Age 10
Beneath the Temple of Broken Time
Sanctum of the Severed Path
The chamber was circular and lightless, save for the single red flame that burned inside a suspended glass hourglass. The flame flickered upside down, dancing against gravity, as if even time bowed to this place.
Kael knelt in the center of the black circle, naked from the waist up. His arms were bound behind him, not to restrain, but to prepare. The runes carved into the stone floor pulsed beneath his knees like a living thing.
Six figures surrounded him—The Hollow Circle—their bone masks featureless, their presence suffocating.
He could feel the void behind their voices.
"Kael, son of rot," one of them said. "You have watched your mother offered. You have spilled your father's blood. But your soul still clings to the past."
"This is the final cut," another whispered. "This is where the boy dies. And the Path begins."
From the shadows stepped a woman—masked, robed, barefoot. In her hands was a blade made of black crystal, glinting faintly with flickers of memory. Each light trapped within it moved like a scream without sound.
The Knife of Forgetting.
Kael had only seen it used once—on a boy named Hiran who wept for his sister. After the blade touched him, he couldn't even remember her name.
Kael did not flinch.
"Speak the name of what you love," the woman said.
Kael's lips didn't move.
"Speak it," the cultists chanted in unison.
He ground his teeth. Then, in a voice hollow as the chamber itself:
"Lira."
A pause.
The chanting stopped.
He had not expected to say it. He hadn't spoken her name since the night he let her die.
The robed woman approached, pressed the blade against his temple.
His body tensed. His throat went dry.
It didn't cut flesh.
It cut memory.
And when it touched him—
He saw Lira. Not just her death, but everything: her laughter, her fear, the way she had said his name like it meant something. Their whispered dreams of escaping together. The way she had believed there was still something human in him.
Then, in a single blink—It was gone.
All of it.
He didn't forget what had happened.
He forgot how it felt.
The pain. The warmth. The reason it had mattered.
She became just another name.
The knife pulled away.
"You have been severed," the woman said. "Now rise."
The ropes fell from his arms. Kael stood.
Empty.
The Hollow Circle bowed their heads.
"You are no longer boy. You are no longer son. You are no longer loved."
"You are Path."
They gave him a robe made of ash-dyed cloth and stitched with sigils. Around his neck, they hung a silver hourglass, cracked in the center.
Kael did not look back.
There was nothing left behind him.
Only the Tower ahead.