"Broken Gods and Shattered Smiles"
Previously on Chapter 15: The Hollow Throne 👁️🕯️
The siblings faced a cursed realm of fog, fear, and whispers.
"You're nothing." "You'll kill them." "They'll leave you." 😈🌫️
They met The Chanter of Hollow Souls — a priest turned monster.
"You are the end," he said. 🩸👁️
Kael struck with fire ⚔️🔥
Aelina cut through shadows 🔪🖤
Nyra summoned void magic 🌑✨
They saw visions of betrayal, blood, and loneliness.
Nyra burned ghosts, whispered: "I don't remember her voice." 💔🔥
The Chanter became a beast.
Kael killed him — but his final words echoed:
"The gods will kneel…" 👁️⛓️
The sky cracked. A violet rift opened — and vanished. ⚡💜
The village returned. Healers rushed in.
In the woods, cloaked watchers smiled.
"Let them grow." 🌲👁️🗨️
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The portal shuddered shut behind them, sighing like a corpse exhaling its final breath. The air shifted. Time rewound and stilled. All around the siblings, the divine domain of Maevhara unfolded.
Velvet twilight bled across the skies, casting an eerie indigo sheen on floating obsidian spires. The ground pulsed beneath their feet, whispering secrets in tongues older than creation. Trees blinked. Black lotus blooms swayed in a wind that never touched skin.
Maevhara waited at the edge of a still obsidian lake, her silhouette a sliver of shadow against the dying light. Her robes rustled like whispers.
"You've done well, little storms. The corrupted priest is no more."
Nyra didn't blink. Aelina strode past her with not even a nod. Kael snorted, the sound guttural, amused, lethal.
"Save the applause," he said, rolling his shoulder where dried blood cracked. "We came for payment, not praise."
Maevhara's smile faltered.
"We have new terms," Nyra said coolly, her eyes catching the reflection of the lake and twisting it into something darker.
Kael raised a finger.
"Compensation for emotional damage."
Aelina added, "Hazard pay for divine negligence."
"Lifetime access to weapons, shelter, and intel," Kael finished with a savage grin. "And damages for our bodies. Can't strut around broken, now can we?"
Zephyrus, seething, surged forward. "You insolent—"
Kael didn't even glance at him. "Pipsqueak, zip it. Grown gods are talking."
Zephyrus lunged.
Maevhara's fingers snapped. Reality trembled. Zephyrus froze mid-motion, his rage halted by a single glance that could unravel empires.
The deal was accepted.
One by one, the gifts were brought forth by divine servants draped in chains of starlight.
Kael's sword gleamed like a grin sharpened to kill. It pulsed when it sensed mockery. It drank pride like wine.
Aelina received a ring, small and elegant, forged from pure silence. When she slipped it on, the world stilled. Her presence vanished.
Nyra's crown hovered just above her scalp, a violet crystal circlet that shimmered like a dying star. It hummed. It whispered. It wanted.
Kael tested his sword with a theatrical swing.
"Not bad, old hag. Might stop hating you for a day."
Zephyrus flinched, his jaw locked.
"How dare you—"
"Zephyrus," Maevhara said, the name laced with thunder. "Silence. They earned it."
She watched them walk away, and her thoughts clung to a memory long buried beneath prophecy:
*When three rise from blood and ash, the gods will kneel… or perish.*
The mortal plane tasted like rust.
As their feet touched down, divine light split the trees. Syra, Liones, and Orielle emerged, shimmering with purity, glowing with hope.
Syra sprinted toward Kael, her hands radiant. "Let me heal you!"
Kael recoiled, lip curled. "Touch me, and I'll rip your arms off."
Syra paused, eyes wide. Her expression cracked.
Then she smiled sweetly.
"Then I'll heal myself first and slap you with both."
Kael blinked. Aelina arched an eyebrow. Nyra chuckled.
"Maybe you three were cuddly once?" Liones tried to joke.
Aelina turned. Her voice was frosty. "We were born screaming, and we've never stopped."
"If you think kindness is in our blood," Nyra added, calm and clinical, "you're delusional. Or desperate."
Kael sneered. "Get in line."
All three siblings brushed past the stunned healers. Aelina muttered without looking back:
"Why are they even here?"
That night, sleep tasted of steel and shadow.
Kael dreamed of a name etched in ruin: *Vorr'azhul*. A forgotten god with a laugh that shattered stars.
Aelina saw her hands tangled in puppet strings, divine marionettes jerking with every twitch of her fingers.
Nyra dreamed of chained gods in eternal torment, whispering pleas:
*Free us. Kill us. Become us.*
They awoke to screams. Not outside. Within.
All three sat bolt upright, laughter breaking from them like thunder.
"We're never gonna be that weak again. Ever," Kael said, eyes alight.
"Let the gods scream next," Aelina hissed.
Nyra, crown aglow, smirked. "We're not haunted. We're the haunters."
Under a dying moon, silence returned. But something else stirred.
From the trees, a figure watched.
A man cloaked in feathers and stitched shadows. No face. Just a jagged smile carved in void.
He whispered to no one:
"Yes... they'll do nicely. Let them think they are free."
Then he vanished, and in his place bloomed a single blood lotus.
The ground was wrong for it. But it grew anyway.
The siblings stirred.
Kael, eyes still closed: "Creep."
Aelina, unmoved: "Not worth the effort."
Nyra, smiling: "Let them watch. We're inevitable."
The first god has awakened.
The second god is stirring.
And it remembers the taste of betrayal.
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🔥 Next Chapter Teaser🔥
The first god has awakened…
But the second stirs in shadow, hungry for vengeance and cloaked in secrets. ⚔️🖤
Betrayal will burn, and only blood will pay the price. 🔥🩸
Are the siblings ready for what's coming? �