The chains didn't creak. They pulsed.
Not restraints. Reminders.
Each link was etched in flame-script older than spellweaving. Not meant to contain, but to remind the world what it feared.
Verus didn't struggle anymore.
He could have, once.
Before history bent his name into metaphor.
Before belief hardened him into a symbol.
Now, he simply lay there.
A dragon with no wings, and no war left to win.
His body was a ruin dressed like a cathedral.
Scales faded from chroma to coal. Breath shallow.
Bones older than language. Magic crawled through his marrow like guilt; slow, constant, alive.
Then a voice came.
Small. Distant. Familiar.
Child?
No.
Summoner?
Worse.
The cavern exhaled. Obsidian walls hummed.
Verus stirred.
The sound from his throat wasn't a growl.
It was a decision.
"You want to know how it started…"
The chains clenched. Stone cracked.
"…Then I'll show you what came before story."
His eyes opened. Not flame. Not light. Only color bleeding from memory. Chroma. Rainbow.
"Lux didn't create the world. He imposed it. Order. Sequence. Radiance. Umbra didn't follow. He arrived, with silence and subtraction."
His voice grew heavier, like it had to push through centuries of ash.
"They didn't fight. They agreed. One would shape, the other would contain."
Runes flared across the chains.
The stone walls answered, glowing faintly as if recognizing his words.
"They made four. Not angels.
Not kings. Just... firsts.
Cierun, stillness and stone.
Valys, silence and memory.
Sythra, storms and joy.
Elmirel, breath and beast."
He exhaled slowly, and heat rippled through the chamber.
"They built the earth like a love letter. And I…"
A pause. Heavy enough to bend time.
"I came after. Not summoned. Not sculpted. I happened. The first thing the world didn't ask for.
"Lux called me the First Spark. Umbra called me the Black Echo. But neither of them claimed me."
The cavern held still, as if waiting.
"So they split me. Tore my soul into pieces. Molded it into systems. Buried it in humans. Bound it in Oaths."
He said the last word like a curse, and the magic in the room winced around it.
"You weren't born. You were taken—from me."
Silence followed.
"And I didn't hate you."
He closed his eyes. The fire didn't go out.
It turned inward.
"I watched you crawl. Name the stars. Forget why they burned.
"The Primordials tried to protect you. They gave you fire, and magic, and language. And you turned their gifts into currency.
"You killed them. Wore their bones. Carved their hearts into blades. Called it progress."
He breathed deep. The runes dimmed.
"Lux didn't stop you. Umbra didn't care."
His head lifted, not in defiance, but in memory.
"But I did. I screamed loud enough to burn Heaven's hearing out."
The chains trembled.
"And for that, they locked me here. Not with power. With forgetting."
Light threaded faintly through his scales.
"But you still use me. Every spell. Every Oath. Every chant. You speak my name without knowing it."
He looked forward to it.
Not to intimidate, but to declare.
"I am the reason Oaths break.
The heat in a spellfire.
The scream inside the ritual.
"And now you ask me to speak?"
A flicker of something passed across his face.
Bitterness, maybe. Or something older.
"Then listen..."
…
"You, Raze…"
"…are supposed to free me.
But first…"
╞═╡ ━ [ you should wake—uuPPPP ] ━ ╞═╡
Raze gasped.
The breath wasn't his. It tore from him like it didn't
belong. His lungs ached. His skin burned cold.
He bolted upright, soaked in sweat that chilled against his spine. His heart kicked like it was trying to punch through his ribs.
The room was dim.
Candlelight flickered along the stone walls, casting shadows that didn't match the furniture.
And Syka… Syka was there.
She sat beside the bed, her gauntlets half-off.
Hands bare for once.
The chain was coiled beside her like a snake too tired to strike. But it wasn't the sight of her that struck him. It was her expression. Sad.
Quiet.
Syka never looked quiet.
Raze blinked. His eyes refused to focus. The fire of that voice, Verus, still echoed in his skull.
Not a memory. Not a dream. A residue.
A truth too large to fit in one body.
"Raze?"
Her voice cracked through the haze.
He looked up, unsteady. His mouth opened.
But nothing came out. Not at first.
Syka turned toward him fully, slipping her hands to his chest. Not with force, but with purpose.
She pressed flat against him, feeling the rhythm of his heartbeat.
Fast. Too fast.
"Your skin's cold," she murmured. "You're clammy. And… are these… goosebumps?"
She tilted her head, concern blooming sharp in her eyes. "What did you see?"
Raze's lips finally moved.
"…He said my name."
Syka blinked. "Who?"
He swallowed. His throat felt scraped raw.
"Verus."
The name hit the air like a stone dropped in holy water. The candle flame nearest them shivered, just slightly.
Syka sat back.
Her face stiffened, not in fear. In recognition.
"You… heard him?" she asked. Carefully.
"No," Raze said, voice low. "I think… I remembered him."
He stared past her, eyes drifting to the cracks in the ceiling as if they meant something.
"The chains didn't creak. They pulsed. The runes on the walls glowed when he spoke. Like they knew his voice. Like the whole room remembered what it was before it became a prison."
Syka didn't interrupt.
He kept going.
"He told me about Lux. About Umbra. About the Firsts. About how the world was built like a love letter and he…he was the one thing it didn't ask for."
"…He wasn't born. He happened."
That word hung in the air like a sentence.
Syka's lips parted, then pressed together again.
Her hands drifted from his chest.
Curling loosely into her lap.
"What else?"
She asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Raze looked at her. Really looked.
"…He said I was taken from him. That… every spell, every chant, every Oath, is built from his soul. Broken pieces of him, buried in us."
Syka paled. Slightly.
"That's impossible," she said. But it wasn't firm.
It wasn't denial.
Just disbelief, thinning at the edges.
"Is it?"
Raze whispered.
"He said I was supposed to free him."
Syka rose slowly.
She didn't look at him now, she looked at the floor.
The empty space as if it might whisper back.
"We should talk to Alteria," she said. "Now. Before this fades."
But Raze shook his head.
"It won't fade."
Syka turned.
"Because?"
"Because I didn't just hear him," Raze said.
He flexed his hand. The heat returned.
Not in his palm, but in his bones. In the marrow.
Like when he awakened his fire.
Slow. Constant. Alive.
"…I felt him."
A pause.
He looked down at his hand. A single ember flickered across his knuckles, unbidden.
It didn't burn.
It remembered.
And then…
The room tilted.
No motion. Just shift.
Like the stone was no longer sure it was real.
The candlelight fractured into strands.
Shadows dragged sideways, where they shouldn't.
Raze blinked. Once. Twice.
Syka was still standing there.
But her shadow wasn't.
Her shadow moved first.
It twitched like it had nerves.
Like it was watching.
And then her legs melted.
Slowly. Quietly. Not like flesh, like form.
Her shape unraveled into a dark ooze, pitch-black and viscous, slithering upward instead of down.
Her arms followed. Her face last.
Eyes gone. Mouth stretched too wide.
What stood in Syka's place now wasn't a person.
It was an echo of shape.
Dripping with void that breathed.
Then a single eye opened in the center of its head.
Red. Pupil vertical.
Bleeding light like it hated color.
And in a voice that didn't come from her throat.
But from inside his bones.
That heat…
It wasn't a flame.
It was Verus.
It spoke.
"Tell. No. One."
It wasn't a warning.
It was a law.
The sound ripped through his ears like glass exploding. He screamed—and screamed—and—
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ system is failing. . . ]
[ alerting vassalord & soulbound ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Raze woke up… actually woke up.
This time.
He screamed so loud the stone cracked under his bed.
And everything…
Went black.