Chapter 19
Chapter 19: The Temple Beneath the Skin
Kael didn't wake from the dream. They fell through it.
One moment they stood in the silver grove, the blood of enemies still warm on their hands. The next, they were drowning no water, just ink. Memories poured past them in ghostlike currents. Voices whispered, too many to understand. All echoed with one name:
"Veinborn."
They crashed into themselves themselves as the high priestess of the Prism Order. Clad in bone-white robes, chanting under a red sky, hands lifted above an altar smeared with blood.
Across from her knelt the Other.
Not monstrous.
Not cruel.
Just a mirror of Kael gaunt, afraid, and trembling.
"Please," the Other whispered. "Let me stay."
Kael no, Priestess Kael raised the blade anyway.
It gleamed with every life Kael had ever touched.
The memory shattered.
Kael awoke gasping, in their bed, surrounded by shadows.
Except… the shadows moved.
They surged, coalescing into a figure sitting at the edge of the bed.
Riven.
His silver eyes glowed faintly, the runes around them curling like smoke.
"I felt it," he said, voice low. "The dream."
Kael tried to breathe. "It wasn't just a dream."
"I know."
Riven stood and walked to the window, arms folded.
"They tried to kill it before it began. Whoever made you whoever tried to end you was part of something ancient. The Veinborn weren't just souls with magic. We were supposed to replace the gods."
Kael swallowed. "And they couldn't allow that."
Riven turned. "The Temple isn't gone. It's just beneath."
"Beneath what?"
"Beneath you."
Kael blinked. "You're not making sense."
"Yes, I am," Riven said. "You carry it in your body. That's why the Prism Order wants your blood. That's why the Remnants stalk your dreams. That's why your soul thread glows like molten gold."
Kael's mouth went dry.
"I have a map," Riven said. "But we need to go alone. No Aeris. No twins. No Thorne. If they knew what lies beneath… they wouldn't follow."
"Why?"
"Because it doesn't just reveal the past. It rewrites it."
---
They rode under the cloak of night, taking the river path east of Relewyn. The journey to Damar Hollow took three days. During those nights, Riven refused to sleep.
"It might reach me," he'd say, pacing. "If it sees what I've done, it'll twist my threads too."
Kael stayed silent. They didn't dream either not of blood, not of the prophecy, not of the Others.
But every time they touched their chest, the rune throbbed.
---
Damar Hollow.
A wound on the world. A gorge of stone and shadow. The ground sloped into a black abyss where trees grew upside-down, their roots clawing the stars.
The very air hummed with something unwritten.
"This is it?" Kael asked.
Riven nodded. "The scar left when the Veinborn were split. The cradle of your first self."
Kael stared into the void.
"I thought it'd be grander."
Riven smiled, the faintest edge of grief in it. "Real gods are always born in pain."
They descended.
---
The blood gate didn't look like much.
Just a stone slab with a handprint burned into it. But when Riven pressed his marked arm to it, the world twisted.
A seam split open in the air, trailing black ichor and whispering Kael's name in a thousand forgotten tongues.
They stepped through.
---
Inside, it was not earth. It was flesh.
The walls pulsed. The floor writhed. The ceiling exhaled.
Kael gagged.
"This is the temple?"
"Yes," Riven said. "You were made inside a dying god. The Veinborn were not just born they were sculpted."
The passage darkened. Kael's fingertips lit faintly, illuminating the inner tissue of this colossal being. Faces swam in the walls memories, or screams.
At the core of the temple, a dais of glass jutted from the ground, ringed in runes that bled light.
Kael stepped forward.
The moment their foot touched the platform, the room exploded in golden mist.
And a voice filled the air:
"You are the thousandth self."
From the dais rose a skeleton perfectly preserved, wrapped in sacred cloth.
It had Kael's face.
"This is your first form. The god-child who refused to become whole. You split your power and cast yourself into time, again and again, to learn."
Kael trembled.
"Learn what?"
"How not to destroy everything you love."
The chamber rippled. A memory formed Kael, but divine. Towering. Burning. Wings of light stretched wide. Cities crumbled. Oceans boiled. And behind them, the bodies of those they loved Kiel, Laeth, Thorne, Aeris, even Riven all dead.
Kael dropped to their knees. "No. I wouldn't "
"You already did," Riven said softly. "In another thread."
"I don't want this."
"Then seal it," the voice urged. "Bind the god. Anchor yourself in choice."
Kael drew their dagger.
Blood flowed.
It struck the skeleton.
The temple screamed.
Riven threw up a shield.
The skeleton turned to stone.
The light collapsed inward.
Kael passed out.
---
They awoke in Riven's arms, outside the gate.
The stars looked older.
Riven brushed a strand of hair from Kael's face. "You're not free of it. But you've chained it. That's something."
Kael blinked. "You stayed."
"Someone had to catch you."
Kael touched his cheek.
"Thank you."
He leaned into the touch. "Don't thank me yet."
---
They returned to Relewyn by dusk.
Smoke curled from the eastern sky.
The walls were unmanned.
The gates open.
Aeris met them barefoot, blood streaking her robes.
"They came while you were gone. The twins "
Kael's pulse spiked. "Where are they?"
Aeris handed them a scroll.
Silver ink. Crystalline seal. The Prism Order.
"Two threads severed. One chain begun. The prophecy will unravel by the next moon."
Kael's knees buckled.
---
That night, Kael sat alone in the chapel beneath the keep.
They lit no candles.
They spoke no prayers.
Only silence.
Their palm still cut from the sealing began to glow.
A crack spread across the rune.
And inside their head… a second voice stirred.
Not the Other.
Not the god-child.
Something new.
Something born from the fracture.
And it whispered:
"Let me in. I remember how to save them."
Kael whispered back.
"Who are you?"
The voice smiled.
"I'm you if you'd chosen vengeance instead of love."