Darkness.

  Not the comforting kind that lulled one to sleep—but the endless black of the void. The kind that had no up or down, no time or breath. Only pressure. Endless weightless silence.

  Kael drifted.

  No thought. No pain. No name.

  Then—a light.

  A speck in the infinite.

  It grew—slowly at first, then faster—blinding, boiling, alive.

  It consumed everything.

  And then—screaming.

  A wet, primal wail split the air like a blade. The cries were raw, unformed, desperate. He was no longer drifting.

  He was born.

  Kael’s eyes—new and burning—blinked against the crimson haze. He felt pain, wetness, cold. Something foreign against his raw skin. The thick scent of blood, and another deeper stench—musky, earthy, alive.

  He gasped, and a coughing cry tore from his tiny throat. His vision blurred with light and shadow, red and gold, as the world tilted around him.

  He was a baby.

  A newborn.

  Reborn.

  His body was covered in fluids—blood, amniotic jelly, mucus, and something darker, almost black, that shimmered faintly with purple sheen. His skin was pale gray, tinged with a violet hue along the chest and neck. Faint, soft black scales patterned his forearms and shoulders, visible even at birth. His eyes, when they cracked open, were a molten amber—reptilian slits blinking as they tried to focus.

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  Around him, voices murmured in a language he somehow knew, though no memory told him how. It was melodic, almost draconic in tone. A woman wept in joy, and a man’s voice—deep and proud—boomed beside her.

  The birthing room was a chamber of gothic beauty. Candlelight flickered against stone walls carved with winged drakes and fire-swirled sigils. Black velvet curtains hung from the ceilings, trimmed in gold thread. Crimson banners bearing a family crest—a black dragon skull wreathed in violet flame—draped down behind the birthing bed. The air smelled of incense and herbs. Midwives in long black and silver robes moved like shadows, their faces veiled, their hands precise.

  The bed itself was carved bonewood, and the sheets soaked crimson. A large basin beside it steamed with bloodied water where cloths were rinsed.

  On the bed lay Kael’s mother.

  She was beautiful in a way only drakenborne could be—sharp-featured, tall, with long violet-black hair clinging to her face in damp strands. Small horns curled back from her forehead, and her dark lavender skin glistened with sweat. Her eyes—identical to Kael’s, molten amber—gazed down at the crying newborn with exhaustion and awe.

  Beside her, standing tall in obsidian-scaled armor, was Kael’s father.

  He was a broad-shouldered warlord of a man, with a thick mane of black and silver hair tied back. His horns were jagged and crown-like, rising from his brow like a devil king. His cloak bore the mark of a noble house. Across his jaw, a scar told of battles long survived.

  “A male,” he said, voice a growl of pride. “With scales already. The blood runs strong in him.”

  “Kael,” his mother whispered. “His name is Kael…”

  Inside the child’s mind, there were no memories of Earth. No pain. No heartbreak. No Lucy. No car. No cold warehouses or shattered glass.

  By choice.

  When Elyndra offered rebirth, he chose to forget it all. To start clean. A soul marked by suffering, but free of its chains.

  Now, all that remained was Kael—the child of dragons, the marked necromancer, the Soulbearer.

  He screamed again, this time louder—stronger—until his mother laughed through her tears and clutched him to her chest.

  And far beyond the birthing room, across the peaks of Duskar Cradle, the skies rumbled… as if the world itself had just felt something awaken.