The air in Westbridge felt colder than usual that morning. The streets were drowsy with dawn, half-awake and glazed in silver fog. Kael stood beneath the rusted streetlamp, his eyes trailing the cracks in the pavement like they could form a map of everything that went wrong. His hands stayed buried deep in his jacket pocket, gripping the pendant like it was the only thing tethering him to himself. He hadn't slept. Sai had drifted off beside him hours ago, curled up on the couch of their cramped motel room, but Kael had sat by the window all night watching. Listening.
Waiting.
Because something was coming.
And silence had never felt so loud.
Inside, Sai stirred. She reached out instinctively for him, found only cold air, and opened her eyes with a frown. The motel walls were paper-thin. Somewhere down the hall, someone coughed. A baby cried. And Kael, her Kael stood like a statue outside the window, lit by a grey sliver of dying moonlight.
She sat up and called softly, "Kael?"
He didn't move. She pulled her sweater over her shoulders and joined him, slipping her hand into his.
"You didn't sleep," she whispered.
"No." His voice was quiet. "Couldn't."
Sai leaned her head on his shoulder. "Is it the vault?"
"No. It's not the vault that scares me. It's what I'll find in there. Or what I won't."
Sai turned to face him. "Kael… no matter what's inside that vault, you're not the scared boy in the cellar anymore. You've walked through fire. You've lost everything and still stood." He looked down at her, "But what if I wasn't meant to survive it? What if all of this, this legacy, this pendant, this hunt, what if it's meant to end with me breaking?" Sai took his face in her hands gently. "Then let it break you. But let it break you open—not down," His eyes closed, just for a moment. Then he nodded..
Later that morning, they made their way to the edge of the city. According to Sai's grandfather's map, the vault wasn't hidden in some ancient castle or secret tomb. It was beneath an old library, long abandoned, Forgotten by most, and buried beneath layers of bureaucracy and cement.
But not completely.
The library stood crooked, a building held together by memory. Weeds curled over broken steps, the doors creaked when Kael pushed them open, the air inside dense with dust and secrets.
They stepped in, flashlights cutting through the dark. Sai kept close, her eyes darting across every shadow. The pendant around Kael's neck pulsed faintly, not glowing but sensing.
They walked past fallen shelves and weather-worn maps, to a hidden staircase at the back, concealed behind a false wall. Sai found it by accident, pressing her hand against a carved symbol, the three-eyed crown.
The wall shifted. The air changed.
And Kael whispered, "This is it."
The staircase spiraled downward, deeper than expected. The lower they went, the tighter Kael's chest felt. His mother's voice echoed somewhere deep in his memory, If you're ever lost, trust the silence.
At the bottom, a steel door waited. Sai reached out first. But Kael stopped her.
"No. This is mine to open."
He stepped forward and placed the pendant into the indentation at the center of the door. It clicked, shuddered, then cracked open.
Inside, the chamber pulsed faintly, not with magic, but with life.
Scrolls... Files. .. Names written in ink so old it had turned to ash at the edges. Symbols... Seals.
And at the very center, a podium with a single box.
Kael approached it slowly, hands trembling.
Inside the box was a letter.
Folded. Yellowed. Familiar handwriting.
He picked it up.
To Kael,
If you're reading this, then you've come farther than anyone ever expected. And you deserve the truth…
Kael read in silence, his fingers shaking, his lips barely forming the words. Sai stood back, not wanting to intrude. But as he reached the end, he sank to his knees, "It was all planned," he whispered. "All of it."
He handed Sai the letter. She read it slowly, each word stealing the air from her lungs.
Kael's father hadn't just abandoned him. He had hidden him, forged records, paid off witnesses, and blamed everything on Kael's mother when she tried to fight back, Madam Elsie was never the villain alone, she was invited in.
Kael was erased. Deliberately. To protect a throne no one could see.
"I was never meant to know," he muttered. "Never meant to come back."
Sai knelt beside him and took his hand.
"You were meant to survive," she said firmly. "And you did. Kael, you did."
He looked at her, eyes red. "But what now? What do I do with this?"
"Now," she said softly, "we speak. We stop being quiet."---
Back outside, the world hadn't changed. But something inside Kael had.
He didn't stand the same. He didn't walk the same.
The silence had broken.
And for the first time in a long time, Kael Eron felt like someone who had everything to lose and everything to claim.