The Eclipse Chamber Opens Its Eye
---15 June 2021 — 3:00 AM
Ruined Shrine, Heart of the Eclipse Chamber Veins
The shrine roots creaked like a dying giant tonight — the ground under Aadiv's knees felt warmer than it should, pulsing with veins of faint gold and flickers of black like thin cracks in old bone.
He knelt shirtless — his shoulders striped with fresh bruises, sweat pooling in the dip of his collarbones.
The chain rune over his ribs glowed like a brand pressed too deep to heal — every breath made it pulse, hot and sharp.
---
Beneath him, the Eclipse Chamber's seal trembled.
He felt it — the old runes buried under layers of soil, stone, and ancient lies.
A mouth waiting to open. A wound waiting to feed.
---
> Aadiv (voice rough, teeth gritted against the roots):
"You've tasted my flame. You've drunk my blood.
Now — show me what you're hiding."
The Voice drifted in — softer tonight, more patient, like a father's whisper at a funeral pyre.
---
> Inner Voice (deep, calm thunder):
"Knock once — and the Eye opens.
Knock twice — and the chain breaks."
Aadiv's fists dug into the dirt — veins on his forearms flickering gold. The Ember pulsed in his gut like a star forced into flesh.
---
He slammed his palm down.
The shrine floor cracked — a thin seam opened between the runes, hissing out a thin curl of black mist that smelled of iron and old blood.
His vision split sideways — a sudden drop like falling through a well lined with coiled roots.
---
A chamber unfolded before him — not stone, not dirt, but living dark, veined with gold lines that pulsed to his heartbeat.
At its center: an Eye.
Not a human eye — a glyph carved into the oldest root, shaped like a closed pupil surrounded by rings of runes that whispered in languages he'd never heard.
It flickered open.
Just a slit — enough to see what waited in its depths.
---
> Aadiv (breath caught in his throat):
"What… what are you?"
---
Behind the Eye: a shadow.
Long. Curved. Its edge a thin crack of starlight that pulsed with the same gold that burned in Aadiv's chest.
The Great Kurokagetsu — buried not in a scabbard but inside a nest of roots, the blade's obsidian skin veined with flickers of molten gold.
Ritual runes glowed along its spine — old words he could almost taste:
"The wound feeds the flame. The flame feeds the chain. The chain feeds the blade."
---
A flicker of illusions flashed around the blade — cities burning, temples collapsing, his own hands swinging the katana through shadows that bled gold instead of red.
---
> Inner Voice (echoes all around him, like thunder behind a door):
"Name your wound.
Devour your grief.
Draw the Eye's fang — or remain its prey."
---
Aadiv's knees slammed into the dirt — his chest pressed to the cracked floor as the vision seared itself into his mind.
The Eye pulsed once — runes expanding like petals around a wound that could never close.
He felt the chain rune burn against his ribs — one link snapping, another reforging tighter, binding him to what he just saw.
---
> Aadiv (voice a whisper between pain and hunger):
"I see you.
And you'll see me — when I come for you."
---
The Eye closed — the runes around it dimmed, slipping back under the roots like a heartbeat fading into sleep.
Aadiv collapsed forward — sweat and blood soaking the old shrine floor, his breath echoing in the hush of the roots overhead.
Far below, the Great Kurokagetsu waited — its edge hungry for the day the Ash-Born would break the final seal.
---