Chapter 13 – The Wyrm Beneath the Cradle

The gates of the Cradle of Bone didn't open they shivered. A deep groan echoed through the skeletal archway, as if the place itself was waking from a cursed dream. Bones arched overhead in twisted spirals, fused with ash-stained roots, forming a grotesque cathedral of death.

Kaelen hesitated at the threshold, his breath frosting despite the warmth of the sun. "This place..." he murmured. "It doesn't feel dead. It feels like it's waiting."

"It is," I said, stepping in. "The Cradle never truly sleeps. It remembers everything that was... and everything that's still coming."

Inside, the air thickened. Sound faded, and even my thoughts felt muffled. The torches lining the bone walls flickered to life as we passed, their flames pale blue ethereal, unnatural. But they didn't burn heat.

They burned memories.

Whispers swam through the air like moths: names spoken by the long dead, chants from forgotten rituals, screams swallowed by time. One torch hissed as we passed, and Kaelen flinched.

"It said my name," he muttered. "But not like a call. Like a curse."

I didn't answer. Because I'd heard it too.

We descended into the depths behind High Priestess Maelin, whose black veil never shifted with her steps. Her presence was... less human, more like a shadow mimicking form. She didn't walk she glided, and the ground didn't dare creak beneath her.

I had trained here once.

But even I had never been allowed below the fourth circle.

Now we passed into the eighth.

The walls no longer held torches. Instead, glowing runes pulsed in the bone itself, illuminating spectral echoes on the surface ghost-like reenactments of history repeating in silence.

A child screaming in her mother's arms as wolves tore down their door.

A man burying his lover in cursed soil.

A witch slicing her palm open beneath the blood moon.

Over and over all scenes linked by a common mark.

The same cursed rune Kaelen bore on his chest. The same one I had begun to dream about, drawn in ash and moonlight.

My blood chilled.

"These visions," I said. "They aren't just echoes."

"No," Maelin answered without turning. "They are warnings."

We arrived at a chamber vast and silent, shaped like a ribcage turned inside out. In its center stood an obsidian monolith, smooth and pulsing faintly, as if it breathed with a hidden heart.

Maelin gestured toward it. "The Pillar of the Wyrm. It is older than magic itself. Some say it is not stone, but the spine of the first cursed god."

Kaelen circled it warily. "What does it do?"

"It listens," she said.

I frowned. "To what?"

Maelin's lips twisted. "To fate."

Then the monolith flared.

Gold and black light poured from its cracks, casting wild shadows across the room. Kaelen recoiled, clutching his chest then gasped.

"I know this place," he said, voice strange, layered. "I died here. I began here."

His eyes were no longer his.

They gleamed with a predatory gold, his pupils slitted like a serpent's.

Maelin stiffened. "No... it's too soon. He's not ready!"

"What's happening?" I demanded, grabbing Kaelen's shoulders.

His body jerked as if pulled by invisible chains. His voice deepened again, unnatural. "You carry the cycle. The bridge. The flame that will either end the curse or feed it."

I turned to Maelin. "Make it stop!"

"I can't," she said. "He's channeling the Wyrmfather."

Kaelen collapsed to his knees, veins glowing, mouth open in a silent scream. I lunged to his side, but Maelin yanked me back.

"Touching him now could bind you both permanently. Let him burn through it."

I tore free of her grip. "If he burns, I burn with him."

I placed my hand on his chest.

The rune on his skin flared.

And something passed between us.

A memory not my own.

I stood in a battlefield of ash, holding a child wrapped in blood-soaked cloth. Kaelen knelt before me, chained, bleeding, whispering, "You must choose. Me... or the world."

The vision shattered.

Kaelen collapsed, unconscious.

The light vanished.

The monolith stilled.

The air stank of sulfur and prophecy.

Maelin fell to her knees, exhausted. "He has been marked. The Wyrmfather sees him now. And through him... sees you."

"Why?" I whispered. "Why us?"

Maelin raised her veil. Beneath it, her face was etched with ancient runes scars from rituals long forgotten. "Because your bond is strong enough to tear the veil between life and curse. And because the child inside you... is the first key."

My heart stopped. "So it's true?"

She nodded. "The curse you share isn't just blood. It's legacy. And that legacy is trying to be born."

Later that night, I sat beside Kaelen as he slept fitfully in a lower chamber, fever burning through him. His body trembled, lips moving with silent nightmares.

Maelin placed a black coin in my hand. "This is a soul anchor. It can hold him to himself... temporarily. Use it only if he begins to split."

I tucked it into my robes, eyes never leaving him. "He said he saw me holding a child... and behind me, a shadow with his face."

Maelin lowered herself beside me, tone quieter. "The Wyrm is not a god. It is a force. It feeds on broken love. On betrayed fate. The stronger the bond, the sweeter the meal."

I clenched my jaw. "Then we won't break."

She touched my hand gently. "Then prepare to pay the price."

In the third watch of night, I heard movement.

Kaelen was awake.

Sitting upright.

But something was wrong.

He stared at the wall like he could see through it.

I crept closer. "Kaelen?"

He turned slowly.

His eyes were dull. Empty.

"Kaelen?"

He blinked.

Then"It spoke to me," he murmured. "Not in dreams. In truth. It said… if we don't choose by the next blood moon, the curse will choose for us."

"What choice?"

But he was already asleep again, slumping forward into my arms.

At dawn, I stood at the edge of the Cradle's inner sanctum. The wind carried whispers through the bones, not of threat but of warning.

I pressed a palm to my lower belly.

My magic sparked in response.

Inside me, something stirred.

Alive.

Ancient.

Watching.