The era of bloodshed had waned, though its echoes still wandered across the void like whispers from a grave. The realm of Zhel-vorah, long cloaked in tempest and ruin, had finally begun to exhale. Fields once scorched by divine flame now bloomed again beneath the mournful eyes of the twin moons. Peace, that rare and fleeting thing, had settled across his lands—but in his heart, there was no stillness.
Zhel-vorah, Monarch of the Endless Change, stood atop the blackened spires of the Ebon Citadel, gazing into a horizon painted in hues of dying gold. A century of war had etched furrows into his soul, but it was not weariness that consumed him—it was longing.
Then she arrived.
Aurelia.
She walked through the garden of broken statues like a dream reborn. Her hair shimmered like strands of woven starlight, and her eyes—soft violets touched by sorrow—saw into a past she did not remember. Zhel-vorah recognized her immediately. It was not her beauty that struck him; it was her soul, ancient and familiar. The same essence, the same echo—Lyn, the one he had lost to time.
He did not tell her. Not then.
Love, that cruel architect of destiny, unfurled its tapestry in silence. Despite being an Overlord and he a Monarch—two existences never meant to cross—they fell into each other like dawn into dusk. The world watched with contempt. Monarchs were chaos incarnate. Overlords, arbiters of order. Their union was heresy.
But Aurelia fled the sky palaces. She renounced her celestial name and married Zhel-vorah in the quiet shadows of the Ebon Temple. For a time, the world held its breath, and they were allowed to be nothing more than man and wife.
Three children blessed their bond.
Lucias, born beneath the eclipse—stern, proud, a mirror of his father. Zenex, quiet as snowfall, whose mind wandered where gods feared to tread. And Aurevian, daughter of stormlight and laughter, born in the twilight between worlds.
Yet, happiness is a lie the stars tell before they fall.
Zhel-vorah began to notice something missing. Aurelia laughed, loved, and wept beside him—but the ancient flame, the soul he had once touched as Lyn, was silent within her. She did not remember.
He summoned his oldest servant, the ever-smiling Nyreth, a being of shifting masks and ancient knowledge. Nyreth bowed low, his voice wrapped in honeyed shadows.
"There is one path, my lord. The Cup of Reincarnation. Use of it, and memory across lifetimes shall return."
But the Cup lay within the Overlords' domain—the Lunar World, guarded by the Laws of White Flame. To reach it was to summon war.
Before Zhel-vorah could act, another storm arrived.
Aurelion, Aurelia's father, Sovereign of the Luminous Edict, descended upon the Ebon Citadel with celestial fury veiled beneath civility. He came not as a father—but as a judge.
"Return my daughter," Aurelion demanded, his voice unbending as the firmament.
Zhel-vorah stood unshaken. "She is no prisoner. She is my wife. My equal."
"She has broken the Covenant. You, Monarch, have defiled our bloodline. If she does not return, she will be burned in the Wells of Purity."
A tremor passed through Zhel-vorah's clenched fists. He struck Aurelion with divine fire, not to kill—but to warn.
"She is not a tool. If you touch her, I will shatter your realm into ash and echo."
Aurelion, lips bloodied but dignity intact, spoke a final curse:
"One who betrays her father… shall be betrayed by her children."
Zhel-vorah turned his back. "I have raised them to believe in love, not legacy."
But in his heart, doubt bloomed.
Aurelia sat in the Hanging Garden, sipping jasmine tea beneath a veil of moonsilver. She felt it—something fractured in the wind.
Nyreth approached her in silence, a shadow among roses.
"Nyreth, you here mean there is something that Zhel did but afraid to say."
Nyreth nodded.
"Just tell me.. don't hesitate." She told.
"He struck your father. Threatened to unmake the Overlords."
Her fingers trembled around porcelain.
"He has changed," Nyreth whispered. "And at night… in his sleep… he saw a girl, Lyn."
She surprised and wanted to know more but Nyreth hesitated. He told he can't say more. This was that information the his master wanted to tell her. Then Aurelia request to tell her more about his past.
That name. A whisper she had once ignored now echoed like a scream.
"Do you believe he loves you? Or a ghost inside you?"
Doubt choked her breath. Nyreth, patient and serpentine, planted seeds of uncertainty and he told her about Zhel-vorah didn't love her. He just used her. He wanted to create army. He urged her to flee, promised safety among her own kind.
And so, one quiet night, she vanished.
When Zhel-vorah returned and found the chambers empty, rage became silence. He crossed into the Overlord domain, clad in obsidian armor and sorrow. The Lunar World denied him. He saw her wife was dead and burning with fire.
He shocked and fell to his knees. Tears are coming out the he stood and answered with fire.
The Great Primordial War ignited, and the world wept anew.
Lucias, blade in hand, joined him. So did Aurevian, eyes bright with conviction. But Zenex stayed behind.
Zhel-vorah found him amidst the battlefield.
"Come with me, son. The world seeks to erase us."
Zenex raised his eyes—ancient, calm.
"You seek vengeance. I seek understanding."
He requested him a lot but Zenex denied. When Zhel-vorah realized Zenex would not be convinced then he only turned away.
He did not curse him, a father once proud, now hollow.
At the war's climax, Zhel-vorah stood atop the shattered Moon Spire, facing betrayal not from enemies—but from blood.
Aurevian, his daughter, wielding the Seal of Pale Chains, bound him.
"Why?" he asked, not as a god, but as a man.
"Because you are not the father I remember," she said. "You are the ghost of a war that never ended."
The dark clouds of Solmiras swallowed him.
Nyreth watched from afar. And smiled.