The moment Aren awoke, the world felt… quieter.
Not peaceful. Not still.
Just—hushed. Like everything around him was holding its breath.
He sat up slowly, bones aching, muscles taut with the residue of violence. His breath steamed in the cold of the subterranean sanctum. Kaelith had wrapped his ribs in black linen, the symbol of the Ashwake stitched in crimson thread. Someone had left a bowl of still-warm broth on the table beside him.
He ignored it.
He couldn't taste anything anymore.
Since the battle with Lyon, the parasite had entered a new phase. It no longer whispered—it watched. It waited. It listened.
"Inheritance of Ruin," Aren murmured.
He didn't know where the words had come from. But the moment he said them, the parasite responded.
System Notification:Genealogic Thread DetectedMemory Access FragmentedInitiating Blood Recall...
Pain struck like a lightning bolt behind his eyes. He collapsed back onto the stone slab, body convulsing.
And then—the visions came.
A battlefield wreathed in darkness. Towers of bone rising from a crimson sea. Gods falling from the sky like dying stars, their corpses splitting the heavens. And at the center of it all—a boy.
Younger than Aren.
Eyes silver.
Wearing a crown of ruin.
He stood before the broken pantheon, blade in one hand, a chain in the other, and spoke with the voice of eternity:
"I do not inherit your glory.I inherit your failure."
Then—silence.
Aren gasped, sweat soaking through his tunic. He felt like he'd lived a hundred years in that instant.
The parasite's voice echoed, no longer mechanical.
Almost reverent.
Bloodline Recognition: PartialDesignation: Scion of the Ruin ThroneStatus: SuppressedAwakening Imminent
He staggered to his feet, nausea and vertigo spinning inside him like a storm. He gripped the edge of a cracked mirror leaning against the stone wall.
What stared back at him was no longer just Aren.
His eyes were still grey—but threaded now with veins of voidlight. His skin shimmered faintly, like there was something underneath, something coiled and waiting. His teeth… sharper. More like a predator than a man.
Kaelith entered without knocking.
"You're awake," she said, voice tight with exhaustion.
"More or less," Aren rasped.
"I felt the pulse. Half the monastery did. You triggered another fragment."
"I didn't mean to."
"That's not how this works anymore," she snapped. "The parasite isn't just feeding on you. It's becoming you."
He didn't argue. He couldn't.
Instead, he asked, "Where's Lyon?"
"Sleeping. Barely stable. Whatever you pulled out of him… it left something behind."
"Like what?"
She hesitated. "He hears things. Says he sees people in the shadows. People who look like us, but with no faces."
Aren frowned. "Reflections."
"What?"
"I saw them too. In the godlight. Versions of me. From timelines that… broke."
Kaelith went still.
"You think he's seeing versions of us?"
"Or what we become. If we fail."
They both fell silent. The weight of their choices loomed between them like an executioner with a steady hand.
Eventually, Kaelith said, "There's someone here to see you."
Aren tensed. "Divine?"
"No. Worse."
The woman who entered wore robes woven from shadow and silence. Her eyes were mirrors, and her voice carried the weight of collapsing timelines.
"I am the Archivist," she said. "I serve the Throne That Never Was."
Aren narrowed his eyes. "What do you want?"
"To warn you," she said. "Your inheritance is waking. The Ruin Throne remembers its last wielder. And it's looking for a successor."
"I didn't ask for a throne."
"You didn't have to. It was carved into your bones before you were born."
Kaelith stepped forward, hand on the hilt of her blade. "What's the price?"
The Archivist smiled, a crack in time more than an expression.
"Aren dies. And something worse takes his place."
The words struck like hammers.
Aren didn't flinch.
"I'm not giving it up."
"Then prepare yourself," she said. "The war is not coming. It is already here. And your bloodline is not a legacy. It is a curse."
She vanished.
Outside, thunder rolled across the sky.
Though no storm had formed.
