Archmage Reborn: the path of shadows

The temple of Elmsfall squatted in the village's center like a rotted tooth the elders refused to pull.

Once whitewashed and proud, its walls had turned the color of old bone. Long cracks crept through the masonry like spider veins, and crows had claimed the bell tower as their nesting ground. The sacred flame hadn't been lit in over a year.

To the villagers, it was still holy ground.

To Kael, it was a corpse that no one had dared bury.

Midnight draped the village in mist.

Kael crouched beside the old well, eyes fixed on the crooked doors of the temple. Goran was drunk again. The priest's quarters were dark. The rest of the village lay in uneasy sleep.

Exactly as he needed.

He moved in silence, each step practiced. The iron lock on the temple's door was so rusted it looked ready to fall apart, but Kael didn't force it. He had no interest in raising alarm.

Instead, he pressed two fingers to the keyhole and whispered a thread of energy into the mechanism.

Whisper Thread.

His first spell completely his own.

The tumblers shifted, almost curious, and the lock gave a soft, tired click.

He slipped inside.

The air reeked of damp incense and old dust. Rows of splintered pews lined the aisle, their cushions gnawed by rats and time. At the altar stood a blackened iron flame idol, draped in red cloth too faded to hold any meaning.

But Kael didn't approach the front.

He went behind it.

Just as he'd guessed, a false panel hid a narrow stone stairwell leading down into darkness.

No hesitation.

He conjured a faint flame—not from an incantation or spellform, but from within—and descended.

The first chamber was a crypt. Narrow and cramped, the walls were lined with cracked glass coffins. Most had collapsed in on themselves. Bone dust clung to the air.

But these weren't saints.

Kael knew the difference.

Robes clung to a few of the remains—burned, frayed, with arcane sigils scorched into what was left of their ribcages.

"Mages," Kael murmured. "Executed, then hidden."

Someone had hunted them—and buried the evidence beneath sanctified ground.

He stepped further in, heart pounding.

Then, behind him, a flicker. A shadow without shape. No source.

He turned sharply.

The flame in his palm flared.

"Who's there?"

The shadow didn't vanish. It shifted—stretching, bending—until it took the shape of a glyph.

One Kael had never seen before.

Then it faded.

The second chamber was worse.

A workroom, if it could be called that. No windows. Iron restraints bolted to bloodstained tables. A cage hung empty from the ceiling. Chains swayed gently as if something had just been released.

Kael didn't stop.

At the center of the room, bound to a stone slab, sat a bundle wrapped in dark cloth.

His fingers trembled as he pulled it free.

A grimoire.

Not just any—his.

Burned along the edges. Pages torn. But the ink, the script, the margins filled with frantic notations… all unmistakably his.

"He found this," Kael whispered. "And tried to unravel it."

That's when the door slammed shut behind him.

Footsteps echoed on the stone.

"I wondered when you'd come," said a voice.

Kael turned.

Father Dalan stood at the top of the stairs, his robe drawn tightly around him. But in his hands wasn't a holy text or relic.

It was a staff.

Carved with runes Kael hadn't seen in decades—black, jagged, dangerous.

"You're not the boy they think you are," Dalan said, eyes cold. "I knew it the moment I saw you. There's something ancient in you."

Kael raised his hand, flame crackling.

"And you've been hiding something old and broken in this temple. That makes two of us."

Dalan chuckled bitterly.

"I had hoped to guide you. Shape you. But the glyph I see in your core… it's far beyond me. You were never meant to survive."

He slammed the staff down.

Chains slithered from the summoning circle, shrieking like metal serpents.

They snapped toward Kael.

Kael didn't retreat.

He snapped his fingers.

The fire in his palm exploded into a spinning ring of blue flame. The chains met it—and were eaten whole.

"Flameroot Bind."

The fire leapt forward, wrapped around Dalan's staff. The runes sizzled, cracked, and shattered with a flash of backlash energy. Dalan screamed, clutching his arm as smoke poured from the ruined wood.

Kael stepped into the summoning circle, still gripping the grimoire.

The spiral-and-triangle glyph on his palm began to glow—brighter, faster—until it pulsed in perfect rhythm with the book.

The chamber vanished.

He was there again.

The tower. The betrayal. Serana's knife. The smoke. The scream.

Eclipse Requiem.

The spell that tore the world from under him.

He staggered back, heart racing, breath ragged.

Dalan was gone.

Kael stood alone in the dark, the grimoire pressed to his chest.

The temple had buried more than bodies.

It had tried to bury his legacy.

Now, it was his again.

"You tried to study what I was," he said softly, the blue fire flickering across the stone. "Now you'll learn what I've become."

Outside, in the village square, the long-dead brazier atop the temple cracked into flame.

It didn't burn gold.

It burned blue.