**Title: The Shattered Will Ascendant**
The night of the Astral Convergence bled across the sky, its fractured light painting the heavens in jagged streaks of gold and void-black. In the heart of the Veilthorn Citadel, where roots coiled into towers and the air hummed with forbidden magic, a child's first cry split the silence—and reality itself shuddered.
Lirael, her silver hair drenched in sweat and her emerald eyes dimming, clutched the newborn to her chest. Her husband, Kaelion, a warrior whose fire magic had once scorched battlefields to ash, knelt beside her, his calloused hands trembling. Not from fear. From the *absence* of his power. The infant's mere presence smothered magic like a hand around a throat.
*"You've doomed us both,"* Kaelion whispered, his voice raw. *"The High Elders will burn continents to find him."*
Lirael's lips curled into a bloodstained smile. *"Our son… will unstitch the tapestry even gods fear to touch."*
The chamber trembled as she began the incantation—a spell from the *Codex of Shattered Horizons*, its words etched into her flesh. Her body dissolved into starlight, each syllable a sacrifice:
***"By my life, I sever his fate.
By my will, I blind the eyes of heaven."***
The newborn wailed, and the Astral Veil *answered*. A maelstrom of mana—crimson fire, azure ice, golden lightning—slammed into the citadel. Kaelion's flames snuffed out as Lirael vanished, leaving only a wisp of light coiled around the child's tiny fist.
High Elder Veyra emerged from the shadows, her jade mask cracked like a spider's web. *"His mana core is inverted. He bends reality… by accident."*
Kaelion's blade ignited weakly. *"What does that mean?"*
*"It means,"* Veyra said, staring at the child's mismatched eyes—one sun-gold, the other a void—*"the world will break before he does."*