Story Title :- idle guy
Chapter 24: Revenant's Oath
The rain fell in sheets over the ruined city of Tareth Kai, where thunder cracked like cannonfire across the darkened skies. Kael stood at the edge of a shattered tower, cloak torn, gaze fixed on the horizon where Velthren—the ancient sleeper—moved like a shadow across the land.
Lira joined him, her arm wrapped in a hastily conjured healing band. “He's not destroying. He’s searching.”
“For what?” Kael asked. “What could a god lose?”
Lira tilted her head, watching the way Velthren paused near a collapsed cathedral, his swirling eyes scanning the broken domes with what looked like sorrow. “Maybe… himself.”
Kael had no answer. The Dreamforge still hummed beneath their feet in the catacombs below, its knowledge half-unlocked. But every time Kael touched it, it took more out of him. The visions grew stronger. And stranger.
One, in particular, haunted him:
A battlefield where all the stars had gone out. And standing among corpses of both man and god… was him.
Alone.
The Revenants Arrive
The alarms sounded first—ancient chimes echoing from city towers still functional by raw magic alone. Lira spun, drawing her arc-scythe. Kael summoned a shardblade of Rift energy, already pulsing with awareness.
Then they came.
Wearing armor laced with celestial metal, faces hidden behind angular visors. Revenants—resurrected war-saints, their minds wiped and reprogrammed to serve Nyros.
They moved with inhuman precision, blades drawn, no words exchanged.
Kael stepped forward. “I don’t want to fight you.”
The leader removed his helmet.
Kael froze.
It was Jorin.
His foster brother. Thought dead during the Siege of Verdain years ago. But now here he stood, eyes like burnt coals, skin laced with glowing circuit marks. A half-life.
“Kael,” Jorin said flatly. “You shouldn't have come back.”
“Jorin, it’s me.”
“I remember. That's why I volunteered to be the one to kill you.”
Memory and Metal
The fight was brutal.
Lira took on three Revenants at once, spinning like a hurricane of red light and glyphfire. Sparks flew as enchanted steel met scythe-forged magic. Kael, meanwhile, clashed with Jorin in the rain-drenched streets, old memories flashing between strikes.
They used to spar in the mud as children. Now they tore apart stone and steel with every blow.
“You don’t have to do this!” Kael shouted.
“I already did!” Jorin roared. “Nyros gave me purpose—resurrected me when you abandoned me in Verdain!”
Kael’s blade cracked Jorin’s visor. Behind it, Jorin’s face was torn between rage and pain. A man caught between life and programming.
Kael dropped his weapon.
“I didn’t abandon you. I searched for you. For years.”
Jorin hesitated.
That was enough.
Kael’s magic surged—not in an attack, but a pulse of memory. The Riftheart let Kael project what he had lived through—digging through ruins, interrogating Nyros’s lieutenants, wandering in madness.
Jorin fell to his knees, breath shuddering.
The Revenants froze.
Then, one by one, they dropped their weapons.
The Shattered Chain
Jorin wasn’t fully freed—but the seed was planted. The others, still chained to the core command, hesitated at his rebellion. Lira stepped beside Kael, panting, her scythe dripping with nullblood.
“If we can free him, we can free them all.”
“No,” Kael said. “We have to. They aren’t soldiers. They’re victims.”
They returned underground with Jorin in tow, plugging him into the Dreamforge. Through it, they found the truth of the Revenants’ creation:
Nyros had used soulbinding runes powered by corrupted Riftstones—tearing pieces of Velthren’s essence and using them to animate the dead. The process was irreversible.
Unless…
Kael placed his hand on the Forge again.
The risk was enormous. It would require channeling Velthren’s own mercy. Letting the fragment inside him bloom.
It could kill him.
But he did it anyway.
Light burst from the Forge, spreading through the city. The Revenants screamed—not in pain, but in release. Their minds untethered. Their souls, realigned.
And Jorin stood, for the first time in years, as himself.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
Kael collapsed.
The Vision Beyond Time
Kael awoke not in the Forge—but somewhere else.
An endless ocean under a shattered sky.
Velthren stood over him—not massive this time, but man-shaped, cloaked in robes of flickering stars.
“You dare use my soul?”
Kael stood unflinching. “You gave it to me.”
“I gave nothing. It was taken. Broken.”
Kael pointed at him. “Then help me fix it.”
Velthren’s eyes dimmed slightly. “Why?”
“Because Nyros wants to unleash you without your mind. Just your power. He’s building an empire of death. I don’t want to rule. I want to heal.”
The god paused.
Then he extended a hand.
“I will lend you a fraction. But if you falter… I will finish what the others started.”
Kael took it.
The ocean split into fire.
The Oath of the Freed
Kael awoke in the Dreamforge chamber, eyes glowing silver-white. Jorin and Lira helped him up.
“What happened?” Lira asked.
“He agreed,” Kael said.
“To what?”
“Helping us stop Nyros… before he turns this world into another chained tomb.”
They stood among the freed Revenants, who now bowed to Kael—not as a king, but as a guide. One who carried a piece of a god but chose humanity over power.
Jorin nodded. “We’ll follow you. Not because we owe you—but because it’s right.”
Kael smiled faintly.
Then he turned to the horizon.
Where Nyros was already opening the final Riftgate—calling something even older than Velthren.
End of Chapter 24
