Chapter Thirteen: Beneath the Arch
Chapter Thirteen: Beneath the Arch
The sound came again.
Low. Focused. Not wind, not song. A hum, deep as the earth, rising from the western edge of the village—where the shattered arch stood half-swallowed by dunes.
Kieran didn't sleep that night.
He sat beneath the pale sky, the old man's words echoing in his ears.
"She once said the desert remembers what the world forgets."
He didn't know who she was. But he knew what the desert remembered. He could feel it. In the shifting of his shadow. In the tremor behind his heartbeat.
The Trial hadn't ended.
Yet.
It had just paused.
---
By dawn, the group gathered again. Calla leaned against a stone pillar, arms crossed and hair pulled back. Talon sat nearby, his arm freshly rewrapped but face pale. Rei, always tense, checked the edge on his blade for the third time.
Selene stood near the arch.
Waiting.
"You hear it too," Kieran said as he approached her.
"I never stopped."
The others joined, one by one. Nova glanced toward the arch's base.
"It's not just sound," she said. "There's a current. A pull."
"Like gravity," Talon murmured. "But wrong."
Kieran looked at the structure. It wasn't large—no taller than a broken tower. But something about it bent the world around it. Light twisted. Sand shifted. Even their shadows leaned toward it when no wind blew.
"Whatever's down there," Rei said, "it's old. And it's not sleeping anymore."
"Then we find out why," Selene said. "And we finish what this Trial started."
---
The old man met them at the edge of the village.
"You're going down?" he asked, not surprised.
Kieran nodded. "What's beneath it?"
The old man looked toward the arch, his one good eye clouded with something beyond memory.
"Once, it was a gate. Now it's a wound."
"Into what?"
"Not into the world," he said. "Into its memory."
---
They descended at dusk.
The path beneath the arch was carved of fused stone and something darker—obsidian shot through with bone-like striations. It sloped gently, then steeply. The light above dimmed.
Rei held the front. Selene took the rear. Kieran kept to the center.
The deeper they went, the more the air changed.
Warmth vanished. Wind stopped. The hum became a pulse. And soon, they heard it beneath their boots—the whisper of sand falling onto sand where no wind reached.
Then came the markings.
Carved into the walls. Thousands of them. Repeating patterns. Names. Dates. Symbols too deep to have been made by tools. They glowed faintly as they passed.
"This place isn't dead," Talon whispered. "It's remembering us."
---
They reached the threshold.
A vast chamber opened before them, hollow and waiting. In the center stood a monolith—jagged, crowned in runes, and ringed with a spiral of feathers made of black glass.
At its base, something moved.
A figure.
Cloaked in pale robes.
It turned.
And though it had no face, Kieran recognized it.
The voice came not from the figure—but from inside their minds.
"You returned. Good. It means the wound has not closed."
Selene stepped forward. "What are you?"
The figure didn't move. But the shadow behind it twisted—longer than the light allowed.
"I am the memory of a god that did not die cleanly. I am the stain that speaks. I am the gate's echo."
"You're a Trial?" Kieran asked.
"No. I am what was left behind when Trials forgot how to end."
It pointed one long, boneless hand toward him.
"You carry the mark. You brought the feather. You remember what you were not meant to see."
The chamber trembled. The spiral of feathers rose.
Each one became a blade of shadow. A voice. A trial.
And the figure said one final thing:
"Then come. And forget."
---
The spiral did not move.
Not yet.
The feathers—black glass, etched in runes—hovered an inch off the stone floor, suspended in stillness. Like a breath waiting to be exhaled.
But the pressure had changed.
The chamber no longer felt empty. It felt full. Like something was holding its breath beneath the surface of reality.
Selene didn't move from the front.
Rei slowly lowered his blade. "Whatever that was… it stopped."
"No," Nova said. "It's waiting."
Behind them, Talon staggered slightly. Calla caught his arm before he could fall.
"You shouldn't have come," she whispered.
"Didn't want to be left behind," Talon said, his voice tight. "Not again."
Calla eased him down against one of the smoother stones. His breathing was shallow, but steady. The old man's herbs had dulled the pain, but the rot from the Wretch's wound still lingered—Kieran could feel it in the air, like old rust clinging to cloth.
"We're not ready for this," Calla said.
"We're never ready," Rei answered. "We just survive anyway."
---
Kieran moved toward the monolith. He didn't touch it. Just stood near it—close enough to feel the pull.
It didn't hum anymore.
It... listened.
"What is this place?" he asked, low.
Selene stood beside him now. Her gaze stayed on the spiral.
"Echo chamber," she said.
"Of what?"
"Memory. Regret. Unfinished Trials. The ones that failed but never ended."
Kieran felt it, now that she'd said it.
The air tasted like dust and sorrow.
"It reacted to me," he said.
"It recognized you."
"How?"
Selene finally looked at him. Her expression was unreadable, but her voice wasn't.
"Because part of you never left your first Trial."
---
Behind them, Talon stirred again. But he didn't speak.
He was staring.
At the feathers.
"Do you hear that?" he whispered.
The group turned.
Calla frowned. "Hear what?"
"There's singing."
The room went silent.
No one else heard it.
But Talon's face was pale. His pupils dilated.
"They're singing my name."
Selene moved instantly, stepping between Talon and the spiral.
"Back away," she snapped.
Kieran knelt beside Talon, gripping his shoulder. "Stay with me."
Talon blinked. The spell broke. His breath returned in a shaky gasp. "I was there. Just for a second. In a place that looked like here but—wasn't."
"You brushed the edge," Selene said. "It's trying to pull you in."
"It felt like... they knew me. Like they'd been waiting."
Nova stepped forward. "We need to get him out of here."
Rei's jaw tightened. "And leave this? After everything?"
Kieran stood.
"No," he said. "We wait. We prepare. And then we finish it. But not like this."
He looked at Selene.
"You said it's not dead."
"It's not."
"Then it can wait one more night."
---
The group made camp on the outer edge of the chamber—just past the threshold, where the pull of the spiral didn't reach. They kept shifts. No one slept well.
Kieran sat first watch with Selene.
The spiral still hovered.
Silent.
Listening.
Waiting.