[Underground Stronghold
Alden sat on a chair, one leg over the other. His hand stiffened as he reached into his pocket and withdrew the heavy, sealed box. With a deep, steadying inhale that rattled in his chest, he clicked the latch open and removed its contents: the Sun Stone.
The moment the stone collided with the air, the atmosphere distorted. It emitted a dense, wet heat—less like fire, more like the breath of something rotting.
Alden’s clothes bloomed, threads swelling and splitting apart as a sudden, furious mold devoured them, consuming fabric like decay consumes fruit left in the heat. The air thickened with moisture.
His skin blistered and swelled.
The chair sagged beneath him with a wet, fibrous groan. He shifted before it could swallow him, settling cross-legged on the stone floor instead.
Engaging his core, he clenched his muscles tightly against the excruciating pain. It was not enough. Alden sighed. To grow his vessel, he must first empty his essence reserve and then quickly refill it.
He compelled his essence to weave his unraveling body back together, pushing it outward. As the skin shed, he regrew it—a grotesque cycle of destruction and rebirth, mirroring his past life.
After several long minutes, the familiar hollowness gnawed at his insides, depleting his reserves.
Alden examined his body. A single knife could kill him now in mere seconds.
With a gasping grunt, Alden slammed the lead-lined box shut, sealing the Sun Stone inside. If he had misjudged the timing of closing the box, he would have cooked from the inside out, his body metabolizing itself to nothing, leaving no essence to protect him.
His eyes felt hazy, his heart raced, and his mind drifted to pointless philosophical musings.
Saving Lut. That was the arithmetic of it.
It was a life for a life, paid in full. Nothing more, nothing less.
"Sounds about right," he muttered and smirked, feeling the cold of the stronghold seep back into the room. The life force of nature surged into his body, filling the vacuum he had created. His body hungrily absorbed it, transforming it into void essence. The void essence rapidly cooled him from within, frost crystallizing on his eyelashes.
He shivered violently, his teeth chattering, biting down on nothing. Sensing the internal reservoir filling up, he waited. It reached his previous limit—and then surpassed it.
More.
As he took a deep breath, he noticed a slight increase in the quantity of his spiritual vessel. The walls had stretched, but not significantly.
Greedy and hungry for more, he unsealed the Sun Stone again.
Burn. Heal. Empty. Freeze. Repeat.
Each time he hollowed himself out, the void pulled, and the stone fed it by pouring itself into the gap instead of the air.
Wouldn’t it be a waste to let the energy flow in all directions? The rate of decay would be excruciatingly slow. He idly pondered this before deciding to draw all the energy towards himself, creating a vacuum that filled with each passing moment. Only for him to create more vacuum.
Against his chest, the Ichor pendant pulsed a frantic, warning crimson. The light in his eyes dimmed, replaced by a flat, obsidian stillness.
The cycle ran without him now—his body knew what to do. His mind went elsewhere.
If he actually died, would it be such a tragedy?
The Apocalypse.
Was it his duty to solve it?
Why should he risk his life to save an empire that would replace him the moment he weakened? 'It had already done that once, hadn’t it?' He sneered. But he couldn't let go.
She was the flame, and this wretched universe was the candle. If the wax melted, the flame would die. To keep her—even just the memory of her—he had to save the very hell that kept them apart.
Alden reopened the box, savoring the agony, drawing deep until the Sun Stone’s violent luster faded into a dull, grey slag.
He finally slumped back, closing his eyes. His capacity felt immense now, almost double his waking state. Not what he once had at his peak, but sufficient for what he needed to do.
Then exhaustion arrived—heavy, grey, final.
He dragged himself from the floor, his limbs feeling like lead weights in deep water, and collapsed onto the edge of the bed. His eyes darted to the washbasin, ten steps away.
'Too far,' he concluded.
With the last dregs of his strength, he pulled the heavy quilt over his naked body, burying himself in the dark.
Tomorrow, another journey. Time had stopped moving. It didn't seem like it would spin again. He was stuck. Living this farce, he was waiting to end it.
Only one outcome. This time from afar. Hoping this time, at least, there would be no hate.
'If I fix everything, won’t she at least stop cursing me in my dreams?'
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
He didn't know how long he lay there before his hand found the bottle on its own. He didn't bother pouring it into a glass.
Swirling the wine, he watched as the liquid caught the dim light.
"It is really hard," he whispered, the words slurring, blurring the edges.
He glanced down, feeling his doubled reserve of essence, but didn't will it to move.
His will was already strained. He couldn’t be bothered to transfer his essence to rid himself of his intoxication. Tonight, he preferred it this way.
