Chapter 26: Beneath the Pulse
The silence that followed was not peace.
It was the space between heartbeats.
The light still lingered in the air, drifting like slow embers. The crowd of vessels knelt before the ruins, heads bowed, breaths synchronized. Each inhale shimmered faintly—each exhale stirred the dust of what once was Vareth.
But the earth below was moving again.
Not trembling. Breathing.
I felt it through my boots—a slow, heavy rhythm pulsing beneath the stone, deeper and older than the Breath itself. It wasn't the same harmony I once felt in the heart of the world. This beat was darker. Hungrier.
Carrow stood beside me, sword drawn, the metal humming faintly as if alive. "It's not the Breath," he muttered. "It's something else."
She—the girl of the Breath—watched the ground with wary calm. "It's what the Breath awoke," she said softly. "Every creation leaves an echo. And sometimes… the echo learns to speak."
The words chilled me.
Beneath the ruins, fissures of faint gold light opened, spreading like cracks in glass. From the deepest one, a low tone emerged—a hum too deep for words, yet it carried meaning. I felt it inside my skull, whispering things I couldn't fully hear.
Carrow grimaced, pressing a hand to his temple. "It's inside my head."
"It's inside all of us," she said.
The nearest of the vessels lifted her face. Her eyes blazed white. "It calls us home," she whispered.
Before I could move, she stepped forward and vanished into the fissure. The others followed—one by one—without fear, as though drawn by gravity itself.
"Stop them!" Carrow shouted, lunging forward, but the moment his foot touched the glowing crack, the ground rejected him. Energy flared outward, throwing him backward.
I caught him before he hit the rubble. His breath was ragged, eyes wide. "It doesn't want us," he said.
"Not you," the girl murmured. "It wants its reflection."
Her gaze found mine.
My pulse stuttered. The marks along my arms burned like molten light, reacting to the call below.
"No," I breathed. "Not again."
"It's not asking for death," she said gently. "It's asking for memory. What you took from it when you sealed the Breath."
The ground convulsed once, violently. The fissures widened. The vessels disappeared into the light until only a faint resonance remained—a thousand heartbeats fading into one.
Then came the voice.
It wasn't sound. It was pressure, heat, emotion—all at once. It filled my lungs until I couldn't breathe.
> You taught the world to inhale.
Now teach it to let go.
My knees buckled. My vision fractured—shadows of the old world flashing through me: the first collapse, the storms, the light that remade everything. I saw myself standing in both worlds at once, torn between creation and ruin.
Carrow gripped my shoulder. "What's happening?"
"It wants me to go down," I managed.
"Then you're not going alone."
She stepped forward, eyes luminous. "No. He must. The Breath recognizes only him."
Carrow shook his head. "If he doesn't return?"
She looked toward the glowing fissure, her voice a whisper of wind. "Then the world will exhale."
I met Carrow's gaze—steady, loyal, afraid. For the first time in a century, I smiled. "If it comes to that," I said, "make sure it breathes freely."
He started to speak, but the fissure widened beneath me. Light coiled upward, wrapping around my body in tendrils of gold and ash. I felt the weight of everything—the past, the Breath, the endless rhythm of rebirth—folding around me like an embrace.
Then I fell.
Through stone. Through light. Through silence.
Falling into the heart of something vast and ancient.
The deeper I went, the warmer it became, until the air itself glowed. I opened my eyes—and saw the shape of the pulse.
It wasn't a heart. It wasn't even alive.
It was a mirror.
Suspended in an ocean of light, reflecting everything that had ever breathed—the first trees, the last cities, every soul that had whispered a name into the wind. And at its center… a shadow.
Something had learned to live within the Breath's reflection.
And it was waiting for me.
Its voice rippled through the mirror, soft as a sigh:
> You carried the Breath above.
Now carry the Hollow below.
The light folded around me once more, and the world went white.
"— To Be Continued —"
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