The temple grew like a living thing.
Every sunrise, more travelers arrived. Some came guided by dreams. Some followed whispers on the wind. Others came with no explanation at all—only the pull in their bones that led them to this valley, to the place where stone remembered.
I watched from the rise as the workers laid new stones. Gold light clung unnaturally to the edges at noon, turning the gray blocks radiant for a heartbeat. At night, silence fell so absolute that the crackle of campfires sounded like distant thunder.
The Foundation of the Veil was no longer just a construction site. It had become something else.
The Pilgrim
He came barefoot. His cloak was tattered, his beard matted by dust from a long journey. He never spoke of where he began. He only said, "I saw two fires in the sky, and they showed me the way."
He knelt before the unfinished walls and pressed his forehead to the stones, whispering to them as if they were listening. Some thought him mad. But by the third night, others began to imitate him. Whispering to the walls became a quiet ritual, born not of doctrine, but of instinct.
I walked through the site at dusk, watching fires bloom across the valley. They always came in pairs now: one larger, one smaller, echoing the twin flames the boy had started.
A scribe sat near the central pillar, scratching shapes into a slate by firelight. At first, I thought they were random markings. But when I knelt closer, my breath caught.
They were runes. Not human. Not known.
They curled like rivers splitting into two, one line etched in fine gold powder, the other smeared in ash.
"Where did you learn these?" I asked.
He looked up, eyes wide and sleepless. "They come in my dreams," he whispered. "Every night, they burn themselves into my mind until I wake."
I didn't tell him I'd seen them too.
The Twins
Far above mortal reach, in realms unseen, two beings stirred.
Seravyn watched from her dawnlit throne, light cascading from her form like rivers of gold. Her eyes saw the temple bathed in morning sun. At her silent will, warmth descended. The stones drank it in, glowing faintly as if touched by something divine.
In the opposite silence, Nyxara stood in her shadowed dominion, silver mist curling around her like smoke. She whispered to the dark, and sound itself obeyed. At night, her influence blanketed the temple. Dreams turned lucid. Words faded on mortal lips. In silence, visions grew louder.
They did not speak to each other. They did not descend. But their presence was felt.
The workers began to speak of "signs."
"When the noonlight burns," they'd say, "She watches."
"When the night swallows sound," others whispered, "She listens."
Two truths. One presence.
I felt them too. Not as whispers, but as weight. During the day, heat pooled in the stones when I pressed my hand to the wall, as if a great heart beat beneath. At night, silence wrapped around me like a cloak, pulling me into half-waking dreams where light and shadow danced.
The Young Couple
A man and woman had arrived together a week ago. Farmers. They had lost their fields when the rivers ran black after the sky split.
They spent their days hauling stone, their nights building a small shrine of their own at the valley's edge—two upright stones, one painted gold, the other covered in black ash.
On the seventh night, they awoke to find faint draconic silhouettes etched into the ash, as if burned by unseen fire.
The woman fell to her knees, weeping. "They saw us," she whispered.
The man didn't speak. He simply touched the markings and stared at his hand as if it held stars.
Erynd
Visions began to come more often. They weren't like Kaelíth's whisper, which carved itself into the soul like scripture. These were fragmented. Twin flames twining together, then splitting. Runes spiraling outward like constellations. Two colossal forms watching from afar.
At first I tried to push them away. But each night, the silence deepened, and they pressed closer, like waves against a shore.
I realized then that I wasn't being spoken to. I was being watched.
The twins did not command. They observed. Their gaze was neither warm nor cruel. It was ancient. Patient.
It happened at twilight.
The valley gathered near the foundation, as they did every evening, lighting twin fires and whispering prayers that had no scripture. The wind stilled. The last light of the sun faded into the rising dark.
And then… the beams appeared.
Two pillars of light and shadow shot skyward from the half-built temple—one gold-white, radiant and warm, the other silver-dark, silent as a void.
Gasps rippled through the crowd. Some dropped to their knees. Others cried out in fear.
The beams met high above, and for a heartbeat, the sky tore open.
Two colossal draconic silhouettes emerged—one blazing like a newborn sun, the other coiling through the night like a serpent of mist. They did not roar. They did not descend.
They simply watched.
The people screamed and prayed all at once. Words overlapped, languages tangled. Someone shouted "Twin Flames!" and the name caught like wildfire.
From that night onward, they would not be known as the light and the silence alone.
They were the Twin Flames.
When the beams faded and the silhouettes withdrew, silence lingered in the valley. The fires burned lower, their light trembling like nervous hands.
I stood at the foundation, staring upward, heart pounding. I'd heard Kaelíth's whisper. I'd felt his weight. But this was different. This was not a single voice.
This was two forces intertwining, neither fully mortal nor fully divine, leaving their mark without ever touching the ground.
The days that followed changed everything.
More pilgrims came, bringing stories of dreams and visions. A group of scribes began carving twin-beamed pillars at the temple's entrance, their hands guided by instinct rather than blueprints. Merchants started leaving offerings of gold and obsidian at the base of the walls, without being asked.
The temple's aura thickened. At night, a low hum filled the air, like distant wings in the dark.
I knelt alone within the unfinished sanctuary one evening, head bowed.
"This is no longer memory," I whispered to the stone. "It's becoming… alive."
The silence answered. Not in words. In presence. Two presences.
For the first time, I didn't feel like a prophet carrying someone else's voice.
I felt like a witness standing between gods.
Far above, the twins turned their gaze briefly toward each other—light against silence.
Kaelíth did not speak. But faintly, as if through the stone itself, a single calm line reached me:
"They walk where light and silence meet."
I lifted my head, heart steady.
The temple was no longer a foundation.
It was becoming a throne.