The world learned of Zander Kael's death before dawn.
The communication networks erupted with breaking alerts: Massive explosion devastates the Tera Vallis Biodome — known among its residents as the Eden Vault. News anchors spoke with measured gravity, but the undertone of panic was unmistakable. A self-detonation by an assassin, they said. A catastrophic breach of the biodome's containment field. Total loss of life within the blast radius.
There were no survivors.
Images flooded the feeds — distorted, grainy shots of shattered terrain and flickering lights against the once-snowy dome. The story was simple, controlled, and complete. No one was meant to question it.
Far from Earth, in the floating city of Kythera Orbitum, a slender man stood before a holographic projection of the devastation. His narrow face reflected a cruel satisfaction as the feed replayed the image of the smoldering biodome.
"Zander Kael…" the Ligari overseer murmured, his tone half a sneer, half a sigh. "Finally snuffed out."
A subordinate — young, disciplined, hesitant — approached. "Sir, the footage isn't fully verified. Satellite relays were scrambled during the detonation. Should we—"
"Verify," the overseer interrupted smoothly, his silver eyes glinting with cold mirth. "Yes. Send a recovery team to confirm it. Bring me evidence — bones, fragments, whatever is left of the boy."
The young officer nodded stiffly and turned to leave, but the overseer's voice followed, soft and venomous. "And if he isn't dead… then you make sure he is. I don't care what it takes."
The subordinate swallowed hard, nodding once more before exiting the room. Alone, the overseer leaned closer to the holographic image, fingers brushing the faint outline of the destroyed biodome as if savoring the moment.
"Hydraxis's little prodigy," he whispered. "Gone before he ever became a true threat."
He smiled faintly — unaware that his victory was a fabrication born of sacrifice and careful deceit.
On Earth, the Kael residence had never felt colder.
The report came through the family's holo-comm line, official and clinical. Zander's parents sat motionless for several seconds after the transmission ended — unable to comprehend the words that had just shattered their world.
"No…" his mother breathed, her voice breaking into a sob. "No, not our boy…"
His father, ever the steady one, tried to speak but found nothing left in his throat but dust and silence. He gripped the edge of the table, knuckles white, his gaze unfocused.
Sensei stood with them — silent, solemn. He had delivered the confirmation himself, his voice steady as duty demanded, but his eyes had betrayed something deeper.
He placed a hand on Zander's father's shoulder. "He was brave," he said softly. "Until the end. You raised a warrior."
Zander's mother turned to him, eyes wet and pleading. "You trained him… you were there… did he suffer?"
Sensei hesitated for the briefest moment. "No," he said. "It was over in an instant."
A lie, spoken with the weight of compassion.
He stayed with them long after the news had spread through the neighborhood — long after the first waves of mourners arrived, offering hollow words of sympathy and comfort. Sensei stayed because he had to. Because this was the price of saving the boy who now wandered the world under a false death.
As he left the Kael home that night, he looked up at the stars and whispered to the empty sky, "Forgive me, Zander. May this lie buy you freedom."
At the Academy, grief carried a different sound.
The training hall was silent except for the echo of a single dropped blade. Lyra stood in the center, her eyes red, her body trembling.
"Gone," she whispered. "Just when we were… finally making progress…"
She turned sharply and hurled the training sword against the wall, where it clattered and fell.
Callan knelt beside her, head bowed. "He wasn't supposed to die like that," he said quietly. "He was supposed to… to be untouchable. That idiot always said he'd come back stronger."
Lyra didn't respond. She sank to her knees, covering her face with her hands.
Across the room, Joren stood apart from them, his expression unreadable. He didn't cry, didn't move, didn't speak. But in his stillness, there was an unmistakable fracture — the kind that no one could see until it broke completely.
After a long moment, he turned toward the exit. "He was my rival," he said, his voice flat. "And he just… disappeared."
The words hung in the air as he walked away. None of them knew that somewhere, far from the Academy and its ghosts, Zander still breathed.
The wind howled through the broken mountains beyond the biodome's boundary, scattering snow and ash into gray streams. A faint trail of smoke marked the farthest edge of destruction — and beyond it, two figures rode fast through the frozen wilderness.
Zander Kael's face was hidden beneath the dark visor of his helmet, the cold wind slicing against his cheeks as the hover-cycle roared beneath him. Behind him, slumped but alive, Aethros held onto his waist weakly, his body still recovering.
They didn't speak. The silence between them was heavy — too heavy. Every heartbeat was a reminder of what they'd lost, and of the price paid to preserve a lie.
