Chapter 87: The Echo of Bloodlines
The fetid air of the Blighted Wood felt surprisingly lighter.
The crystal chill of the Startear Spring still lingered on Raine's tongue, a curious warmth threading through his veins—not searing, but like embers dancing in a hearth, gently banishing the cold from his marrow.
His star‐born heritage—long dormant—stirred like an awakened leviathan, its low roar rippling through his veins.
As if an ancient beast roused by the spring's touch, it rumbled within his blood.
The star‐shard at his chest was more than warm now.
It quivered in high-frequency tremors, syncing with his pounding heart.
Raine pressed it instinctively; each pulse under his fingertips was not inert matter but a beating, living fragment of a heart.
"Boy, you look paler than before," Karrion's gruff concern drifted over, dwarf warmth cracking through the gloom.
He'd just buckled the last waterskin back to his belt, satisfaction etched in each satisfied motion.
Raine looked up to speak—but the world blurred and shifted in his eyes.
Motes of dust, the gnarled outlines of trees, even the hem of Thalia's cloak glimmered with a faint, silvery aura.
Not seen, but sensed.
As if stardust swirled in the air—echoes of ages past, the dying whisper of dissipating power.
These vestiges—faint and fractured—carried the comfort of kinship, drawn forth by his awakened blood.
The scent of starlings.
Deep within the cursed wood, traces of his own line lingered.
They had fought here, lived—and then… perished.
"I—," Raine parted his lips, throat parched. "I'm… alright."
His gaze flicked involuntarily to Thalia.
She stood silent at the cave mouth's light-shadow threshold, cloak masking her features—only a pale jawline visible.
Unfazed by Raine's transformation—or perhaps she'd long grown accustomed to such wonders.
Raine felt that same lingering aura about her—yet denser, deeper, like a star's core compressed into shadow and ice.
The spring had rekindled his blood, heightening his attunement to this kin-born force.
Suddenly, the star-shard burned him.
Not warmth, but searing pain.
Raine gasped, his body swaying uncontrollably.
Karrion's steadied him in a flash. "Oi! What's wrong? That spring water got a sting to it?"
"Not that—," Raine ground out through clenched teeth, cold sweat beading his brow.
It wasn't the spring.
It was his bloodline, the star-shard, the land's latent power—they converged, ripping at a barrier in his mind.
Light and shadow warped and spun around him.
Karrion's worried face, Thalia's indistinct form, the wet cave walls—everything melted and faded.
Dizziness crashed over him like a tidal wave, dragging him into a deeper, clearer vortex.
Here it came again.
A vision.
This one felt more real, more… monumental than any before.
Darkness receded; a blinding light forced his eyes shut.
When he opened them, he was suspended mid-air, within the ruins of a floating, shattered city.
Starfall Citadel!
Broken arches soared above; a colossal crystal chandelier hung fractured, shards refracting pale star-glow from unknown skies.
Beneath him lay cracked obsidian, yawning fissures revealing roiling clouds and fathomless gloom below.
Floating shards of land loomed like massive tombstones; severed bridges stabbed into the void.
Starlight-magic's residue crackled in the air—pure and potent, yet laced with a nauseating miasma of decay.
This was… the last stronghold of the Starlings.
His eyes darted with urgency; his heart thundered.
Where was his sister… Elarya?
He spied the central altar depicted in those family tomes.
That ancient dais of Moonstone and Star-metal now lay dull and cracked like a shattered web, its gem-inlays empty sockets.
At its core…
Raine's heart seized.
No one stood there.
No sister he had longed for night and day.
Only a lone figure.
Back turned to him, poised at the altar's center in antiquated star-woven robes.
The garment was ornate, silver-threaded with star-paths and runes—but dulled, tainted in places by unspeakable stains.
The figure was indistinct.
A warped halo shrouded him, obscuring features—gender itself was indefinable.
Yet the posture…
Raine's breath hitched.
