Echoes of Blood

The stairs ended abruptly, plunging Akhen into blackness so complete it felt like drowning. He took a cautious step forward.

Scrape.

His boot dragged across something smooth yet solid. Wood. Kneeling, his fingers traced right angles and carved edges ,a desk, preserved unnaturally in this buried place. Dust coated its surface, thick as centuries.

Then his knuckles brushed something colder.

Metal.

A button, perfectly round, its surface still polished despite the ages. His thumb hovered for a heartbeat before pressing down.

Click.

Light erupted.

Akhen recoiled as light flooded the chamber, his shadow leaping sharp against the far wall. The glow came from a glass orb resting atop the desk no flame, no oil, just unwavering pale radiance that painted every detail in sterile clarity.

But the orb held his gaze. Not in Ashvale or any city beyond possessed such sorcery—light without heat, without fuel, eternal as the stars themselves. Its glow revealed the room to akhen.

The walls rose around him like the interior of a coffin. Stone blocks fitted together so precisely his fingernail couldn't find a seam. No mortar. No tool marks. Just cold, perfect geometry.

Shelves lined the far wall, it had many instruments akhen had never seen before , a brass cylinder studded with quartz lenses, its interior humming faintly when touched.

A trio of blades too thin to be steel, their edges shimmering like heat haze. Vials of liquid that swirled sluggishly despite centuries of stillness. Tools for sciences beyond his understanding or perhaps beyond mortal hands altogether.

But the desk had more to offer .

A single sheet of impossible material lay before him. Not parchment. Not vellum. Something thinner than skin, yet when he lifted it, the edges didn’t curl or crumble.

The first line of text burned into his vision:

"Hello, Akhen."

His name glared up at him in ink that seemed too black, too present, as if the letters had been carved into the air itself rather than merely written.

"We will walk this together, you and I."

The words slithered into his ears with unnatural warmth, like blood from a fresh wound. His tattoo flared beneath its wrappings—a single vicious throb that made his teeth ache.

"I have watched you from the shadows for a long time."

A memory flickered at the edge of his mind: the sensation of eyes on his back in empty deserts, the whisper of footsteps just beyond firelight. Not paranoia. Never paranoia.

"You were not meant to crawl through dust like others."

His throat tightened. The paper trembled now, though no breeze stirred the dead air. It knew. It remembered every stolen meal, every back-alley knife fight, every night spent in various cities.

"You were forged for something greater."

The last word pulsed, expanding in his vision until it eclipsed all else. Greater. A hook in his ribs, pulling toward some unseen brink. He nearly missed the final line:

"Go to the basement. The first piece of truth awaits you there."

Akhen crushed the paper in his fist.

It didn't crease.

A cold sweat prickled Akhen’s neck as he stared at the impossible paper. No instructions. No clues. Just that damning command: Find the basement.

His fingers dug into his satchel ,maps of Ashvale’s underbelly, smuggler routes, even the old sewer canals—but nothing showed this buried place. The room offered no doors, no hatches… only smooth walls that mocked his search.

Then

A flicker of recognition.

There, carved into the edge of a sagging shelf: the same twisted glyph from the paper’s border. His thumb traced its curves, the wood unnaturally warm beneath his touch. A push

Click.

The entire shelf swung inward on hidden hinges, revealing a narrow stairwell choked with cobwebs. Air, stale as an opened tomb, stairs leading even deeper into the hill.

The air tasted of ancient dust and something sharper or perhaps blood. His boots scraped against uneven stone as he descended, the cramped stairway swallowing each footstep.

The chamber below held only one thing:

A golden stone.

Suspended by chains thicker than his wrists, the rock glowed faintly, its surface carved into facets sharper than any blade. Not shaped by hammer or chisel—these edges were too perfect, too clean, as if someone had simply willed the stone to fracture this way.

Akhen reached out.

A misstep. A slip.

The stone's razor edge bit into his palm. Blood welled, dripped onto its surface—

The vision struck like a falling hammer:

A figure stood in the shadows of his mind—not a stranger, but a presence as familiar as his own breath. Watching. Waiting. Had always been watching.

Then the voice, warped as if heard through water:

"I am the—"

Static swallowed the rest. The world twisted.

Fire rained from the sky.

Concentrated sunlight spat from steel war machines, cutting through armored giants who stood against them. Gods. They had to be gods. Their silver armor melted like wax, their divine blood boiling where it struck the earth.

Fire lit the skies, not from torches but from weapons Akhen had never seen. These weapons were spitting streams of molten death.

Opposite them stood beings with incredible powers. Their forms were radiant, draped in light, their hands shaping storms and mountains with a gesture. Akhen knew what they were , GODS.

One after another, divine bodies shattered under human weapons carved from the bones of their own kind. The air was thick with screams, the ground cracked under the weight of the fallen .

And in that vision — he was there.
Not among the humans.
Among the gods.
Defending

The golden stone's glow dimmed.

"This is all I can show you... for now. Let us continue our journey, my child."

The words slithered into his skull, that final phrase — my child — curling around his thoughts like smoke. The warmth in it was dangerous. It carried the same cadence as the letter upstairs, yet beneath it thrummed something older than temples, older than prayers. Something that might have made even the gods tremble.

Akhen's hands shook. Not from fear, but from the terrible weight of understanding.

This wasn't just history.

This was memory.

The vision had felt too familiar — the way his body had moved among the gods, not as a worshipper, but as kin. The way their dying light had seared his eyes with grief that went deeper than mere witness.

And the weapons...

He looked again at his hands, the blood still wet from the stone's bite. Human hands. Mortal hands. Yet the truth now coiled beneath his skin, whispering:

You were never one of them.

The stone's final words weren't just guidance. They were an awakening.

Whatever lay ahead on this path wasn't merely ancient — it was his by right. By blood.

And that, more than any battlefield vision, chilled him to the core.