At one point, Zander slowed the bike and pulled over at the crest of a ridge. From there, he could see the glow of the biodome's distant ruins, a faint shimmer against the twilight horizon. His chest tightened.
They all think I'm dead.
The thought stabbed through him like a blade. His parents, his friends, Sensei — all mourning him right now, believing his body was vaporized in that explosion.
He clenched his fists around the handlebars until his knuckles ached.
"I'll make it worth it," he whispered hoarsely. "Every second, every drop of blood you shed for me, Sensei… I'll make it count."
Aethros stirred behind him, his voice faint. "You… talking to yourself again?"
Zander managed a small, broken laugh. "Yeah. Guess I am."
They rode on.
Hours later, after crossing a frozen valley, they found shelter in a narrow cave near a frozen stream. The wind outside howled endlessly, but within the small cavern, the flicker of a campfire offered a fragile peace.
Zander sat beside the flame, staring into it as if the answers to everything were hidden in those shifting tongues of orange and gold. His helmet lay beside him, his dark hair damp with sweat and melted frost.
Aethros slept a few feet away, wrapped in a thermal cloak, his breathing steadier now. His body had regained much of its color — perhaps sixty percent of his original strength, Zander estimated — but he still wasn't ready to fight.
For days they lived like that. Hunting what they could, fishing from the stream, mending wounds and rationing supplies.
Each night, Zander dreamed of the explosion — of the light swallowing everything — and woke with his heart pounding. He told himself it was worth it. That this exile had purpose. That one day, he'd return and reclaim everything that had been stolen from him.
But every time he thought of his parents' faces, the lie burned a little deeper.
It was on the seventh night that the silence finally broke.
Zander sat at the cave's mouth, watching the aurora ripple faintly over the night sky — colors bending and twisting like veins of fire. The planet's artificial climate had turned strange since the biodome's destabilization; the energy waves still shimmered faintly along the horizon.
He reached up and removed the small communicator Sensei had given him — the one device linking him to a world that believed he no longer existed. He stared at it for a long time, thumb brushing against the cool metal surface.
"Three years," he murmured. "Three years until the election of Earth's representative…"
His jaw tightened. "Wait till I show up."
The words came out low, almost a growl. "I'll shock the world. I'll take back everything they tried to take from me. And when I'm done…" He closed his eyes. "No one — not the Ligari, not the councils, not anyone — will ever touch my family again."
He looked toward the horizon, where the faint lights of civilization flickered miles away. "I'll rise higher than any of them ever dreamed."
Behind him, Aethros stirred in his sleep, mumbling something incoherent. Zander turned back toward the fire, his features hardening — not in hatred, but in resolve.
The boy who had died in the Tera Vallis Biodome was gone.
What remained was something forged in fire and loss — something the world would one day learn to fear.
A few days later, Aethros was walking again — slow, but steady. His energy was returning, though he still grumbled about the lack of powerful beasts to feed his growth.
"The strongest devour the weak," he said one morning, stretching his limbs with a low growl. "But this land… it's empty. Dead."
"Then we'll move," Zander replied. "Further south."
He powered up the hover-cycle and activated the navigation console. A three-dimensional holographic map unfolded above the dashboard, scattering faint blue light over the cave walls.
"Let's see…" he murmured, scanning through the digital terrain grids.
His eyes caught on a red-marked region near the coast — a cluster of volcanoes along the Pacific Ring of Fire. The map labeled it: Emberwild Expanse.
Zander zoomed in. The overlay displayed geothermal vents, ancient lava fields, and a large city roughly nine kilometers east of the volcanic belt — Katsura Haven, its name glowing faintly. Beyond it stretched the glimmering ocean.
He studied the map in silence for a moment before nodding to himself. "Perfect," he said quietly. "Close to civilization, but far enough to stay off the radar. Wild terrain. Strong beasts, too, if we're lucky."
Aethros grinned faintly, his sharp teeth catching the firelight. "Good. I'm hungry."
Zander folded the hologram and started the hover-cycle's engines. The machine hummed softly, lights pulsing along its frame.
As they took off into the gray dawn, the snow gave way to rocky plains, then to stretches of dark soil and distant plumes of smoke from the volcanic region ahead. The wind cut across their faces — cold, sharp, alive.
Zander didn't look back.
He couldn't afford to.
Somewhere far behind them, the ashes of the Eden Vault still smoked.And somewhere far ahead, the fires of the Emberwild Expanse awaited.
The dead name of Zander Kael echoed quietly across the world — and in its silence, a new legend began to breathe.