Power did not return all at once, It crept. That was how Kael knew it was dangerous.
He felt it first as warmth beneath the ache in his chest not the violent inferno of his former reign, not the crushing flood that had once bent continents to his will, but something quieter. Intentional. Like a predator easing closer in tall grass.
Kael sat cross-legged in the sealed chamber long before dawn, eyes closed, breath measured. The stone beneath him was cold, carved with ancient sigils meant to bind, suppress, deny. Yet even stone had memory, and these markings had once bowed to him.
Now they trembled, not visibly but he felt it through bone and blood.
The cracked seal pulsed again, slow and deliberate, like a heart relearning its rhythm.
Kael exhaled through his nose.
“So,” he murmured. “
