"Kaelen of the Kawaks." The voice slithered from behind a pillar of basalt. Commander Vex of the Yarrow Dominion stepped into the amber light, his polished black armor reflecting the void. He held no weapon. He didn't need one. "You've been difficult to find. The last one. Do you know what your shards are worth?"
He remembered a story his mother told him. Not a story of fear. A story of the First Kawaks, who lived before the curse, before the Dominion, before the floating isles broke from the earth. The First Kawaks had no fear because they had no death. They were creatures of pure resonance, singing the world into being note by note.
Miren was the first to fully solidify. She looked at Kaelen, then at Vex, and she smiled. kawaks
The pink light flowed from Kaelen's chest into the air, and from the air into the void, and from the void back into the shards. And one by one, the shards began to re-form . Not into weapons. Into people. Ghostly at first, then solid. Men, women, children of crystal and song, stepping out of the air with wonder in their translucent eyes.
Kaelen's fingers tightened on the Tol-Sen. The broken tuning fork was cold against his chest. "Kaelen of the Kawaks
He was not the last anymore.
Something cracked inside Kaelen. Not his bones—something deeper. The dry well flooded. Not with the cold fear of his own death, but with something far worse: the fear that Vex was right. That extinction was not a tragedy but a completion . That the Kawaks would end not with a roar, but with a whimper—and then a ping. He didn't need one
He gathered .