The path to the corpse of a god was not one written on any map.
It was whispered in prayers, buried in ruined scripture, and traced in the bones of forgotten seers who had dared to seek it.
But Elliot had something they never did.
The flame remembered.
---
They left at dawn, riding southeast into the Veiled Expanse, a place where the sun never fully broke the sky. Mist clung to everything like mourning cloth. The earth beneath their horses crumbled, soft as ash, dry as centuries.
Kaelith rode beside him, quiet.
Not distant — just thoughtful. Watching him. Always watching him.
> "Are you ready?" she asked at one point.
Elliot hesitated, eyes still on the road.
> "No. But I think I need to see it anyway."
She nodded, as if that made sense.
---
Three days passed.
No bandits. No beasts.
Just silence. And that strange sense that something — something immense — was humming beneath the soil, pulsing faintly underfoot. Like the ground had a heartbeat.
---
On the fourth night, they found it.
The Ruin of Vaelion.
Not a tomb.
A body.
---
The land fell away into a massive crater — miles wide, rimmed with black stone and shattered skyglass. At the center was a skeleton, the size of a fortress, half-buried in rock and time.
Its skull alone was three stories tall, its ribcage torn open as if from the inside.
Its bones glowed faintly — not gold, but pale white fire.
And at the center of its chest, deep in the core of its shattered heart, something pulsed.
A fragment. Still alive.
Still burning.
---
Elliot stepped into the crater, each step slower than the last.
His chest began to ache. Not from exhaustion — from memory. Not his own. Someone else's.
Vaelion's.
> "They feared me. Not because I destroyed them…
But because I forgave them before I did."
The voice rippled through his spine, his thoughts, his blood.
He dropped to his knees before the glowing heart fragment. The ground beneath him trembled softly. Runes flared across his skin.
Kaelith ran toward him, but the flame pushed her back — gently, but firmly.
This was his moment.
---
Images surged.
A god in golden chains, kneeling before mortals who spat on him.
A betrayal. Not by enemies… but by his kin.
The gods who feared compassion more than wrath.
A divine war sparked not by cruelty — but by mercy denied.
> "You are what remains of my regret," Vaelion whispered through the flames.
"You are my second chance. My rage and my forgiveness. My son, but not by blood."
---
Elliot wept.
Not because he was weak.
Because for the first time, he understood.
He wasn't chosen because he was strong.
He was chosen because he could be broken, and still choose not to destroy everything around him.
---
The flames dimmed.
The fragment sank into his chest like a heartbeat returning home.
Kaelith knelt beside him, arms around his shoulders as he trembled — not from pain, but from the weight of knowing.
She whispered nothing.
Just held him, her forehead against his.
In that moment, no gods, no scrolls, no destiny.
Just them. Breathing.
Alive.
---