The Legendary Reborn Ghost

They buried Caelum Thorne at dusk.

It was not a hero’s funeral, though he had saved kingdoms. No banners flew, no songs were sung. The knights he once led stood silent, armor darkened not by mourning, but by shame. His sword—once a symbol of justice—lay broken at his side. The king he had served for twenty years had condemned him without trial, calling him a traitor, branding him the cause of the war he ended.

The people turned their backs. The very city he had protected shut its gates to his memory.

And so, Caelum Thorne was buried in the earth like a common thief.

But some truths do not stay buried.

A hundred years passed. Kingdoms rose and fell. The name Caelum Thorne faded from the records, stricken by decree, erased from stone and story alike. Yet the earth remembered. The wind still whispered his name when it passed over the old graves outside the ruins of Veyrath. And deep beneath the soil, in the silence of his tomb, Caelum stirred.

It began with the moon—blood-red, hanging low on the horizon.

Then the wind changed.

And then... the scream.

It was not heard by many, but those who lived near the old battlefield claimed the sky split open that night. They said a figure emerged from the earth cloaked in shadow and smoke, his eyes burning silver-white, his breath steaming like winter, though the summer air hung thick and hot.

They said it was death himself.

But it was not death. Not exactly.

It was the ghost of a man who had been wronged—reformed, reforged, and returned.

Caelum did not remember the pain of dying. Only the betrayal. The look in King Alric’s eyes as he signed the decree. The silence of his brothers-in-arms. The tightening of the noose. The darkness that followed.

But now, he remembered everything.

He stood among the dead trees of Black Hollow, breathless but alive, if such a word could still describe what he had become. His body was not the one he had been born with. It was stronger—twisted by magic, wrapped in shadow and bone. Where his heart once beat, now there burned a cold, hollow fire.

He was not alive, not truly. But neither was he gone.

And somewhere, far from the ruin he had clawed his way out of, the bloodline of the man who betrayed him still ruled.

It would not for much longer.

Caelum wandered first to Veyrath. He walked past crumbled towers and broken statues, past thorn-covered walls and collapsed gates. Time had devoured what man had built, but in the shattered bones of the capital, he found a flicker of memory.

He knelt where the throne room once stood, pressing a hand to the stone floor, now overgrown with moss.

“This was my kingdom too,” he whispered.

A voice answered from the shadows.

“You shouldn’t have returned.”

Caelum turned, ghostlight flaring in his eyes.

An old man stepped from the dark. A hermit, cloaked in gray, with eyes that had seen too much.

“They erased you for a reason,” the man said. “Your name brings unrest. Fear. They called you cursed.”

“I was loyal,” Caelum growled. “And I was murdered for it.”

The old man nodded slowly. “I know.”

He removed his hood.

Underneath, his face bore the twisted sigil of the Royal Seers—a mark worn only by those who had once served the crown. “I saw your death in flame and shadow. I saw your return. And I’ve waited.”

Caelum narrowed his eyes. “For what?”

The seer smiled grimly. “For the Hollow King to rise again.”

Far beyond the mountains, in a castle built of bone and black stone, the Hollow King stirred on his throne. He was not mortal. He had not been for centuries. He wore the face of Alric’s heir, but his soul was long devoured. The entity within him, the one that whispered lies into kings' ears and turned brother against brother—it knew Caelum had returned.

And it feared him.

Not because Caelum was alive. But because he was something else. Something that could not be chained or burned or killed again.

A soul unbound.

A ghost driven not by vengeance alone, but by justice left unfinished.

Caelum raised his sword—new-forged from the silver fires of the underworld. The wind around him howled with voices long dead. The trees bent in his presence. Even the stars above seemed to flicker in fear.

“I am Caelum Thorne,” he said, voice echoing across the night. “You took everything from me. Now, I take everything back.”

And with that, the ghost marched toward the throne that ruined him—one step at a time.