They were born three weeks apart—in the same palace wing, under the same winter storm that cracked the Cathedral's stained-glass halo.
Kael Voss — first son of Duke Arlen Voss, heir to the northern march, keeper of the empire's blackest secrets.
Alcris Valemont — second son of the High Justicar, raised inside the Cathedral of Dawn itself, marked for sainthood before he could walk.
For four hundred years, House Voss and the Church had lived in a marriage of necessity:
Voss kept the Rifts sealed with forbidden arts.
The Church pretended not to notice—so long as the seals held.
So the two boys were given to each other the way kingdoms trade hostages:
to ensure loyalty.
They grew up sharing sword drills, scripture recitations, and midnight nightmares.
At age 9, Kael taught Alcris how to pick locks using baby shadow-tendrils he wasn't supposed to have yet. (SFX: shrrk-shrrk twining around the metal)*
At age 10, Alcris taught Kael how to lie with a smile bright enough to blind priests. (SFX: shiin— holy radiance in the eyes)*
At age 13, they made a blood oath on the roof of the Dawn Library—palms cut with the same dagger—promising they would never raise a blade against the other.
They meant it.
At 15, they were sent to Greyspire, the border fortress built atop the empire's largest sealed Rift.
House Voss tradition: every heir had to listen to the Abyss for a year, so they would recognize its voice when it came to bargain.
That was the year everything cracked.
Kael heard the voice first.
It offered him power to save his dying mother.
He refused.
Alcris never heard any whispering.
He only saw Kael grow paler, quieter, shadows pooling under the eyes that used to laugh.
Then came the night the seals almost broke.
Something hammered from the other side for hours. (SFX: DOOM… DOOM… DOOM)
The fortress shook.
Soldiers clawed their own faces to silence the song in their skulls.
Kael—sixteen, terrified—went into the seal chamber alone.
He poured his blood into the runes.
Black veins spidered up his arms for the first time. (SFX: krssss-krk-krk)
The Rift quieted.
Alcris found him unconscious, lying in a circle of his own blood, shadows cradling him like a lover.
The Church called it a miracle.
House Voss called it proof the heir was ready.
Only Alcris saw the truth:
Kael had bargained.
Just a little.
Just enough.
And the crack between them widened.
The Fall of the Third Kingdom
(Officially Recorded as: "The Calamity of Illyria")
Year 987 I.C.
Population: 4.2 million (before erasure)
Official Church Account (heavily edited):
"On the crimson-moon night, the sealed witch Seraphine Nocturne shattered her chains.
Black-white flames consumed Illyria's capital in minutes.
The royal family, nobility, and 99.7% of the populace were erased.
The land was rendered barren.
The Church resealed the Calamity at terrible cost."
What they still whisper in locked rooms:
Illyria had been experimenting with controlled Rift siphoning for decades—copying the forbidden rituals of House Voss.
Their royal crypt was built atop an ancient fracture.
Seraphine Nocturne had been imprisoned there for 300 years—not as punishment, but as a living battery.
Each monarch renewed the seals with their own blood during coronation.
Queen Elyra IV—sixteen, gentle, hopelessly curious—went into the crypt alone on her coronation night.
Not with a sacrificial blade, but with a key.
She wanted to ask the "poor woman in chains" if the Abyss truly granted wishes.
Seraphine answered.
Not with words.
She showed the girl every atrocity done to keep the Abyss asleep:
children fed to runes
cities sacrificed
whole bloodlines erased for carrying a drop too much power
Queen Elyra wept.
And through her tears, she asked Seraphine to make it stop.
Seraphine did.
At dawn, the capital was gone.
A perfect circle 200 miles across, wiped clean. No rubble. No bodies.
Only white ash that screamed when touched by wind. (SFX: hiiiiiii—)
Survivors farther out spoke of the sky turning inside out, and a woman singing a lullaby in a language that made hearts stop mid-beat.
Seraphine walked out barefoot, unstained, drifting east until the Church's First Crusade cornered her near the catacombs of Eldren's Reach.
It took:
17 Saints
3 relics
one entire battalion sacrificed
…to chain her again.
They never found Queen Elyra's body.
Some say Seraphine erased her out of mercy.
Some say Elyra asked to become the flame itself.
How Kael and Alcris Tie In
Six months after Illyria's erasure, a girl matching Queen Elyra's description—older, hollow-eyed—was found wandering the border.
She carried a lock of silver hair.
She spoke only one sentence, over and over:
"Tell Kael Voss I'm sorry."
The Church executed her as an Abyss construct.
Alcris delivered the killing blow.
Kael was there.
Restrained.
Forced to watch.
That was the night Kael stopped calling him brother.
Two years later, when Duke Arlen Voss was caught performing the same Rift-siphoning rituals Illyria had attempted, Alcris led the arrest.
He was also the one who:
planted the Empress's daughter's locket in Kael's room
testified—with shaking tears—that Kael had confessed everything
stood silent while they dragged Kael to the execution block
Because Saints aren't allowed to have brothers.
Only duty.
And the Abyss remembers every promise broken.
(SFX: shaaa… DOOM—a whisper sinking into the dark)