’s me,” he said, voice barely more than breath. “Kai.”

No flicker.

No warmth.

No recognition.

Just silence.

She looked at him like he was a dream she wasn’t sure she wanted to remember.

He knelt beside her, trembling, heart pounding against his ribs. His hand hovered inches from her shoulder, terrified it would pass right through.

“I used to wait by the door,” he said, forcing the words through his throat. “Every night after the fire. I thought maybe… maybe you’d survived. That you’d find a way back to me.”

Her lips parted slightly. A breath. Nothing more.

Then,

“…The door,” she whispered. Her voice cracked like frost underfoot.

Kai’s chest clenched. “Yeah. You always left it open just a little. Said I’d never be alone as long as I could still see the light.”

Her eyes flickered.

A shimmer.

A crack in the numbness.

“I… remember… screaming. Fire. A boy, crying. I tried to stay. But I couldn’t.”

“You didn’t have to leave me behind,” he said, more forcefully now.

She looked down. “I locked the seal. The cost… was forgetting.”

A beat of silence.

Then Kai leaned forward, closer.

“But I didn’t forget you. I came all this way to bring you back.”

And for just one heartbeat,one breath,her eyes cleared.

A tremor ran through her.

“…Kai,” she whispered.

He reached for her hand.

She reached back.

Their fingers brushed.

Then,

The sky screamed.

A sound like metal shattering across a cathedral.

Seria spun around, blades of light forming in her hands. Riven drew his sword without a word.

Kai whipped around toward the horizon.

A shape was rising.

Not walking.

Emerging.

Colossal. Twisting. Cloaked in ash and bone. Its form defied physics,a silhouette of horned shadows stitched together by agony.

No face.

Only a crown of broken horns and a mouth sewn shut.

Riven’s face turned to stone. “A Shade King. No… They were supposed to be sealed deeper.”

The creature roared,a bellow of hatred and hunger.

A wave of darkness surged forward.

Riven threw up a barrier.

It cracked on impact.

Seria gasped and coughed blood, dropping to one knee. The earth beneath Kai and his mother crumbled.

“Kai,” she said, standing slowly. Her voice had changed,no longer soft. No longer unsure.

Something ancient moved in her now.

“No more running.”

She turned to him, eyes glowing faintly, and placed a trembling hand over his heart.

“You are the key, Kai. Not just to this prison,but to the world above. They will come for you. Use you. Worship you. Or destroy you.”

His voice broke. “I don’t care. I just want you back.”

She smiled.

Sad.

Tender.

“I want you to live,” she whispered. “So remember this.”

Her palm flared.

Pain lanced through his chest.

Kai screamed as a weapon,not of steel but soul,poured into him. A silver flame, wrapped in shadow. A blade made of memory, grief, and defiance.

It seared into his core.

The Soulbrand.

Forged not from metal,but from her.

From her sacrifice.

“Don’t become what they need,” she whispered, eyes locked with his.

“Become what they fear.”

Then,

She turned.

And charged the Shade King alone.

Kai cried out,reached for her,but it was too late.

She let it all loose,Void, soul, memory, flame. A mother’s last promise wrapped in cataclysm.

The sky turned inside out.

The earth split like parchment.

The Shade King roared.

And the world exploded.

When Kai woke, he was gasping, drenched in sweat and light.

The Soulbrand was strapped across his back, humming softly, warm against his spine.

Seria knelt beside him, pale. Silent.

Riven sat nearby, bleeding from the mouth. His sword cracked down the center.

No one spoke.

No one could.

Then,

“…Kai,” Seria said.

He looked up.

Her eyes had gone white again.

“No,” Riven muttered. “Not now,”

Too late.

She rose to her feet, trembling. Her lips moved, but the words weren’t hers.

Her voice was hollow.

Ancient.

Layered.

“He stands alone on the mountain of the dead.

He laughs like a god, while kings burn at his feet.

The Soulbrand sings…

And the world begs for mercy.”

She collapsed.

Kai stared.

His hands shook.

Because for one split-second…

He’d seen it too.

A vision.

A ruined kingdom.

A tower of corpses beneath his feet.

And himself,cloaked in black fire, laughing like thunder,holding the Soulbrand high while the skies screamed.

And in the echo of that vision,

A voice he hadn’t heard since the night of the mark.

“Now… you see what you really are.”