Chapter 42 – The Womb of Darkness
The night sky seemed split apart. Invisible cracks spread like wounds carved upon the fabric of reality. Upon a world no longer whole, Lumina stood alone at the edge of her final purification that night, holding a single thread of light tied to the chest of a sinful woman bowing before her.
But before the cleansing was complete, an image slipped into her vision. Not a memory, nor a glimpse of the future, but something beyond the limits of ordinary consciousness: a radiant womb, within it a fetus wrapped in thorns, and the cry of a child echoing from a place that should not exist.
Ilior trembled suddenly. His voice cracked. "That… is no ordinary astral being, Lumina. That… is something older. Closer to the root of Maxcen."
Kaelin Village. Forgotten from maps, erased from prayers. Lumina stepped onto its cobblestone paths embraced by fog. The air itself felt like a ghost refusing to leave. Time slowed, clocks broken, and the cry of an infant echoed from empty houses.
At the village's heart stood a single hut beneath a dead tree. Kaelin lived there. Once a revered sorceress. Now only a remnant of flesh, with a womb that kept growing though time refused to move forward.
Kaelin sat on a rocking chair, her face pale-gray, eyes empty, stomach swollen—yet no human life dwelled within.
"My child…" she whispered. "His father came to me in dreams. He had wings. Black ones. He said I was chosen… to give birth to the light sown beneath sin."
Lumina did not reply. She only gazed at Kaelin's belly, which pulsed slowly—like a creature pretending to sleep.
With an ancient spell, Lumina pierced Kaelin's subconscious. The world she entered was a womb woven from dream and ruin: floors of bone, walls of weeping, a sky of glowing veins.
At its center sat a fetus—but not human. It crouched within a circle of symbols, wearing a crown made of its own finger bones. Its gaze met Lumina's, eyes older than time.
"The Third Fragment," it said. "I am remembrance. A shard of what will be reborn through the world's suffering."
Lumina stepped forward. Her voice steady yet scarred. "Why do you inhabit a human body?"
"Because humans are easier to shape than demons. And a witch's womb is the finest doorway into the world."
The fetus smiled. "You… are bone that failed to become ash. Purificazione is not the end, but purification without light."
Exiting the subconscious, Lumina stood in silence. She could destroy the fetus. She could finish Kaelin's purification. But something within her refused either path. Perhaps she thought: this entity was the fastest way to reach Maxcen.
So she chose a third way.
With a forbidden spell only a Hellseer could wield, Lumina halted time within Kaelin's womb. The fetus froze, its awareness bound by unmoving time. Kaelin lost all memory, becoming once more an empty human without a past.
Lumina sealed the womb. Not with chains, but with prayer and suffering.
As Lumina left the village, the fog still lingered, but the infant's cries no longer echoed.
Yet, far behind her, Kaelin sat alone on the rocking chair, her stomach flat. But within the shadow of her belly, the Third Fragment slowly opened its eyes.
Time began to move again.