The door groaned as it opened, the ancient ice fracturing with a sound like weeping stone. Ael stepped through the threshold alone, leaving behind the wind, the sea, and the anxious voices of his companions.
The world beyond the gate was not a cave. It was a tomb.
Vast. Hollow. Eternal.
The walls were smooth crystal, veined with flowing blue mana. Pillars carved from ancient bone lined the path, each one etched with forgotten languages and names that no longer had meaning to the world above.
But one thing was certain: this place predated empires. It predated the gods.
And at its center, something waited.
Ael's boots echoed as he walked down the glacial corridor, breath visible in the frigid air. With every step, a pressure grew behind his eyes, as though something ancient was awakening just enough to notice him.
Then the corridor opened into a vast circular chamber—its ceiling lost to darkness, its heart filled with frozen mist.
There, embedded in a throne of ice, was a figure.
Tall. Thin. Motionless.
Its body was humanoid, but its proportions were... wrong. Longer arms, six fingers on each hand. A face with no mouth, only smooth, unbroken skin where lips should have been. Its eyes, shut tight, were sealed with rune-marked iron bands.
Chains of the same metal wrapped around its chest and legs—binding it in place.
This was the Sleeper.
And it was still dreaming.
Ael approached cautiously. As he stepped into the circle of frost, the air grew thicker, warmer. Humming. Alive.
Then he heard it—a whisper not in his ears, but in his bones.
"Who walks within the silence of the first world?"
He stopped. "I am Ael. King of nothing. Seeker of the truth."
There was a pause. Then—
"You have carried death across lifetimes. But now you seek life. Why?"
"I lived without emotion," he said softly. "And it made me a monster. Now… I feel. I hurt. I want. And I don't know if that makes me weaker or stronger."
The Sleeper's sealed eyes twitched. One of the bands across them cracked.
"You seek understanding. Yet fear what you will learn."
"I fear myself," Ael whispered.
"Then you are ready."
A blast of mana surged outward from the throne, knocking Ael to his knees.
Visions crashed into his mind—violent and unrelenting.
He saw the first war—not between kingdoms, but between primordial forces. Light that devoured thought. Darkness that birthed time. Magic was not a gift then. It was a curse that broke reality apart and rewrote it.
And the ones who lived through it… were like gods.
He saw the Sleeper then—not asleep, but awake. A being of pure arcane will. Not a tyrant, not a savior, but a gatekeeper. The last of its kind. It bound itself in chains willingly, to contain the source of all magic beneath the ice.
Because if that source awoke again, the world would burn.
"You were born of this magic," the Sleeper's voice echoed through the chamber. "Reforged from its remnants. Not by fate… but by design."
Ael gasped. "What are you saying?"
"You are the final shard of the Gatekeeper's soul."
The vision shattered.
Ael fell, breath ragged, vision blurred.
He was not just a king reborn.
He was part of the force that had once sealed magic itself.
And now… someone was trying to unseal it.
The Executioner.
Ael rose shakily, eyes wide. "Tell me how to stop him."
The Sleeper's voice grew distant.
"You cannot stop him alone. But you may awaken what sleeps within you. Only then will you remember the name you once carried."
The bands across its face cracked further.
"Come closer."
Ael did. And when he reached out—
The Sleeper opened its eyes.
There were no pupils. No irises. Just swirling storms of arcane blue.
In that moment, power poured into Ael—not like fire, but like drowning. Thousands of voices. Millions of lives. Memories that were never his.
But they had always belonged to him.
And buried within it all, a single name echoed—a name he had not spoken since before time itself had meaning.
His true name.
Then the Sleeper's body turned to mist, unraveling like snow in sunlight.
And the chains fell, empty.
Ael stumbled back, clutching his chest.
He was still himself.
But no longer only himself.
Behind him, the glacier trembled.
The Gate shuddered.
And a distant roar echoed from far below—something vast, something hungry.
The Sleeper had passed on more than just knowledge.
It had passed on its burden.
Ael turned toward the exit, jaw clenched.
It was time to face the Executioner again.
But this time, he wouldn't be running.