Chapter 6: The Bones Beneath

Kaelen rose before the light did.

Though, here, light was a generous term.

The grey haze above him never brightened or darkened—only shifted in hue like bruised skin. No sun. No moon. Just a sickly glow that filtered through the warped trees and cast no true shadows.

Still, he moved with purpose.

The night had passed without another Riftborn attack, but sleep had been fleeting. His body rested, but his mind had churned like a blade through silk. Visions—some real, others fractured echoes—continued to haunt him: ruins whispering his name, doors without hinges, skies that peeled open like paper.

But the memory that stayed clearest was the creature. The one that bled shadow and cracked the ground.

He had killed it.

Bent the air, shifted the angle of its attack, and unraveled its very form with a thought he barely understood.

That power had come from the orb—whatever that thing was, deep beneath the ruin.

He traced the black marks along his arm. They no longer shimmered, but pulsed faintly, like veins filled with night.

Whatever this was, it had fused with him.

No. It had awoken something already inside.

He needed answers.

He headed east, if the twisted tree moss and magnetic pull of his instincts could be trusted. The landscape was a broken parody of a forest: trees bent inward, roots tangled into sigils, streams running black with metallic sheen.

And beneath it all—bones.

Massive ones. Sometimes embedded in hills. Sometimes arranged into crude totems. Once, he passed what looked like the fossilized ribcage of something larger than a fortress, half-submerged in a lake of still, mirror-like water.

The world whispered of something ancient. Not dead. Dormant.

Kaelen didn't fear it. He had seen what lay beneath the surface now. There was no returning to ignorance.

What he needed was knowledge.

And weapons.

At midday—again, a word meaningless here—he came upon the ruins of a settlement.

Old. Sunken into the earth as if the land itself had tried to swallow it. Buildings, or what was left of them, jutted from the soil like broken teeth. Moss clung to every surface. Statues lay shattered, their faces carved with masks of agony or worship—perhaps both.

Kaelen approached the center, where a fountain had once stood.

It now spewed mist.

Thick, swirling, filled with whispers.

He stepped close. The mist recoiled from his presence, forming a ring.

Symbols carved into the stone at the base of the fountain lit faintly.

He crouched.

They were ancient, but not dead.

"Sacrifice returns what was stolen. Speak the names of the Forgotten, and they shall remember you."

Kaelen narrowed his eyes. A test? A trap? Or... a door?

He pressed his hand to the glyphs.

Nothing.

Then he whispered, "Kaelen."

The mist stilled.

The light faded.

Then the ground cracked.

He jumped back as the cobbled stone parted, revealing stairs spiraling downward. Warm air rose, tinged with copper and rot. He hesitated for a moment, then descended.

The stairs led to a chamber—circular, as so many things in this place were. At its center lay a corpse.

Or rather, a skeleton, half-buried in glass.

Its skull was elongated, not human. Its ribcage fused into a spiral. Around it, relics lay scattered: blades of bone, rings that bled shadow, books without ink.

Kaelen didn't touch them.

Instead, he stepped to the far wall, where a mural stretched across the stone.

It showed a figure—cloaked in shadow, haloed by fire—standing before a rift in the sky. Behind the rift: cities crumbling, stars bending, and titans falling from grace. The figure reached forward, touching the tear, and from it poured not light, but darkness, weaving around the figure's hands like threads.

Kaelen stared.

The mural whispered to him.

Not with sound, but memory.

He had done this. Or would. Or someone like him had.

"Who were you?" he murmured, tracing the edge of the painting.

A whisper answered.

Not words. Just a feeling:

You already know.

He climbed back into the daylight—such as it was—with one item in hand: a thread of black silk, cold and alive, wrapped around his wrist like it belonged there.

The relic had responded to his touch. It pulsed with rhythm like a second heartbeat.

He didn't know what it did yet.

But he felt stronger with it.

Not faster. Not sharper.

More real.

He left the ruins as dusk fell—or perhaps the clouds merely darkened. In this place, time was fluid.

That night, he dreamt.

Not a dream like before.

He stood on a bridge of mirrors suspended over a void. Below him—endless reflections. Each mirror held a different version of himself. Some were wounded. Some monstrous. Some crowned.

One version stood surrounded by corpses, laughing.

Another was bound in chains of gold, screaming silently.

Kaelen stepped forward, and the mirrors below shifted. The bridge tilted. He nearly fell.

A voice spoke—not his.

"You must choose."

He turned.

A woman stood at the end of the bridge. Veiled. Tall. Radiant and terrible. Her hands held threads—hundreds, thousands—each one connecting to the mirrors below.

"Or you will become them all."

Kaelen reached for one of the threads.

He woke before he touched it.

Morning came like a bruise. Slow. Heavy.

Kaelen sat by the fireless pit he'd carved in a hollowed boulder. The black thread still coiled around his wrist. The marks on his arms pulsed like a second set of veins.

He wasn't alone anymore.

Not truly.

Something had noticed him.

The veil was thinning.

And the deeper he went, the louder the whispers would become.

But he wouldn't run from them.

He would chase them.

Even into madness.

Especially into madness.