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Chapter 50 – The Voice Beneath the Stones
The silence between them stretched like a wound that refused to clot.
Celeste stood at the edge of the glowing stone dais, the echo of her voice still lingering in the air, mingling with ancient murmurs that belonged to no time she recognized. Kairo hadn't moved since she said his name—not out loud, but in the way only his soul would recognize.
And somehow… he had heard it.
But now, the distance between them was more than the air they breathed—it was centuries of bloodlines, a vault of secrets sealed behind bone and loyalty.
Kairo exhaled, stepping down from the pulpit of inscriptions. "You remembered," he said quietly, as though saying it too loud would cause the chamber to collapse in on itself.
"I never forgot," Celeste replied. Her eyes burned, not with tears, but with the pressure of something buried so deep inside her that it took pain to remember it clearly.
Kairo stopped before her. The veins along his forearms shimmered faintly with the same gold pulse as the altar. "Then you know why I had to keep you away."
Celeste didn't flinch. "I know why you thought you had to."
The silence shifted, and with it, the room.
The walls pulsed again—an echo through time—and suddenly the glowing roots that spread across the floor responded, winding upward around the columns like veins surging with memory.
And then a voice—not Kairo's, not Celeste's—broke the stillness.
"Blood called to blood… and the Heir remembered."
Celeste's breath caught. The voice was feminine, ageless, ethereal.
"Who said that?" she asked.
Kairo's jaw tightened. "It's begun."
"What's begun?"
Before he could answer, the center of the dais cracked with a low groan, and a spiral of golden light rose from its core. Like smoke—but thicker. It twisted and congealed until it took the shape of a figure.
A woman.
Or what had once been one.
Her body was cloaked in tattered veils of light and ash. Her eyes shimmered like molten silver, and her face bore the same sigils that had been carved into Kairo's back.
Celeste stumbled back.
The apparition tilted her head. "Celestara."
The name struck her chest like a blow. Her knees buckled. Not from fear—but recognition.
No one had called her that name aloud. Not in this life.
Not since—
"I don't understand…" she whispered, though the back of her mind was beginning to fit the broken puzzle pieces together.
"You were never just Celeste," the figure said softly. "You were the lock. He"—she looked at Kairo—"was the key."
Kairo's shoulders stiffened.
The figure stepped forward, the ground beneath her melting into ancient glyphs. "You are the convergence. The last breath of the Old Line. And together, you must awaken what was buried."
"What was buried?" Celeste whispered.
Kairo finally spoke. "The Ashborne Pact."
Celeste turned to him, stunned. "I thought that was a myth. Just a tale passed down to scare heirs into obedience."
Kairo gave her a look that held no humor. "It was never a tale. It was a covenant. One made by those who survived the first rift in the Veins."
The figure—who had once been called a priestess, or something more—nodded. "And it was sealed with death. Your bloodlines were forged to keep it asleep. But now…"
Her voice dropped to a breathless echo.
"Someone has begun to wake it."
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Somewhere Else
Across the seas, in the high towers of Verrian's northern keep, the glass atop Leoranzo's scrying table cracked.
The light within it turned a dull red.
He looked up slowly, and for the first time in years, the Archon of Shadows looked afraid.
"She's remembering," he hissed.
A figure in black stepped beside him. "Shall I send the command?"
Leoranzo's eyes gleamed. "No. Let them awaken it."
"But—"
"I said no." He smiled, sharp and cold. "Because what comes next… will burn them all."
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Back Beneath the Stones
The chamber trembled with the weight of prophecy.
The ghostly figure began to dissolve, her voice trailing behind like the wind through a broken temple.
"Choose wisely. The Veins are not loyal. They only remember."
And then she was gone.
Celeste turned to Kairo, her voice hoarse. "What do we do now?"
He looked down at his palms, where the sigils had begun to flare brighter, as if something inside him was no longer dormant.
He met her eyes. "Now… we find the others. And we prepare for war."
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End of Chapter 50