The first scream shattered the battlefield.
Not from the nobles. Not from the Riftmarked.
From something else.
Something that had never been human.
Aelthar stood at the edge of the valley, his hands relaxed at his sides, his expression unreadable as the Rift split open the ground.
The storm above raged, lightning snapping through the sky, but the true horror was below.
They crawled from the cracks like revenants, dragging themselves free of the earth, their bodies pulsing with dark veins of Riftlight. Not flesh. Not bone. Something twisted.
But not mindless.
Not the beasts the nobles had expected.
These creatures—the Riftborn—walked like men but were entirely different.
They stood tall, armoured in blackened metal that shimmered unnaturally. Their weapons were curved, unfamiliar, etched with symbols no scholar would recognize.
And their eyes—their eyes were hollow voids, burning with pale fire.
The noble soldiers stumbled back.
Steel clattered against stone as some dropped their weapons.
One of the knights let out a strangled breath. "What in the gods' names—"
The Riftborn turned their heads.
And they smiled.
The first noble soldier charged.
He did not make it three steps.
A Riftborn moved without sound, without effort, its blade already unsheathed before the knight could lift his sword.
The steel sang through the air.
A flash of Riftlight—a perfect, seamless movement.
The knight collapsed in two pieces.
The battlefield froze.
The Riftborn stood silent, watching the chaos around them.
And then—one of them stepped forward.
And knelt.
----
Vaelthas did not breathe.
He had seen many things in war.
He had seen soldiers butchered before they could scream.
He had seen men broken beneath the weight of the Rift's hunger.
But this—
This was something worse.
The Riftborn were not mindless.
They were not wild.
They knelt.
Before Aelthar.
Not in submission. Not in surrender.
In recognition.
Vaelthas's fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword.
He turned to Aelthar, his voice low, controlled.
"They do not serve you."
Aelthar's gaze did not shift from the Riftborn. "They kneel before me."
Vaelthas's jaw tightened. "That is not the same thing."
The Riftborn watched them.
Silent. Waiting.
Aelthar felt it, too.
The weight of something unspoken.
Because Vaelthas was right.
This was not loyalty.
This was something older.
Something Aelthar had not yet remembered.
And the Riftborn were waiting for him, too.
----
The noble knights were the first to break.
They had come to fight a war of men.
They had prepared for blood, steel, and battle against a mortal enemy.
But they were not prepared for this.
The Riftborn did not charge.
They did not advance with fury or cut down the nobles in a storm of death.
They stood.
Watching.
Waiting.
As if the battle had never been theirs to fight.
And that—that was worse than slaughter.
Because the nobles understood war.
But they did not understand this.
The first noble general turned his horse.
The second followed.
Then—the cracks in their army spread.
One by one, the nobles began to retreat.
Not in chaos.
Not in disorder.
But in horrified, stunned silence.
No matter how much they told themselves that Aelthar was just a man, the thing that had answered him was not.
And they could not fight what they did not understand.
The Riftborn watched them go.
And then—one of them spoke.
Not to the nobles.
Not to the Riftmarked.
But to Aelthar.
And it used a name he had not heard in centuries.
Not Aric.
Not Aelthar.
It whispered something older.
And the moment it did—
The Rift pulsed.
And Aelthar remembered.
----
The Riftborn did not speak immediately.
They knelt before Aelthar; their heads bowed, their forms wrapped in the pulsing glow of Riftlight. Their bodies flickered like candle flames caught in a violent wind—as if they did not fully belong to this world.
The nobles had retreated in silence.
The Riftmarked stood frozen behind Aelthar.
But the Riftborn—they waited.
Aelthar stepped forward. His boots pressed into the shattered earth, where Rift energy still shimmered along the cracks. The battlefield felt unnaturally still. The storm above churned, the wind howling like a caged beast, but below, in the presence of the Riftborn, time itself felt stretched.
It was as if the Rift was holding its breath.
It was as if it was waiting for Aelthar to speak first.
But he didn't.
Instead, he watched.
Because this—this was not obedience.
This was something else.
The Riftborn knelt, but they did not lower their eyes. They looked at him as if they knew him.
Not as a king.
Not as a conqueror.
But as something older.
Aelthar exhaled.
He should have felt victorious.
Instead—he felt recognized.
And that was worse.
Because he did not remember them.
But they—they remembered him.
One of them stepped forward.
And finally, it spoke.
----
The Riftborn's voice was wrong.
It did not echo like a man's. It did not rasp like a dying warrior.
It was layered. **One voice, two voices, three—**all speaking as one, as if time itself had folded over their words.
"You have returned."
Aelthar did not react.
The Riftmarked behind him shifted uneasily. Vaelthas tensed, his hand drifting toward his blade, but he did not move.
Because no one knew what this was yet.
"We have waited," the Riftborn continued. Its hollow gaze locked onto Aelthar, not in reverence, but in certainty.
"You have been broken. But you will be made whole again."
Aelthar finally spoke. His voice was calm. Controlled.
"Who are you?"
The Riftborn's expression did not change.
"We are the first. We are the last. We are those who were left behind."
Something in Aelthar's chest tightened.
"Left behind?"
The Riftborn tilted its head, the glow in its empty eyes shifting—deepening.
"When the world burned, when the Rift opened, when you fell—we were the ones who remained. The ones who did not forget. The ones who did not kneel to the new gods."
The wind screamed through the valley.
Aelthar's fingers curled into fists.
Because something was wrong.
This Riftborn did not speak like a servant.
It spoke like a prophet.
And it was not worshipping him.
It was reminding him.
Of something he had not yet remembered.
----
Aelthar felt the shift before he saw it.
The Rift pulsed.
Once.
Then again.
Then—it spoke.
Not in whispers.
Not in broken fragments of forgotten memory.
But in one clear, undeniable word.
A name.
And the moment it echoed in Aelthar's mind—his body reacted before his thoughts could catch up.
A step back.
A tightening in his chest.
Because he knew that name.
Even though he had never heard it before.
It settled into his bones like an old wound reopening.
Like a scar, he had never noticed suddenly burning beneath his skin.
The Riftborn watched him.
They were waiting.
Because they had always been waiting.
For him to remember.
And for the first time since reclaiming his throne—
Aelthar felt something close to fear.
The Rift pulsed again.
And this time—it did not whisper.
It called.
And Aelthar knew.
This war was no longer about Velmiris.
This was no longer about thrones and empires.
This was about something older.
Something he had forgotten.
And something the Riftborn refused to let him ignore any longer.