Chapter 9: Beneath the Roots of the World
There are places older than time.
Not charted on maps, not bound by sun or moon. Beneath the crust of creation, deeper than the deepest sea, there is a hollow—a wound in existence where neither gods nor mortals dare to tread.
This place is called by many names in the oldest tomes:
The Nethercore. The Vein of Endings. The Heart That Never Beat.
Here, light has never been born. Yet something watches. Something waits.
And now, for the first time in an age, it stirs.
---
Deep in the Nethercore, amidst an ocean of obsidian thorns and skyless vaults, the Council of the Forgotten gathered. Not gods. Not demons. They were remnants—the First Echoes, born when the world was still raw and molten, when the concept of fear was yet to be shaped.
They did not speak in words. Their thoughts were color, vibration, rupture. But for the sake of sanity, their communion may be interpreted as something like speech:
"The Broken Flame rises."
A whisper of thought, like blood dripping into still water.
"The gods tremble again. Their weakness is music."
The largest of them unfurled—an ancient entity known only as Vruul, formed of roots that bled ink and teeth that grew like crystal spires. His voice rumbled like falling stone:
"Kael has returned."
A stillness followed. Then a ripple of amusement.
"But not as he was," hissed another, Y'nethra, the Lady of Hollow Skies, her form a shifting tapestry of moth wings and mouths. "He is flesh now. Vulnerable. Corruptible."
"Or claimable," said a third—Zalgor, a massive serpent whose body stretched beyond dimensions, shedding scale after scale that each became its own small universe before collapsing.
"He carries the Root Flame," Vruul continued. "It is bound to his soul, even in mortality. The gods fear it because it remembers the true fire… the one they sealed away after betraying him."
Y'nethra pulsed with pleasure. "The mortal girl. The seer. She opens him. She binds him."
"Then she must not be harmed," said Zalgor.
There was agreement—unspoken, but thick in the dark.
In the old days, they had tried to tempt Kael. He had refused them, wielding his power to seal many of their kind beneath mountains, within voids, behind veils of time. But now… now he was something they understood better than gods.
He was broken.
Wounded.
Angry.
Perfect.
Vruul lifted a limb of gnarled claw toward a vision pool—a sphere of pitch floating midair. Within it, the image of Kael and Lira sleeping in the burned-out shrine shimmered.
Kael's expression was peaceful. But his hand rested on the hilt of the Root Flame even in sleep.
Y'nethra's many eyes blinked in tandem.
"We must move before the gods do. Before the crucible is lit. Let him feel us again. Whisper to him in the places between dreams. Offer… remembrance."
Zalgor coiled, scales clinking like wind chimes made of bone. "And if he accepts?"
"Then the Thirteenth Throne will rise again…" Vruul murmured, "but not as a judge."
He leaned closer to the sphere.
"As a king."
---
That night, Kael dreamed.
But it wasn't a memory.
He stood in a field of swords. Thousands of them, all upright, buried to their hilts in black soil. The sky above was hollow—a dome of nothingness. The air was thick with static.
From the horizon, a tree crawled into view—not walking, not rising, but growing at impossible speed. It had no leaves, only branches like arms, and bark like stitched flesh. From its hollow core, voices called to him.
Whispers, echoes of names he did not know but somehow remembered.
"…you were not born from their will… you were carved from defiance…"
"…they stole your throne… but not your fire…"
"…remember the pain, Kael… let it guide your blade…"
He turned—and standing behind him was a woman with eyes like the void and wings made of fractured glass.
Lira?
No. Not quite.
She smiled, and her voice cracked the dream in half:
"We will help you reclaim your crown, Kael. Not for justice. Not for order. But for truth."
The swords began to hum.
Kael gripped the Root Flame—but it felt different in his hand. He looked down. It was bleeding.
And so was he.
His chest burned—not with pain, but awakening.
---
He snapped awake, breath sharp, sweat clinging to his brow.
Lira jolted beside him. "Kael? What happened?"
He looked at her. For a moment, her face was wrong—still dream-warped. But then it cleared.
"I saw them," he said slowly. "The ones beneath. Not the gods. Something… older."
Lira's face paled. "The Forgotten?"
He nodded.
"They remember me," he whispered. "And they're reaching for me."
She gripped his hand.
"What will you do?"
Kael stood, walking to the shrine's exit. The sky was still night, but it watched him now.
He didn't turn around when he answered.
"I don't know if I'll resist them, Lira."
He closed his abyss-black eyes.
"But if I join them… the gods won't just fear me anymore."
He opened his eyes again.
"They'll kneel."