News of the Plaza of Crimson Ash spread faster than a plague. It was no longer a hushed rumor from the Pit; it was a public spectacle, witnessed by hundreds. A beggar had walked through holy fire, melted a priest, and annihilated a squad of Temple Guards with his bare hands. The stories grew with each telling, becoming more monstrous, more divine.
Deep within the cold stone halls of the Temple of the Gilded Sigh, panic was taking root.
In a circular chamber, lit by the eerie glow of soul-light crystals, an old man knelt before a vast, obsidian basin filled with shimmering, silver water. This was High Scrivener Thale, the Keeper of the Soul-Tome, a man whose job it was to identify and track every soul born within Orivalt's sprawling slums. His face, a roadmap of wrinkles and worry, was pale.
Before him, two Acolytes held a struggling man over the basin. It was the guard who had fled the plaza, the first to escape Ravi's silent judgment. His eyes were wild, his sanity frayed to a single, thin thread.
"His soul-print is tainted by contact with the heretic," Thale rasped, his voice thin as parchment. "We must see what he saw. We must know the nature of this entity. Hold him steady."
The Acolytes forced the guard's head down, submerging his face in the silvery liquid of the Scrying Basin. The water began to swirl violently, its surface churning. An image formed, milky and indistinct at first, then sharpening with terrifying clarity.
Thale saw it all. He saw the fire part. He saw Favian melt. He saw the brutal, silent massacre of the guards. But the basin offered more than just sight; it conveyed the essence, the soul-print, of the being at the center of it all.
Thale leaned closer, his eyes widening as he attempted to read the unique spiritual signature of the Ashen Beggar.
It was like staring directly into the heart of a supernova.
The basin didn't just show him a soul; it showed him an absence. A void. A yawning chasm of such primordial, ancient power that it had no name in their lexicon. It was not a soul to be read, but a fundamental law of reality that predated souls entirely. It was the blank page on which the universe had been written.
Thale screamed.
It was a raw, piercing sound of a mind shattering under an impossible weight. He clutched his head, falling back from the basin, his body convulsing. The silvery water boiled, turning black and thick as tar. The guard being held in the water went rigid, a choked gurgle escaping his lips before his heart simply exploded in his chest.
The Acolytes dropped the corpse and scrambled back, their faces white with terror.
Thale was on the floor, writhing. He clawed at his own face, his fingernails digging deep furrows into his wrinkled skin. His eyes, once hubs of scholarly wisdom, were now wide with the sublime horror of revelation.
"No… not a demon…" he choked, blood frothing at his lips. "Not a god… The… The…"
His voice failed him. His tongue, now a useless piece of meat, could not form the words his shattered mind was screaming. He scrambled toward the chamber wall, his movements spastic and broken. One of the Acolytes tried to restrain him, but Thale bit him with the strength of a rabid dog.
With a final, desperate surge of energy, he began to claw at the cold, hard stone of the chamber wall. He used his own fingernails, tearing them from their beds, ignoring the pain. Blood streamed down the wall as he carved, his movements frantic, scratching out the letters of a name—a title—that had been erased from every book, every scroll, every monument in the known world.
When he was finished, he collapsed at the base of the wall, a single, shuddering sigh escaping his lips as his life faded.
The terrified Acolytes crept forward, their eyes drawn to the bloody scrawl on the wall. They could not read the ancient runes, but the raw power emanating from them was unmistakable.
HE IS THE ARCHITECT.
The term meant nothing to them, but the weight of it settled in the room like a shroud. The surviving Acolyte, trembling, turned to flee, to tell the High Priest what had happened. But as he turned, he felt a sudden chill.
The shadows in the corner of the chamber deepened, coalescing into a shape that was not quite there. A figure stood within the darkness, indistinct and wavering, like heat haze off black sand. It wore the robes of a monk, but its face was a vortex of shifting nothingness.
It was a Void Saint, one of the cosmic nihilists who haunted the edges of reality, drawn to existential decay like moths to a dying flame.
"So," a voice whispered from the shadow, a sound like dry leaves skittering across a grave. It was a voice that held the cold of infinite space. "The cycle begins anew. The Architect has returned to his broken clay."
The Acolyte whimpered, falling to his knees, his mind unable to bear the weight of the day's revelations.
The Void Saint tilted its head, its non-face seeming to study the bloody runes on the wall. "Let's see if he fails again."
The shadow dissipated, leaving behind nothing but a lingering cold and the scent of ozone.
Miles away, in a collapsed sewer tunnel that had become his temporary sanctuary, Ravi felt a tremor in the fabric of the world. It was the faint echo of his true nature being recognized, a ripple spreading from the temple.
Velvara, who had tracked him with the instincts of a predator, sat a respectful distance away, cleaning her stolen dagger with the cloth he had given her. She felt the change in the air too, a subtle shift in pressure.
She watched him, her eyes intense. He had not spoken a word to her since the plaza. He simply sat, his back against the curved wall of the tunnel, his eyes closed. He seemed to be listening to something far away.
"They know," she said, her voice soft but certain. "The priests. They saw you through that dead guard's eyes, didn't they?"
Ravi's eyes opened. They were still the color of ash, but for a fleeting moment, a flicker of something ancient and powerful burned within them.
"Let them," he said. It was the first word he had spoken to her. His voice was quiet, a low baritone that held no emotion, yet it resonated in the very marrow of her bones.
A new name was already spreading through the Ruinspire Ward, born from the babbling of the terrified onlookers and the whispers of a single, mad Acolyte who had fled the Scrying Chamber. They didn't know the word Architect, but they had twisted Thale's vision into something they could understand.
They were calling him the Ashen One. The silent god who walked in the filth. The spark of a new, terrifying age.