Thar’Zul

Veilrend 17 (End of Act 2) — The Hollow Beyond Stars Silence. Not the quiet of still air or empty space— but true silence. The kind that exists before the idea of sound. This was where Thar’Zul had fallen. Cast from the mortal plane in the moment of fracture, he drifted beyond the weave of existence. A thing too large to die, too old to forget. The separation from Seris had torn him asunder—half his power locked inside the vessel, sealed within a sliver of mirrored flesh. The rest of him... this, reduced to essence, a mind spread thin across ten thousand dimensions of void. > But he lived. He floated as smoke with memory, a storm of awareness. A god's mind fragmented across eternity, dragging itself into cohesion like blood clotting around bone. He had once bent stars with thought. Now he whispered through the cracks in dreaming. And slowly… painfully… he reformed. --- First, shape. Not a body—not yet—but something resembling direction. He weaved a silhouette from nebulae of madness, drew limbs from the discarded screams of dying stars. A cloak of darkness, threaded with reflections of lives he had consumed. Second, will. Focus. Purpose. And he had one. > Seris. Even now, the name flared within him like a scar. Not hatred. Not vengeance. Necessity. The mortal had not been merely a vessel—he had taken part of Thar’Zul’s essence into himself, unintentionally absorbing it in the moment of collapse. It had twisted them both into the Mirrored One, a fusion of regret and ruin. Now they were severed. And Seris held what Thar’Zul required to be whole again. --- He peered through the cracks in space, watching. He saw Vael. He saw the boy with Ith’rael’s mark. And he saw the shard. Small. Insignificant. Yet it glowed with the unmistakable residue of himself. > You carry me, little shard. You carry the echo of what we could become. He did not rage. He did not scream. Thar’Zul had waited for ages beyond the stars. He would wait again.