Old friend

Kael'thar's hand moved to his blade as he ducked into the shadows between shelves. A figure emerged from the gloom—tall, robed, hooded in deep crimson. No face visible. Just a voice.

"I wondered how long it would take you," it said.

Kael'thar narrowed his eyes. "You know me?"

"Oh yes. Everyone in the Circle remembers the fool who tried to burn the truth."

Kael'thar stepped forward, blade glinting. "Then you know what I've come for."

The hooded figure tilted its head. "And you think we'll let you leave with it?"

Kael'thar smiled grimly.

"You'll try to stop me."

Immediately he was lifted in the air, his bones groaned. He saw himself flying hiting a the wall.

Pain.

Real, raw, human pain.

Kael'thar crashed against the cold marble floor of the archives, his ribs screaming with each ragged breath. Blood dripped from his split lip, soaking into the ancient runes carved beneath him.

The hooded figure stood tall, unharmed, his hands still glowing with residual spellfire. "You're not what you used to be," the stranger sneered. "Your soul may carry echoes of the Overbeing, but this body is flesh and weakness."

Kael'thar tried to rise, but his limbs trembled, useless. The world spun around him.

He had faced gods. Torn through realms. Commanded storms.

"Pathetic," the figure said, raising a palm for the final strike. "You came to steal from us. Instead, you'll become dust beneath our shelves."

Kael'thar looked up to catch a glimpse of the strangers face.

Then Kael'thar saw it.

Behind the figure, mounted on the far wall of the vault in a glass case lined with obsidian: his sword.

Not just a relic—The Voidfang, forged in the screaming heart of a dying star, tempered in the blood of titans. A blade made from a void diamond, that bent the laws of reality, whispered to by creation itself.

He had thought it lost forever.

A surge jolted through him. His soul—ancient, forgotten—roared.

Time slowed.

The figure stepped forward, unaware.

Kael'thar reached deep—not into muscle, but memory. Essence. And from the shattered remnants of his former power, he summoned a flicker of who he had once been.

His body screamed, but his will sharpened into a spear.

With a feral growl, he launched himself forward, ducking beneath the killing blow, rolling into a shoulder slam that knocked the robed figure back a step—just enough.

He reached the case, pressed both hands against the glass, and hissed a single command word from the Old Tongue.

The case shattered.

Voidfang fell into his hands.

The blade pulsed—recognition, joy, fury. The vault itself shivered as ancient wards snapped like frayed cords.

"Impossible!" the hooded figure snarled.

Kael'thar didn't answer. He let the blade speak for him.

The first strike cleaved a spell mid-cast.

The second shattered the man's staff.

The third knocked him into a pillar, breaking bones with a sickening crunch.

Kael'thar moved with practiced violence, still breathing hard, still bleeding—but now lethal.

He kicked the enemy's weapon away, pressed Voidfang to the man's throat, and growled, "You should've killed me."

The figure chuckled, blood staining his teeth. "You always were… arrogant."

Kael'thar flipped him onto his stomach, bound him with arcane chains scavenged from the nearest sealed tome, and turned to the vault.

Greed came like hunger.

He tore open drawers, ripped ancient locks from their hinges. Bottled spells. Crates of ethereal components. Scrolls imbued with time-magic. Armor forged for warlords of the Ninth Era. A staff older than the stars, humming with latent chaos. He threw the case housing the map to ashen temple on the ground stuffing the map in his bag.

He stuffed them into his pack. Too much. He knew it. Didn't care.

This place owed him. The world owed him.

He was Kael'thar. He had returned from the dead. And he would not crawl anymore.

He took everything.

Then came the sound.

Glass shattering.

Chains clattering.

He spun.

The hooded figure, bloodied but grinning, stood inside a shifting veil of light—a teleportation potion gripped in one hand, already broken on the ground.

"No!" Kael'thar lunged, Voidfang raised.

Too late.

In a flash of light and thunder, the man vanished—gone, along with whatever secrets still lingered in his mind.

Kael'thar cursed savagely, slamming his blade into the stone floor.

Silence returned.

He stood alone in the heart of a vault that had nearly killed him, surrounded by stolen power.

Not victorious. Not yet.

But armed.

And now—the hunt began in earnest.

The road back was long, but the land seemed smaller now.

Kael'thar walked in silence, the pack on his back heavy with more than weight—it pulsed, like a second heartbeat, a promise of power waiting to be unshackled. Every step reminded him what he had reclaimed… and what it had cost.

He'd wrapped Voidfang in cloth and lashed it beneath the false bottom of his satchel, binding it in a warded shroud so tight even the birds wouldn't feel its hum. Some things, even power-hungry madmen don't flaunt. Especially on open roads.

He traveled mostly at night, under a hood, careful to avoid towns. He no longer limped, but the bruises bloomed beneath his clothes like dark flowers. Human pain still clung to him, as did the memory of nearly dying—again.

By the fifth day, the chapel emerged.His gut tightened.

Kael'thar shoved the chapel door open with a grunt, the heavy wood groaning like it resented his presence.

"Still reeks of incense and rot," he muttered, stepping into the dim, abandoned sanctuary.

"Lira?" he called softly.

No answer.

He moved quickly, slipping inside their rough shelter, and set the satchel down. He unrolled the maps and artifacts, his fingers quick, hiding enchanted scrolls in hollow logs, tucking potions Scrolls, potions, shards of enchanted glass, even the stolen soul-lantern—he shoved them in without ceremony. Voidfang he buried deeper, wrapped in silence and shadow. into crevices beneath the floorboards. He buried beneath loose earth behind the tent, binding it in a rune of concealment only he could

break.

"You really think you're so smart?"

The voice cut through the silence like a blade.

Kael'thar froze, then turned slowly, hand instinctively reaching for a blade that wasn't there.

Lira leaned against the chapel arch, behind him. Her arms folded, brow arched. Her tone was calm—but her eyes were sharp.