Chapter 26: The God-Hunt

The storm came with no warning—no clouds, no wind, just presence. A weight fell upon the sky like an ancient curse returning to roost. Birds fled, trees withered in fright, and silence devoured the night. Kael awoke beneath the ruins of the Temple of Thren, his breath catching. He didn't need to hear the voice to know what had arrived. He could feel it in his bones. The gods were hunting him.

Above him, a rune of iron burned into the air. Veyrus's mark.

Kael stood slowly, eyes narrowing as the shadows around him thickened. From the darkness, a blade of memory formed in his hand—not of steel, but of hardened thought, truth crystallized into a weapon. He hadn't drawn it in weeks. He didn't want to. But now… he had no choice.

He stepped into the clearing, already knowing they would not face him as mortals did. These were gods, bitter with the realization that their secrets had been unearthed by a boy who never asked for divinity.

Veyrus descended first. Towering, armored in molten iron shaped like scripture. His face was a mask—no eyes, no mouth, only runes of silence pulsing like veins.

"Kael," he thundered, voice echoing inside Kael's skull. "You were given power to preserve. You have used it to interfere."

Kael didn't flinch. "I preserved truth. The fact it wounds you isn't my fault."

"You broke the Balance," another voice said—Veralia, Goddess of Oaths, her robes trailing vows written in blood. "Mortals were meant to forget. It is mercy."

"It was control," Kael snapped. "I broke your illusion, not your balance."

Around them, four more gods appeared, encircling him like wolves closing in on a lone deer. They weren't here to talk. They were here to erase him.

"Where is the Archive?" Veyrus demanded. "Return it. End this."

Kael raised his sword of memory, its surface flickering with ancient faces, voices, and truth.

"I am the Archive."

And then the sky shattered.

Veyrus struck first, his hammer of binding crashing into the ground, sending molten chains arcing through the earth. Kael leapt back, his blade slashing the air, cutting through the bonds before they touched him. Veralia's words twisted into spears, sentences forming mid-air and launching like arrows. Kael deflected them with thoughts sharpened into shields.

But he was outnumbered.

Outclassed.

And alone.

Each blow they landed echoed across the landscape, tearing holes in time, undoing pieces of the world around them. Trees aged centuries in a second and crumbled to dust. Rivers boiled into vapor. History itself trembled under the weight of godly wrath.

Kael fought not to win—but to escape.

Because if they captured him, they wouldn't just kill him.

They would erase him—from memory, from time, from the Archive itself.

He reached within, grasping at the last fragments of the Seedstone's deeper magic—not remembrance, but severance. He spoke a word never written, never taught, and the ground beneath him cracked open, swallowing him in white light.

He vanished.

The gods halted mid-attack, stunned.

"He escaped," Veralia hissed.

Veyrus clenched a gauntleted fist. "Not for long. He cannot hide from what he is."

And above them, the iron rune pulsed once more—spreading across the sky like a curse.

Kael fell through light—not the warmth of the sun or the glow of divine flame, but a pale, eerie white that pulsed like the breath of something ancient and forgotten. His body twisted, torn through dimensions like paper through fire, until the sensation stopped with jarring stillness. He landed on ground that wasn't stone or soil, but memory hardened into substance. Around him stretched a vast wasteland of silence—flat, endless, and empty.

This was the Wound of the First Lie.

A place older than gods.

Where the first betrayal had occurred.

Where truth had been severed.

Where no memory could exist.

Kael stood slowly, his legs trembling. Even the Seedstone within him pulsed faintly, weakened by the very air of this place. He was alone in the truest sense—not even his own past echoed here. It was terrifying. And yet, in that isolation, he found clarity.

The gods feared him because he carried what they discarded.

They feared him because he had become proof that memory could never be fully controlled.

But now, they feared him enough to destroy him.

He wandered through the pale realm, unsure of where to go. There were no stars, no landmarks—only mist and the slow, dull ache in his chest that told him he was far from anything alive. Yet as he walked, he noticed something: faint glimmers in the air, like shattered pieces of truth that had bled into this realm before being sealed.

One glimmer hovered before him.

He reached out.

And saw her.

Remanai.

Not alive. Not present.

Just a shard—a moment.

She stood in a field of sunflowers, looking up at the sky, whispering to herself: "We are not meant to be forgotten. Even the worst of us. Even the best."

Then the shard vanished.

Kael fell to his knees.

She had understood this long before he did. That memory wasn't a weapon or a gift—it was a right. And now, here in the most forsaken part of existence, even that right was fraying.

He had one choice left.

Either let the gods define what should remain in history...

Or fight for a world where everyone—even monsters, even saints, even himself—was remembered honestly.

He drove his hand into the ground, letting the Seedstone spill from his chest and into the Wound.

The ground screamed.

Light bled upward, not warm, not cold—but real. A storm of remembrance. Names long banished burst from the soil. Faces, symbols, battles, songs—all of it poured into the void, stitching history back into the place where the first lie had severed it.

And from that storm, Kael stood.

He was no longer a boy cloaked in stolen power.

He was no longer the Archive alone.

He was the Memoryborn.

A being forged from the pain and truth of the world itself.

And he would no longer run.

He turned to the veil of the realm, where gods dared not enter. He opened his eyes, blazing gold and silver.

"I am Kael," he declared, voice shaking the Wound, "and I will no longer forget what you fear."

Then, the veil cracked.

And through it, he returned.