"I was not born. I was forged.
Between flame and spell.Between hatred and fear.They called me a mistake.Now I will become their memory."
—The Hybrid
Abyssal Trench. 9000 meters below sea level.
No light.
No sound.
No gods.
Only pressure, silence, and the slow breathing of a Gate that had not opened in over a thousand years.
Its name was Tel-Veroth.
The Third Gate.
Not carved by time, but grown from the bones of an ancient war. Its ribs curled like frozen wings. Its heart beat once every century.
And tonight, for the first time in millennia, it opened a single eye.
Inside, wrapped in coils of glass and blood, slept a creature the world had tried to forget.
The Hybrid.
He did not wake with a cry.
He remembered.
Memory Layer 1: The Betrayal
She had been a mage.
Seralyn. A soulbinder. Tender, powerful, curious.
She studied dragons not to kill them, but to understand.
And he… the father… had been a wyrm of the Old Lineage.
Vaelthur, who spoke in fire-poems, who sang in dreams.
They met at the foot of the world, where dragons came to die in peace and mages came to mourn their wars.
They did not mean to love.
But they did.
And when she carried their child, she fled the Tower, knowing what the Council would do.
Knowing the silence would follow.
The child was born beneath a moonless sky.
Skin like obsidian. Eyes like molten silver.
He screamed—and the mountains shook.
For inside him lived a paradox: flame that bled magic, and mana that breathed fire.
He was not meant to exist.
And that was why they came.
The Mage Council.
They killed Seralyn before she could speak her son's name.
They caged Vaelthur in a stasis tomb, draining his knowledge to feed the Codices.
And the boy?
They buried him.
Alive.
Inside the Third Gate.
Where he would forget himself.
Until the world remembered.
Memory Layer 2: Awakening
The boy never died.
But neither did he live.
Inside the Gate, he dreamed.
Of fire consuming cities.
Of dragons crying out without tongues.
Of mages burning their own memories to keep power.
He screamed, but only the Gate heard him.
And the Gate, in its ancient wisdom, whispered:
"You are not alone. You are not a mistake.You are the cost."
And so, he began to awaken.
His wings tore free from his back, ragged and wet with time.
His breath became a curse.
His thoughts became weapons.
He stepped forward—not into light, but into revelation.
A mirror formed from the Gate's core.
In it, he saw Amine.
Standing. Glowing. Chosen.
And he hated.
"They embrace him… but they buried me."
"They call him summoner… but I was silenced."
"He is the face of balance.I will become the face of justice."
He reached upward.
Toward the surface.
And with each kilometer he climbed, the oceans bled.
Fish scattered.
Whales cried.
Storms formed above him.
He did not surface.
He arrived.
Now: Eastern Sea. 300 kilometers off the coast.
Mages aboard an observation citadel felt it first.
A spike in ley pressure.
Tides reversing.
Clouds freezing in place.
Then—him.
Black wings. Silver eyes. A presence that made minds fracture.
He spoke not with voice, but memory:
"Where is Amine Toku?"
None answered.
So he burned the citadel down to its bones.
Meanwhile: Elyth Seran
Amine felt it.
A ripple in the Gate-lines.
A memory not his own, crawling down his spine.
He turned to Seluin, who had already fallen to one knee, whispering in Old Mage Tongue.
Mira looked to the sky. "What is it?"
Seluin trembled.
"Not a dragon. Not a mage.But the one thing this world cannot kill."
"A child… of consequence."
Amine clenched his fists.
He had opened two Gates.
Now a third had opened itself—for the enemy.
A new war had begun.
One not of humans and dragons.
But of inheritance.