The world the Guardian brought him to was silent.

  There were no cities. No armies. No signs of conquest. Only vast stone plains stretching beneath a pale sky, broken by distant mountains and a calm that felt almost unnatural.

  Caelis stood alone.

  The moment his feet touched the ground, he felt it.

  His power… was gone.

  Not sealed.

  Not suppressed.

  Gone.

  He clenched his fist, calling inward for the familiar surge of the white fragment. Nothing answered. His body felt heavy, fragile—mortal.

  He turned sharply toward the Guardian. “What did you do?”

  The Guardian remained calm. “I removed what you relied on.”

  Caelis’s jaw tightened. “Then how am I supposed to fight?”

  “You are not here to fight,” the Guardian replied. “You are here to unlearn.”

  Days passed.

  Or perhaps weeks.

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  Time flowed differently in this place.

  Caelis trained without power. He ran until his lungs burned. He struck stone until his knuckles split. He learned to move again—not with force, but with balance. Every mistake punished him. Every careless motion sent him crashing to the ground.

  There was no mercy.

  When he fell, the Guardian did not help him rise.

  When he failed, no explanation was given.

  “You led armies,” the Guardian said one day, watching Caelis struggle to stand. “Yet you never learned to stand alone.”

  Anger burned in Caelis’s chest. “I was strong,” he said. “Strong enough to command worlds.”

  “And weak enough to be defeated,” the Guardian answered.

  The words struck deeper than any blow.

  Training continued.

  Only after Caelis learned restraint did the Guardian allow him to feel his power again—not fully, not freely. Just enough to sense it.

  It resisted him.

  His energy no longer flowed as it once had. When he forced it, pain followed. When he lost control, the power vanished entirely.

  “Power responds to intent,” the Guardian explained. “Yours was shaped by obedience and conquest. That must be broken.”

  Caelis clenched his teeth. He remembered the wolf. The family. The silence after the blast.

  He began to fight differently.

  Not to dominate.

  Not to destroy.

  But to control.

  Slowly, painfully, his power returned in fragments—measured, unstable, honest. Every strike now required focus. Every release demanded clarity.

  One night, exhausted, Caelis collapsed onto the stone ground.

  “Why help me?” he asked quietly.

  The Guardian looked toward the sky. “Because balance is not maintained by kings,” he said. “It is preserved by those who choose restraint when destruction is easy.”

  Caelis closed his eyes.

  For the first time since his rebellion, he did not feel like a weapon being reforged.

  He felt like a warrior being rebuilt.

  And somewhere beyond this silent world, the Aurelith King remained unaware—

  —that the one he had condemned to die was learning how to return.