Chapter 30: The Second Descent
The fires over Velcrest's southern district had dulled to a hellish smolder. Ash drifted through the air like the fallout of a god's forgotten war, the red sky bleeding between torn clouds as if the heavens themselves were wounded. Stone spires leaned drunkenly, many broken at the base. The Ember Cathedral's remaining bells no longer chimed; they hung in silence, fractured and scorched.
Elias von Durell stood in the high arches of the Inner Bastion, where his blood still stained the cracked marble from the ritual interruption two nights prior. His coat, once a formal black with gold trim, now bore tears across the arms and smudges of soot. The blood-mark on his forearm pulsed faintly, reacting to something far older than the ley-lines that pulsed beneath the city.
Velena was beside him, leaning against a granite parapet, arms folded. Her leathers were torn at the waist and thigh, and her hair—usually bound in an elegant knot—was loose, strands clinging to her cheek with dried sweat. Her eyes, silver-blue and sharp as blades, flicked toward Elias without turning her head.
"The chants have changed again," she murmured.
He nodded. "Third shift in two days. The hymn structure is Saurian. Pre-Sundering era. Ralvarin confirmed it."
A low wind carried with it an unnatural whisper—a rustle not from the stone ruins or banners, but from beneath the city. The Ember Cathedral's undercrypt, sealed for generations, had begun to stir. And from it came not just the stench of rot and damp... but the dry scent of old parchment and burnt gold.
Velena inhaled sharply. "We're running out of time."
Seris Vandra approached, boots silent even on the cracked stone. Her cloak now bore an unfamiliar sigil: a three-eyed crow with its wings bound in chains. Elias's eyes narrowed.
"That's not Royal Guard insignia."
Seris tilted her head. "I was approached by someone last night. A representative of the Free Dagger Circle."
"Smugglers?"
"Nobles, Elias," Seris corrected, voice low and steady. "Southern houses. They're backing a pretender to the throne. An exiled prince. Masked. They call him the Hollow Heir."
Elias's jaw clenched. "That myth again."
Ralvarin emerged behind them, robes flaring with a residual charge of blue ley-light. His expression was grim.
"It's no myth anymore. The crypts below have cracked open. A name was spoken by the stones. Aetrin. The Hollow God."
Velena's voice was barely a whisper. "But Aetrin was sealed during the Treaty of Flame and Clay. That treaty was lost."
Ralvarin's eyes gleamed. "And now the god forgotten by both Church and Crown stirs beneath us, called by blood spilled above and betrayal sown from below."
As he spoke, the bell towers groaned—not rung by hands, but by the tremors of something ancient shifting.
Elias gripped the hilt of his blade, knuckles whitening. "Then we descend. Tonight."
Cambric arrived moments later with word from the dwarven emissaries. The Pact of Ash and Iron had been signed. A force of Ironward Dwarves, battle-armored and wielding runed siege-staves, was marching from the Stone-Binder's hold.
But the price for their aid? Elias would need to fulfill the Blood Oath of Stone—marriage to a dwarven noble's daughter. Velena's posture stiffened. Elias didn't answer right away.
"We'll deal with debts after survival," he said.
That night, as storm clouds gathered, the party descended into the catacombs of the Ember Cathedral. Runes glowed along the steps, reacting to Velena's presence. Her hand hovered near the stone.
"They know me," she whispered. "My bloodline... it's marked in the wards."
Elias stared. "You said your mother was of Durell lineage."
She turned, gaze distant. "She lied. My true blood is Sanctellan. I'm descended from the Saint of Embers."
Flames flickered along the corridor—sacred fire responding to her presence. Ralvarin murmured, awed, "She's a divine anchor. That's why the gods whisper around her."
Below, beneath the crypt, they found it: an altar shaped like a throne of ash and bone. And upon it, a chained figure—golden-masked, breathing slowly, as if in dream.
The Hollow God.
The descent beneath Velcrest had not merely been physical. Each step was a wade into memory, regret, and unearthed secrets. The faint glow of Elias's conjured flame stretched long shadows across the spiral stairwell, painting the faces of the stone saints in grotesque relief. He could almost hear them weeping.
Velena followed close behind, her hand trailing the damp wall, sensing the sacred leyline's tortured pulse beneath the stones. "This place," she murmured, "it remembers pain. Centuries of it."
They emerged into a wide hall whose air was thick with petrichor and incense that had long since turned to ash. Mosaic murals along the arched ceiling depicted scenes of ancient oaths, celestial battles, and a final image—the shattering of a sun.
High Arcanist Ralvarin, who had remained largely silent during the descent, halted before a massive door of obsidian-veined ironwood etched with golden sigils.
"The Gate of First Judgment," he said quietly. "Only opened once every royal ascension. And even then, only by blood."
Elias stepped forward. His hand, still bandaged from the pact, bled freely as he pressed it to the sigil. There was a pause. Then a chime. Low, resonant, and bone-deep. The door dissolved—not opened—into motes of light.
Beyond was the heart of Velcrest's undercrypt: a cathedral built upside down, suspended by mirrored gravity, its spires reaching downward into a void of stars. The group stepped onto a hovering disc of stone, drifting toward the altar.
Seris Vandra kept her blades out, eyes scanning every high rafter. "This was a throne room... but not for any mortal king."
A sudden pulse—like a breath inhaled after ages of death—rolled through the chamber. Statues cracked. The air thickened with divinity and rot. A voice echoed, not spoken but remembered.
"You wear the flesh of oathbreakers... and yet dare to walk upon sacred ash?"
The void at the cathedral's center began to churn. Rising from it was a figure—eight feet tall, cloaked in writhing veils of hollowed starlight. Its face was a mirror, cracked and shifting with each heartbeat.
Ralvarin gasped. "The Hollow God."
Velena staggered back, nausea surging from the weight of presence alone. "Its magic is ancient… older than the crown. Older than Velcrest."
Elias steadied her. "We came for answers. Speak your judgment, ghost of fire and ruin."
The Hollow God tilted its head. In its reflection, Elias saw himself as a child, kneeling before his dead father. In the same reflection, another Elias—bloodstained, laughing atop a throne of bones—mocked him.
**"One path ends in chains. The other in ash. But both lead to me."
"Choose, Elias Durell: Crown or Flame."**
Seris hissed. "It's a binding. Whatever you answer now... it will echo into eternity."
Elias took a step forward. Fire rose around his shoulders—not conjured, but summoned by ancient memory. "I choose truth. Not thrones. Not gods. But truth. Even if it burns."
The Hollow God paused.
"Then be unmade, to be made anew."
It extended its hand. Elias gripped it.
For a heartbeat, the world collapsed into flame, screams, visions of past and future, and something darker.
And then—silence.
Elias gasped, crumpled to the cold floor.
Velena caught him. His eyes glowed with emberlight, bleeding power. The mark on his arm had changed—no longer the seal of Durell, but a spiral of flame around a broken sun.
Ralvarin whispered, "You touched divinity and lived."
Elias looked toward the now-empty space where the Hollow God had stood. "No... I bargained with it. And now, Velcrest must decide whether to follow the old gods—or the truth we drag into light."
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End of Chapter 30