Thar’Zul Seris

Intro Veilrend 5: The Knot of Fire Part 1 The veil screamed. It wasn’t sound—no ear could hear it—but Kaelen felt it. In her blood. In the very marrow of her name. The star-iron relic in her palm flared against her skin, burning sigils into her glove, searing truth into flesh. She welcomed the pain. Before her, Seris loomed—not taller, but deeper, as though he stretched beyond the visible world. His laughter had stopped. His mouth was open, not to speak, but to receive. Behind him, the rift had bloomed into an abyssal flower, petals of lightless geometry folding back to reveal the shifting form of Thar’Zul. And within the heart of that storm: Aelric. Kaelen saw him—not with her eyes, but with memory. His silhouette flickered at the rift’s center, wrapped in suffering, bound by runes. Yet something pulsed within him. A knot. A defiance. A name remembered. She took a step forward. Seris raised a hand. “You cannot pass. He is becoming. And I... I am already undone. I’ve tasted the truth, Kaelen. It’s beautiful. You should kneel.” Kaelen’s voice was raw steel. “No.” She drew Everspire, cracked though it was, and drove the point into the earth. The relic she bore, now blazing like a dying star, she pressed to the blade’s hilt. Sigils spiraled outward, scarring the air. “By the vow of Vel’Harun. By the name of the Bound Flame. By the gods who fell and those who watched... I speak your names!” The light struck Seris like judgment. He shrieked—not in pain, but recoil, as if the memory of who he’d been tore through the fabric of what he’d become. And far behind him, Aelric remembered. He remembered the tower. The laughter over ancient texts. Kaelen’s hands steadying his when he feared he’d found something too terrible to understand. He screamed, and this time, it was not devoured. It shattered the binding runes.