You know a man by how he watches you when he believes you're not watching him back.
Draven never once looked away when we were in battle together in a former life. His eyes were a storm—focused, cold, bound to strategy. But here, in this new cycle of fractured eternity, when he stepped from the silver-gate of the Rift Hunters with a host of god-killers behind him, he looked at me like I was the ruin of all he had ever sworn to defend.
And worse…
Like I had already betrayed him once.
His boots clanked on the obsidian bridge of the shattered fortress of Olystras. Twilight thunder cracked behind him. The celestial auroras over the Rift Shard glimmered like exposed nerves across the sky.
We were standing atop the last neutral bastion between the Outer Veil and the Ascendant Thrones.
And Draven brought war with him.
"Aetherion Vale," he said, voice even, commanding, too calm. "By decree of the High Accord, you are to surrender the Celestial Key and your claim to Sovereignty."
I stepped forward.
Eirin stood at my flank, hood drawn low, her moonlight body already coalescing into her defense stance. Kael drew the chain-blade that still hummed with the curse I'd helped him break. Lyra said nothing, but her shadow peeled from her feet and wrapped around mine, an old gesture—one of warning.
I didn't answer Draven.
Not yet.
Because his eyes told me he wasn't just following orders.
They told me he remembered.
The silence broke like crystal.
"Do you know what I saw last night?" he asked. "A dream. No—a memory. One where I knelt to you. Bled for you. Called you king."
The Rift Hunters behind him flinched, confused.
He kept speaking, eyes burning.
"And in that dream, you told me—you were only borrowing the future. That I had to be the one to end you, when the time came."
He looked… shaken.
Not just by the past.
But by how much he still believed it.
"I never said that," I replied quietly. "Not in this life."
"No," Draven agreed. "But in the one that made this one necessary."
He threw off his coat.
His armor underneath was scorched from something older than fire.
"I remember everything now," he growled. "You were the one who shattered the Fourth Star Gate. Who broke time so the soul-wars could end. And you burned the constellation map into my chest with your own hands."
He pulled down the collar of his armor.
And there it was.
The sigil.
My crest.
Inscribed in holy fire.
Still glowing.
The Rift Hunters stirred, sensing the unraveling.
A few stepped back.
Some raised weapons.
But Draven kept his eyes only on me.
"Commander," one of his lieutenants called. "What are you doing?"
Draven turned his back on them.
And said nothing.
Only faced me, arms slack.
Then knelt.
"Then finish it," he said, voice low. "If I am your past mistake… correct it. Strike me down and reclaim what I tried to bury."
His sword skidded across the floor to my feet.
The same one he used to swear loyalty with in the age of the Tenfold Thrones.
The same one he later used to stab me in the back when my sovereignty fractured the Veil.
I looked down at it.
And suddenly—I remembered too.
We were friends.
Brothers.
And rivals.
Each a mirror to the other's flaw.
He was my general in the First Sovereign Cycle.
He watched me ascend.
He watched me lose control.
And when the stars started bleeding—he was the one who ended me.
"Draven…" I whispered.
He looked up.
"You switched sides then too."
His face twitched. "And I'm switching again now."
I took a deep breath.
The Celestial Key pulsed in my hand.
And I realized the truth:
This betrayal wasn't treachery.
It was loyalty in its rawest form.
He remembered. He had seen enough of what I would become.
And he chose me anyway.
Again.
Behind him, the Rift Hunters began to shout.
Weapons rose.
Magic surged.
Orders screamed across the wind.
But it was too late.
Because Draven had already turned toward them.
And this time—he fought for me.
The bridge exploded into combat.
Reality bent as time-stilled rifles cracked air and celestial spears rained from pocket-worlds above. Lyra vanished into shadows, assassinating lieutenants mid-command. Kael's chain-blade wrapped around a Rift Hunter mech and ripped it into six dimensions at once.
Draven—
He moved like someone fighting himself.
And perhaps, in a way, he was.
I caught up with him mid-slaughter.
He was bleeding. Smiling.
"This isn't redemption, you know," I muttered as we took cover behind the remnants of a collapsed Rift cannon.
He laughed, and his blood spat gold.
"It never was," he said. "But it is familiar. And I always hated being on the wrong side of history."
We won.
Or maybe the other side simply broke.
The Rift Hunters either fled or died. Those who stayed behind knelt, confused, dazed, remembering fragments of forgotten lives. Some stared at me as if I were their god. Others… their executioner.
Draven stood, breathing heavily, surrounded by corpses and starlight.
And then he said:
"Do you want to know what scared me most about you, back then?"
I looked at him, wary.
He grinned, broken-toothed and unrepentant.
"It wasn't your power."
He leaned in, close enough that only I could hear.
"It was that even when I killed you… I still believed in you."
I stepped back.
That admission—
It did something to the air.
Like a fracture mending from the inside.
"Then believe in me again," I said.
He nodded.
And for the first time since the Third Veil shattered—I had my general back.
But then—
The sky above split open.
Not like a Rift.
Not like a portal.
But like a verdict.
A golden eye opened in the stars.
No pupil. No iris. Just awareness.
And a voice, older than creation, thundered through every atom of me:
"Aetherion Vale. You are summoned to the Skybound Tribunal. All Sovereign crimes must be judged."
And from the tear in the sky descended twelve star-forged thrones—each bearing a faceless judge cloaked in the banners of forgotten constellations.
I turned to Draven.
His mouth had gone dry.
Because even he remembered what the Tribunal was for.
Not justice.
But correction.