Her name was a memory no one remembered.
But the world knew it once.
Azerai.
The first marked. The one who should've led the rebellion before there ever was a throne.
Before the light crowned itself sovereign.
Before the dark bent the knee in fear.
Before Kael.
Before all of them.
She stood at the edge of the altar—barefoot, blindfolded, unshaking.
The symbol above her began to shift.
Not glowing.
Devouring.
A spiral of void stitched with threads that didn't shimmer—they pulsed with absence.
Azerai tilted her head. "I was forgotten because I chose to be."
Kael stepped forward. "You were like us?"
Her smile twisted. Not cruel. Not soft. Just old.
"Like you? No. You were born of rebellion. I was the rebellion."
The sky groaned above.
Even the stars seemed afraid to watch now.
Rin stepped closer, her spell-hand glowing hot. "If you were first… why now? Why hide until we made it this far?"
Azerai's voice was gentle.
And sharp.
Like silk hiding a dagger.
"Because you needed to bleed. To fall. To fight. You needed to earn your marks."
She reached toward Kael, but didn't touch.
"And I needed to see which of you wouldn't break. Which of you could remember me—not with your mind, but your soul."
Juno whispered, "You… you're from the time before the bindings."
Azerai nodded slowly. "I'm from when choice wasn't a luxury. When freedom meant destruction. I chose to burn and bury myself, rather than bend."
Mace crossed his arms, voice low. "You sound like you think you're better than us."
Azerai's expression didn't change.
"I am what you're fighting to become. You, Mace, are still chained by guilt. Rin hides behind fire. Juno hides behind faith. And Kael…"
She finally turned her head fully toward him.
"You were built to finish what I started."
The altar split open.
The obsidian cracked like ice under divine pressure, revealing a stairway beneath—threads twisting downward, not forward.
Kael's mark pulsed in sync with Azerai's spiral.
"Where does it lead?" Rin asked.
Azerai's blindfold tightened as if the threads themselves curled around her eyes.
> "To the first binding. The true throne. The place they swore no marked would ever reach again."
Juno flinched. "You mean… the Core?"
Azerai's voice was barely a whisper now.
"The Core isn't just where fate is decided. It's where it begged for control. Where it broke us… to bind us."
Kael stared down the staircase.
He didn't fear it.
But he felt something new.
Like his soul was remembering futures that never were.
"You've been waiting for me to take your place," he said.
Azerai shook her head.
"I've been waiting to fight beside you."
And with that—
She stepped past him.
Her blindfold unraveled itself, thread by thread, revealing eyes that burned not with sight…
But with memory.
With wrath.
With truth.
The five of them—Kael, Rin, Mace, Juno, and Azerai—stood at the threshold of the impossible.
Each marked not by fate's gift, but by their defiance of it.
And beneath them, for the first time in eons—
The throne stirred.
Not to defend itself.
But to beg.
To bargain.
Because the one it forgot…
Had come home.