That slight stoop, the raised hand beckoning unseen forces…
Seemed… familiar.
A cold dread snaked up his spine.
The figure performed some dark ritual.
The floor around the dais bore a vast, intricate glyph—veins of dark crimson pulsed with dire intent.
Pure star-energy was being drained, twisted, and funneled into that form by the glyphs.
He was a ravenous void, devouring every spark of radiance.
With each draw, his aura thickened, malice intensifying.
This was no star-magic.
It was a desecration—a corrosive perversion of starlight itself!
Raine reeled with revulsion and rage.
He yearned to shout, to dash forward—but invisible bonds held him, forcing him to watch.
The figure seemed to sense his gaze, pausing in mid-ritual.
He slowly… turned.
Still, no face emerged.
But that silhouette…
Struck Raine's mind like sudden lightning.
Family archives… ancient scrolls… yellowed parchments…
A portrait carefully preserved, yet deliberately concealed.
The subject wore similar archaic robes, profile shrouded—only a proud, melancholic outline remained.
Beside it, fading ink bore a name—and a chilling epithet.
—"Exile."
The ancestor banished for delving into forbidden sorcery, touching the Void!
Raine's blood froze.
It was him!
The very forbidden one, penned into oblivion—here stood the Exile atop Starfall's altar, siphoning starlight in blasphemous ritual!
Where was his sister?
Elarya?
Had all those visions… been…
A darker thought coiled around his heart like a serpent.
The massacre of his kin… the intruders… the unsolvable mysteries…
Could it be…?!
No! Impossible!
Raine fought to deny—to scream—but terror and chaos overwhelmed him as tidal waves.
The vision buckled and shattered.
The Exile, the citadel—all dissolved in an instant.
In that final flicker, the figure turned fully—and behind the warped halo, two pitiless, hollow eyes locked onto him across space and time.
"Aaah!"
Raine jerked awake with a gasp, trembling, stumbling back into the cold stone.
Cold sweat drenched his garb; his heart pounded as if to burst free.
"Raine!" Karrion's panic cut through the darkness as he steadied the nearly collapsible youth. "What happened? You look like death—was it…?"
Raine gulped air, vision still blurred, ears ringing.
He toggled between Karrion's worried face and Thalia's silent gaze.
Her hood twitched; behind its shade, her gaze darkened.
"A vision…" Raine croaked, voice trembling, "I saw… Starfall Citadel…"
Karrion's eyes widened. "Your sister? You saw her?"
Raine shook his head, teeth chattering.
"No… not her…"
He tried to speak of the altar, the figure, the dreadful ancestor…
But his words froze like ice in his throat.
Fear.
An unprecedented terror gripped him.
Deeper than any horror of corruption, or backlash of star-power.
If the vision was true…
If his sister was never in Starfall…
If the one performing the dark rite was the banished ancestor…
Then what of his quest, his goal, his obsession?
A joke? A carefully woven lie? A trap leading to his ruin?
The slaughter of his kin… was it not an enemy raid?
Or betrayal within? Did the forbidden sorcerer ancestor destroy his own blood for some dark design?
The thought was too horrifying, too subversive—it spun Raine's mind.
His belief in finding his sister—the pillar that bore him through every peril—shuddered for the first time.
Not a crack, but the rumble of collapse.
His heart flooded with confusion and dread.
He knew not what to believe, nor where to turn.
The path ahead was no longer one to hope, but a maze into an unknown abyss.
"Raine?" Thalia's voice sounded—soft, almost pitying.
Raine jerked his head up, staring at her.
What did she know?
Had she known all along… Starfall was a trap?
Countless doubts and suspicions coiled like poison vines in his mind.
He looked at Thalia's hooded face, at Karrion's anxious gaze—and felt a bone-chilling cold.
This blighted wood was darker than he'd imagined.
And he, perhaps, was walking toward an outcome more dreadful than death itself.