Kael's breath slowed. His mind raced. The first Celestial Sovereign?
He had thought himself unique the only one to ever command time itself. But this masked figure, this relic of a forgotten age, claimed to have come before him.
"You lie."
The warrior chuckled, a sound like cracking stone and ancient winds. "You feel it, don't you? The truth, stirring in your blood."
Kael clenched his fists. He had awakened fragments of his past, but nothing had suggested another before him. If this being was telling the truth, then what else had been erased from history?
"Then tell me," Kael demanded, silver eyes burning. "Why have I never heard of you?"
The masked warrior tilted his head. "Because I was erased just as you were."
The words sent a cold shiver through Kael's core.
"There was a time before your rule, Kael," the warrior continued. "Before the Tribunal. Before Aetherion. Before the gods feared what we could become."
The air around them shifted, and the battlefield of memories faded. They stood in the ruins once more. The Titanborn knelt in silence, watching. The fractured sky, still unsettled from Kael's awakening, pulsed like a wound in reality.
"What happened to you?" Kael asked.
The masked warrior was silent for a moment. Then, he removed his mask.
Kael staggered back.
The face beneath was familiar too familiar. A reflection of himself, yet older, worn by time and endless war. A face that had lived and died a thousand times.
"I was like you," the man said. "But I failed."
Kael's breath hitched. "Failed?"
The first Sovereign's gaze was like starlight caught in endless darkness.
"I sought to master time, to shape destiny itself. But I was betrayed. And when the gods could not kill me they did worse."
"They rewrote history."
Kael's fists tightened. He had always believed the Tribunal had erased only him.
But if this man spoke the truth then there were others.
And if he had failed.
Would Kael suffer the same fate?
The first Sovereign took a slow step forward.
"You have awakened," he said. "And now, they will come for you again."
The world seemed to darken.
"The Tribunal knows you live, Kael."
"And this time they will not allow you to rise."