Chapter 63 – The Forsaken Descent
The path revealed by the Vein Lord was not a tunnel.
It was a wound.
The stone had split open, not broken, not carved—parted, like the earth itself had been forced to surrender. Thin strands of dark-root hung along the edges, twitching faintly, as if they still remembered being attached to something alive.
Cold air rolled up from below, thick and stale. It crawled over Cael's skin like invisible hands.
Drex stood at the edge, staring down into the black.
"There is no bottom…"
Lira didn't answer. She was watching Cael.
His golden glow flickered at his fingertips, faint and struggling, like a dying flame in a storm. Yet his face had gone still, carved into something cold and distant—stronger, harder, and not entirely human anymore.
"You feel it again, don't you?" she asked.
Cael didn't look at her.
"Yes."
A pause.
"It feels me too."
The silence that followed was deep enough to swallow the world above. Somewhere far below, the fourth heartbeat echoed faintly again.
Thump…
...Thump…
Slow. Ancient. Patient.
Drex clenched his jaw. "We just met the ruler of this underworld, and now we're walking deeper into it?"
Cael finally turned to him. The shadow stretched across half his face, and the fading light carved the other half into gold and darkness.
"That wasn't the ruler."
"…You serious right now?"
"That was the gatekeeper of memory," Cael said quietly. "What's below doesn't need a throne."
Lira's fingers tightened around the hilt of her blade. "Then why is it calling you?"
Cael stepped forward, his boot hovering over the edge.
"Because I belong to it more than I belong to the surface."
For one brief moment, neither of them could tell if that was fear… or acceptance… in his voice.
Then he stepped into nothing.
The fall was not fast.
Gravity didn't pull him the way it should have. Instead, invisible pressure carried him down slowly, as if unseen hands were guiding him.
The walls glowed faintly as he descended—dark veins twisted through pale stone, creating patterns that almost looked like massive veins in a body. With every heartbeat below, the walls pulsed.
Drex and Lira followed, swallowed by the darkness behind him.
And then… the light above vanished.
Total darkness.
Total silence.
It lasted only three seconds.
Then the glow returned from below.
Not gold.
Not red.
Black mixed with deep violet.
They landed on smooth, glasslike stone. It reflected no light, no face, no sky. Just endless darkness underfoot.
They had entered a vast underground world.
Colossal pillars of root and crystal stretched up beyond sight. Huge black rivers wound through the distance, their surfaces perfectly still, like liquid night. Massive, unmoving shapes could be seen far away, half-submerged in the darkness—too large to be rock, too still to be alive.
Lira whispered without realizing it. "This is… a world buried under another world."
Cael stepped forward slowly.
With each step, memories whispered at the edge of his mind—visions of armies kneeling, kings weeping, cities sinking gently into the earth as darkness sang them to sleep.
Drex exhaled, his voice low. "This place dreams of ending us."
Cael's fist tightened.
"No. It dreams of owning us."
Suddenly, the ground beneath them shifted.
Not cracking, not quaking—but moving.
A long, massive ridge rose up from the dark floor several paces in front of them, unfolding slowly like the back of a sleeping creature awakening.
A shape emerged.
Serpentine. Colossal. Armored in dark crystal and veins glowing dull crimson beneath.
Not flesh.
Not stone.
A guardian.
Its head lifted. Its eyes ignited with faint, cold light.
Its voice entered their minds together.
"The Pulse returns to its grave."
Lira stepped back, swallowing fear. "That's not a beast… it's a sentinel."
It circled them slowly, its body carving long ripples across the black surface of the floor.
"Only one path lies beyond me," it said.
"One will walk it. The rest will remain here… in silence."
Drex growled. "Over my dead body."
Its eyes locked on Cael.
"That is already written."
The air grew heavy. A ring of glyphs ignited beneath Cael's feet. The Pulse in his chest burned, fighting whatever was pulling at it.
Lira grabbed his arm. "Cael, don't let it separate us."
A low, almost sorrowful sound echoed from the sentinel.
"He is no longer one of 'us'."
The ground beneath Lira and Drex began to glow, different from Cael's. Symbols formed, slow, precise.
Cael's eyes widened. "No — don't touch them!"
He slammed his hand down. Golden light burst in a wild wave—but the darkness absorbed most of it.
The sentinel spoke again.
"One bearer. One sacrifice. One inheritance."
Three paths opened in the floor:
A dark spiral descending even deeper
A tunnel twisting away into silence
A bridge of crystal forming directly in front of Cael
Its eyes never left him.
"Choose, Iron Son."
"Power… memory… or blood."
The fourth heartbeat thundered for the first time.
THUMP.
A distant roar answered it.
The entire underground shook as something vast shifted far, far below.
Cael realised in that moment:
This wasn't a test to see if he was worthy.
It was a test to see what he was willing to lose.
He looked at Lira. At Drex.
Then at the path made of crystal.
And the darkness beneath it slowly opened its eye.