Chapter 28 : echoes in the vein

The parchment trembled in Lara’s hands as she smoothed it open on Mira’s desk. The ink had faded, but the story beneath it bled through in fragments—like whispers caught between the lines.

Mira was not always the recluse with her secret sigils and riddles.

She was once a miner.

Not a miner of iron or stone, but of mana—the lifeblood of the ridges, pulsing in crystal veins deep underground. In those days, everyone worked. Age meant nothing. Men, women, and even children carried picks or sorted fragments, their lives tethered to the glow of the crystals.

And for a time, it was safe. Vehlor’s mines glittered like buried stars. Families laughed together in the shafts, the youngest racing along the tracks while the elders hummed work songs to steady the rhythm of the drills.

Until the day the beast came.

Something vast, drawn by the concentrated mana, slipped into the mines. Its eyes burned with hollow hunger, its body more shadow than flesh. Every swing of a pickaxe echoed like a drumbeat calling it closer.

Panic spread through the tunnels.

Mira had been there, younger than Ryo was now. She saw the beast swallow light itself as it moved, heard the screams as lanterns snuffed out and workers vanished into the dark.

The foreman—desperate, trembling—gave a single order.

Seal it.

There was no time to evacuate. No time to count who had already fled and who hadn’t. The only way to save the rest was to collapse the shaft.

Mira helped pull the chains that dropped the barriers. She remembered the thunder of stone crashing down, remembered the air filling with dust—remembered the cries of children cut short as they were buried alive with the beast.

The mine was closed that day. Not from war. Not from exhaustion. But because Vehlor had been fed a sacrifice.

And Mira… Mira had never forgiven herself.

---

Ryo’s voice snapped Lara back.

“…Children,” he whispered, staring at the passage. His knuckles were white around the edge of the desk. “She left children down there with it.”

Lara swallowed hard, her eyes moving over the red ink warnings. “And now she’s sent Vix and Aldah to the same veins.”

The snow-laden silence pressed against the windows. Somewhere beyond the ridges, beneath the ice, Vix and Aldah stood in the dark belly of the past.

And the beast that had once been sealed with children was no longer content with memory.

It was waiting.

The fall had left them bruised, but alive.

Vix brushed frost from his cloak, eyes flicking across the cavern. Above, the jagged seam of Frozen Nail Passage was already gone—sealed by the lattice of glyphs Mira had left behind. Only ice and shadow remained.

Aldah pulled herself up, blade drawn, every nerve alert. “We’re in the mines.”

Not the safe shafts they had passed in other ridges. This one felt wrong. The air pressed heavy, as if filled with dust that never settled. Pale blue veins of mana crystal glimmered faintly in the walls, their glow fractured, like they were bleeding light instead of giving it.

“Smells like rot,” Aldah muttered.

Vix crouched near a broken support beam, fingers grazing a half-buried helmet. Small. A child’s. He said nothing, jaw tight, before shoving it back into the rubble.

The tunnel stretched ahead, wide enough for something large to have passed. Every step echoed too far, bouncing like voices in an empty cathedral.

Then they heard it.

Not claws. Not breath.

A sound like humming.

Low, broken, wavering—a child’s voice, carried on no wind.

Aldah froze, eyes darting to Vix. “Tell me you heard that.”

He didn’t answer. His gaze was fixed deeper into the tunnel, where the mana veins pulsed brighter, as though responding to the sound.

The humming grew into a chorus. Dozens of voices, small and frail, weaving together in a half-forgotten work song. The kind miners sang to steady their rhythm.

But the words were wrong. Twisted. Too many voices layered on top of each other, singing in a place where no living lungs remained.

And behind the voices came movement. Something slithering against the crystal walls, dragging itself closer.

Aldah raised her sword, sweat cold on her brow despite the frozen air. “Vix…?”

He didn’t move. His eyes had gone wide, locked on the dark ahead.

“…It’s not the children,” he whispered. “It’s Nhar'zel. Nhar'zel is what’s left of them.”

The humming stopped.

The silence after was worse.

And then, deeper in the cavern, something exhaled.

Not air.

Hunger.

---

The knock on the door wasn’t a knock.

It was a battering ram.

The wood splintered as villagers surged through Mira’s home, their faces twisted by fear and anger. They carried torches, shovels, pickaxes—tools turned into weapons.

“Mira warned us!” one shouted. “They’re digging up the mines!”

“They’ll bring it back!”

Ryo shoved Lara behind him, eyes darting around the room. The scrolls spilled from the desk, scattering across the floor. He could feel it—something cold, restless, stirring inside his chest. The same hunger he had been trying to ignore for months.

And then it broke loose.

The beast inside him ripped forward like fire through dry grass. His vision went black at the edges, his skin burning as claws of shadow erupted along his arms. He roared—an inhuman sound that shook the rafters—and the villagers faltered.

But only for a moment.

Mira stepped through the doorway, calm as ever, carrying a shard of crystal that pulsed with pale blue light.

“Enough.”

Her voice carried like steel through the chaos. She lifted the crystal, and its glow struck Ryo like chains. His body convulsed, the beast howling inside him, but the shard dragged it back—coiling, twisting, forced into silence within his veins. He collapsed to his knees, breathless, the hunger sealed behind his ribs like a caged animal.

Lara cried out, her hands glowing with a healing weave—only for the glow to sputter and die. A second gesture from Mira, and the room shimmered. Lara felt her mana choke, as if the air itself refused to answer her.

“Why?” Lara’s voice was sharp, raw.

Mira looked down at them, eyes unreadable. “Because Vehlor was not a collapse. It was a bargain. The beast that ate the children lives still. It does not sleep. It hungers. And to keep it caged, sacrifices must be made.”

Her grip on the crystal tightened. The villagers behind her muttered prayers, fear etched into every line of their faces.

“You think Vix and Aldah were sent to deliver an explosive?” Mira’s lips curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “No. They were sent to take the children’s place.”

The firelight flickered across the walls as her words hung heavy in the silence.

“And you, boy,” she said, turning her gaze on Ryo, “were never free of the beast. You’ve carried it since birth. You will either serve as its vessel—or die as its offering.”

---