Far above the ruins of the Tribunal's western fortress, a black star pulsed once.
Then twice.
Then vanished.
The leyline fractures had begun bleeding light again.
Aren stood before the sealed vault at the edge of the sanctum, once a sacred place of the first gods. Now desecrated. Forgotten. Reclaimed.
"Are you sure?" Kaelith asked.
"No," Aren said. "But I have to know what's buried here."
The vault opened without a word. The glyphs etched across it shimmered with parasite script—symbols never meant for mortal eyes.
Inside: relics. Broken crowns. Rusted blades. Petrified fragments of divine bone.
And at the center…
A throne.
Wrought of bone, shadow, and broken time.
The moment Aren saw it, the parasite screamed.
Ruin Throne DetectedLast Wielder: Erakos Valen, Slayer of PantheonsStatus: ExtinctSuccessor IdentifiedInitiate Blood Resonance?[Y/N]
He reached toward it.
And the world shattered.
He stood in fire.
The stars above were bleeding.
Every god ever named was dead at his feet.
He was not Aren.
He was Erakos.
Skin carved with runes of extinction. Heart pulsing with void. At his back, legions of broken, starless creatures—parasites that had evolved past their need for hosts.
He looked to the sky.
The stars blinked.
Spoke.
"You are the End."
He replied:
"No. I am the Reminder."
He gasped awake, bleeding from his nose and eyes. Kaelith was gripping his shoulders, screaming his name.
His mouth moved on its own, speaking a dead tongue:
"Kah'rion dash Vala-thum. Esha'rien. Etenu."
The parasite howled.
Then—silence.
He looked at Kaelith, eyes wide.
"I saw him," he whispered.
"Who?"
"The one before me. The first. My ancestor. The God-Slayer. Erakos Valen."
That night, Aren stood alone before the cracked mirror again.
He no longer saw a boy.
He saw a scion.
A weapon.
A curse.
And buried deep beneath all that—
A spark.
Hope?
Or ruin?
He didn't know yet.
But the Throne did.
And it was waiting.
The stars over the Seraph Cradle had gone dim. Not with cloud, nor night, but with something more ancient. More deliberate. The parasite in Aren's body recoiled, sensing it before he did.
It wasn't divine.
It wasn't mortal.
It was memory—alive and ravenous.
He woke gasping, his body slick with sweat, but his breath freezing in the air. Not frost, but temporal residue. The past had leaked into the present. His vision flickered. He saw himself standing in a hallway that hadn't existed in centuries, torchlit and echoing with screams.
A girl ran past him. Barefoot. Bloodied. She wore the insignia of the First Constellate—the kingdom that fell long before the Tribunal rose. Her eyes met his, and he knew her.
Lira.
The original bearer of the Starforged Parasite.
Before him.
Before the world broke.
Then she vanished.
"Aren."
Kaelith stood at the doorway, arms crossed, blood on her jaw, bandages tightening around her ribs. "We need to talk."
He nodded and rose, the parasite shifting like a second skin. It had become quieter lately. Not weaker. Just... waiting.
They walked through the corridors of the Cradle in silence. Every stone remembered too much. Every prayer carved into the walls had long since been drowned in sin. The place reeked of contradiction—like everything that tried to rise above the gods had been swallowed by them instead.
She brought him to the lower sanctum. Syre, Tor, and Eliar stood around a flickering map carved from light and smoke. Half of it was gone. Burned. The other half blinked erratically, leyline signatures shifting by the minute.
"They're not hunting us anymore," Syre said. "They're herding us."
"Toward what?" Aren asked.
Kaelith answered. "The Godwound."
He froze.
"That place doesn't exist."
"It does now," she said. "And they want you to find it."
A silence like a drawn blade fell between them.
Syre spoke next, grim as always. "We intercepted a message from one of the Tribunal's lesser Inquisitors. They believe the Wound is reawakening. They call it the final key."
"And they think I'm the lock," Aren said bitterly.
