He awoke beneath a sky that didn't exist.
It stretched above him in layers, endless horizons stacked like mirrored glass. The stars didn't twinkle—they pulsed, breathing in slow rhythm with something beneath the ground. The world itself felt like it was dreaming, caught between a breath.
Haraza stood slowly, his body aching from a battle that had happened both outside and within. His thoughts scattered, reordered, reshaped. The Helm was gone, not destroyed but transcended, now part of him in a way he couldn't yet explain.
He was alone.
Or so he thought.
The dream-sky rippled, and from the haze emerged figures—not soldiers, not spirits, but imprints. Echoes of those who had once walked this world in power and silence.
The first stepped forward. A woman in layered armor of ivory stone and flowing blue silk. Her eyes were eclipsed suns, and in her hands she held a blade made of woven symbols.
("Haraza Genso,") she said, voice layered in ancient tongues. ("You carry the Rift's burden. And now, you stand before the Silent Accord.")
Behind her, eleven more emerged—each distinct, each radiant with forgotten essence. They were the founders. The original bearers of the Shards. The ones who had once shaped the laws of the world with a whisper and sealed the Dream to preserve its order.
And now they watched him, silent as judgment.
Haraza braced himself.( "You are the Accord.")
("We were,") said the woman. ("Once, long ago. Before the sealing. Before the breach. We are what remains—echoes locked in the Paradox Core, preserved only to test the one who would dare to remember.")
He took a step forward, his boots leaving no trace on the strange mirrored ground. "Why am I here? What do you want?"
("Not what we want,") said a towering drakken echo, his body rimmed in fractal fire. ("What you will choose.")
("You've begun the Cycle,") another intoned, a being of shifting glass. ("One lock broken. Eleven remain. With each, the world slips further from the Accord's grip.")
("With each,") the first woman said again, ("you rewrite the Dream.")
The silence that followed was vast.
Haraza clenched his fists. ("If the Accord knew what was coming, why lock it away? Why bury the truth?")
("Because we were afraid,") she said simply. ("Afraid of what we had created. Afraid of what you might become.")
She lifted her blade—not in aggression, but as a symbol. Its symbols shimmered with timelines, infinite possibilities encoded in motion.
("The Rift is not destruction. It is revelation. The Accord was built to protect, but protection became control. Truth became dogma. The Cycle was our only hope—that one day, someone like you would emerge.")
("To do what?") Haraza asked. ("Restore your order?")
("No,") she said. ("To end it.")
The sky shattered.
When he blinked again, he stood on a floating bridge of marble and thought. Below him stretched the world—the real world—Ubrac in chaos, the outer territories collapsing under storms of unshaped magic, and the Dreamlayers thinning until nightmare bled into waking.
Above him, the eleven echoes floated.
("We will show you what remains,") they said. ("But only if you are willing to see.")
Haraza gritted his teeth. ("I've come this far.")
("Then open your mind.")
Light pierced him.
He saw the history of the Shards—not the myths, but the reality.
They weren't divine. They were tools, created by a civilization that existed beyond the world's horizon, forged to manipulate the fundamental frameworks of perception and will. When that civilization fell—by choice or by force—their tools scattered, buried in the seams of reality. The Accord had found them. Repurposed them.
But power craves purpose.
The Shards awakened. Not as minds, but as interfaces—gateways to something larger. Something outside.
("The Rift,") Haraza whispered in the vision.
The Accord didn't defeat it. They didn't even understand it. They only knew enough to seal the breach, to close the door and erase the key.
Except they couldn't destroy the Helm. So they hid it.
Until now.
("This isn't just about power,") he muttered. ("It's about choice.")
The vision changed again.
Now he saw Mirien—High Voice of the Ebon Crest—standing before the opened seal in Ubrac's vault. Energy roared around her, uncontrolled. The seal had ruptured too soon. She was speaking, not to her followers, but to something across the breach.
("We've opened the eye,") she whispered. ("Now look upon us.")
And the Rift answered.
Haraza gasped.
The echoes faded, and he was alone again—but not in the real world. Not yet. A platform drifted forward, and upon it sat a device shaped like a starwheel, its spokes marked with twelve glyphs.
One glowed faintly. The one he had already unlocked.
("This is your map,") said the voice of the woman echo, now in his mind. ("A guide to the remaining seals. Each will test a truth you hold. Each will ask a price.")
("Why me?") he asked.
("Because you are not bound,") came the answer. ("You are not priest, nor warlock, nor heir. You are haraza—jack of all trades, master of none. A man unclaimed.")
("And that,") she said, ("is what the Dream cannot predict.")
When Haraza opened his eyes, he lay atop the ruins of Ubrac's central vault. The world had not ended—but it had shifted.
Lirien knelt beside him, relief etched in every line of her face. ("You were gone. For hours. I thought you—")
("I was somewhere else,") he said, sitting up.("With them.")
Her eyes widened. ("The Accord?")
He nodded. ("What's left of it.")
The Helm no longer glowed. It pulsed slowly, like a heart. But when he looked into it, he saw the map—the starwheel—etched behind his eyes.
("There are eleven more,") he said.
("Seals?") Lirien asked.
("And trials,")he confirmed. ("Each one will bring us closer to truth—or to ruin.")
She helped him stand. ("Where do we begin?")
He looked up at the stars.
They no longer felt foreign.
They felt like instructions.
("East,")he said. ("To the Broken Sea.")