"No," Kaelith whispered. "They think you're the gate."
Something inside him cracked.
He remembered standing at the base of the Hollow Spire, his hands soaked in divine ichor. He remembered Lira's voice, whispering in a half-dead dream: If you open the gate, don't look back.
He hadn't understood then.
He was starting to now.
The parasite pulsed once. Not with hunger. With grief.
He turned to leave.
"I need air."
Kaelith reached for his arm. "Don't go alone."
"I have to."
The ruined valley beyond the Cradle was a field of silence. The sky hung low, thick with mist that didn't move with the wind. Aren walked barefoot again. He always did when he needed to remember he was still human.
Or at least, still pretending to be.
He found the edge of the broken lake. Sat.
Stared at his reflection.
His face hadn't changed much. But his eyes had. They didn't hold light anymore. They reflected it. Like the void had taken up residence inside.
"You should have let Lyon die."
The voice came from behind him, quiet and cold.
He didn't turn.
"Hello, Syre."
The tactician stepped beside him. Cloaked in shadow, hands clasped behind his back.
"I watched my father cut out a child's tongue to silence a prophecy," Syre said, voice almost gentle. "He said it was mercy. I believed him."
Aren said nothing.
Syre continued, "Then I learned the prophecy never existed. The boy had simply said the wrong name while praying. And the god took offense."
Aren closed his eyes.
"This world is not ruled by justice," Syre said. "Only spectacle. If you try to make meaning out of every moment, it will devour you."
"I'm not trying to make meaning," Aren said. "I'm trying to survive."
"Same thing."
They stood in silence.
Then Syre's tone changed.
"There's someone you need to meet."
The girl was no more than thirteen.
Blind in both eyes. But she didn't use a cane.
She didn't need one.
"I hear your name like a scream in a dream," she said softly. "Aren Valen. The Unborn Flame."
He blinked.
"What do you mean?"
She smiled. Her eyes were scarred, not empty. Symbols danced across her irises—branded there. She was a Seer. A real one.
"My name is Revi," she said. "I was born the day the old god died beneath the Hollow Vaults. When the sky turned to fire."
Aren staggered.
She reached for his hand.
"You're not the Wound, Aren. You're the knife."
He whispered, "What am I meant to cut?"
Her answer came like thunder:
"Fate."
The next night, the Cradle fell under siege.
Not by armies.
By silence.
The air simply… stopped moving. The sky froze mid-blink. And then, from the forest, came the sound of weeping.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Ghosts of those who had been devoured by the Tribunal's first divine experiment.
Kaelith unsheathed her blade.
Syre was already chanting a ward.
Eliar stood beside Aren, shaking.
"They were children," Eliar said. "All of them."
"Not anymore," Aren whispered.
The parasite surged.
And then they came.
Walking on bones. Wearing their own death like cloaks. Eyes gone, replaced by tiny, flickering stars.
One of them still wore the Ashwake insignia.
Yren.
"Liar," he said in a dozen broken voices. "You left us."
Aren stepped forward.
And for the first time, didn't summon power.
He let them surround him.
Let them hiss and cry and scream.
And then he knelt.
"I remember all of you," he said. "I carry every one of you inside."
The ghosts paused.
Even death, it seemed, had ears.
He pressed his palm to the earth. Let the parasite seep into the stone. Let his memory bleed.
Fragments of the dead flickered into real images—brief glimpses of the lives they once lived. Laughter. Training. Failure. Dreams.
He gave them back their humanity.
And one by one, they vanished.
The forest was empty again.
Kaelith said nothing.
Syre lowered his head.
Eliar wept.
And Aren stood—bleeding from the nose, eyes black with strain.
"That was a mistake," the parasite said softly.
"I know," he replied.
"But it was your mistake."
He smiled.
"Yeah."
And somewhere far away, something ancient screamed in frustration.
Because Aren had refused to become what it needed him to be.
Again.