He forced a smile at the stone ceiling, sinking deeper into the pillow as the spinning room gently lulled him. "Tonight... I’ll tell you a story. About wishes."
His heart pounded faster with each thump, his vision hazy.
"The villagers make wishes too," he murmured, conjuring a nonexistent world again. From his mother’s stories, mostly forgotten and reconstructed.
How much of it matched the original—he didn't know. But in an empty room like this, it rarely mattered.
His voice, slowly lilting, painted a forbidden paradise on the canvas of his stone stronghold. "When Finn looks up... past the rooftops... he sees the golden castle. Shimmering in the heat. The Empresses lived there." He paused before murmuring. "And... She lived there."
The pendant Ichor lay against his chest—glowing softly.
"If the silence became too profound… she always filled it," he breathed, his voice cracking in the middle. "She would transform everything he had ever touched into something beautiful…"
His grip on the bottle tightened, knuckles turning white against the dark vessel. The wine rippled, disturbed by his tremor.
The bottle knocked against his teeth. He grumbled internally and drank anyway.
It was bland.
As always.
"But the truth is…" he muttered, raising the bottle in the dim light. "The Angel, she lies..."
The beautiful village vanished into the wine’s fumes. The underground chamber was silent, save for his ragged, wet breathing echoing off the stone walls.
Finn had a castle to look up at. Alden had stone.
His voice fractured, the porcelain mask of the storyteller shattering under the weight of the drink. "She can create life with a smile... take away death with a single word. And promise... Forever."
He set the bottle back on the nightstand, the glass ringing too sharply in the quiet.
"She lies..." he whispered with a resigned smile. "She is... heartless. What do you call those who make wishes like the villagers?"
Alden let out a short, jagged breath.
"Foolish..." he whispered into the pillow, the word hollowed out by a bitter, drunken envy. "As if an angel would bother with mere mortals."
The pendant glowed red against his ribs, a mockery of the heart he felt freezing over.
"Perhaps I’m a fool too," he said, the velvet tone fading to reveal the raw, scraping need beneath. "After all, I still yearn for that angel." The admission lingered in the air, fragile as spun glass yet as sharp as a knife. He felt every cut it inflicted, but couldn't let it go. "What would I even say if I see her…?"
He squeezed his eyes shut, burying his face in the quilt, trying to recall her image and feel her warmth. But the image blurred, and the room’s shadows seemed to draw closer, listening as he opened his mouth once more.
"Probably..." His voice lowered to a dim whisper, a sound on the verge of shattering: "Don't leave me again, my angel…"
He waited. Silence answered. Another whisper escaped his lips, a prayer directed to his indifferent deity, too faint for even his own ears to comprehend.
The words fell into the night, dissolving like breath on a mirror, leaving him alone with the cold.
In her radiant realm of Antithesis, Aurenya listened intently, absorbing every word.
The storyteller’s voice wove on, soft and wistful, painting scenes of hope and despair—villagers who made wishes.
the voice murmured, fogging the air between worlds.
"Wishes," she whispered to herself, tasting the word.
The golden lake rippled as Aurenya shifted restlessly at its edge. The heat of Kaelira’s voice still reverberated in her ears, barely cooling.
Kaelira had pleaded with her not to listen—her voice too careful, the way she spoke when she was truly frightened.
And yet, she had been waiting for the voice to return.
Aurenya had been listening for what felt like countless cycles now, drinking in every word her mysterious storyteller offered.
Aurenya stilled. 'She—his angel? The one he always spoke of?'
He spoke again, his voice lilting with a fragile beauty.
But beneath the gentle weave of his tales, she heard something else.
A tremor in his voice when he said,
A faint heaviness between his words,
Her pale golden wings stiffened against her back. The light around her dimmed, and a hollowing sensation followed from within her chest. "He is in pain," she murmured.
Rising abruptly, she paced along the lake’s edge, her bare feet leaving ripples of gold with each step.
'What do I do?' she thought. She knew no angel, had never thought herself one, and yet her heart burned.
A chill took root beneath her ribs, alien in this world of eternal warmth, as the storyteller’s final plea echoed through the silence:
'Who is this heartless angel? Why doesn’t she save him?'
A sharp bitterness settled in her chest, unfamiliar and unwelcome.
'If his angel could not help him... perhaps I could...' She stopped her thought midway.
But it still struck her like lightning.
Something in her chest tightened, the same pull she had felt when Syralis stepped between her and Kaelira's weapon.
"You deserve to have your wishes come true," she whispered, her voice growing stronger. "You've given me so much—all these beautiful stories, all these glimpses of worlds beyond my flame. You've made me feel less alone when even the Trees won't speak to me."
She thought of Kaelira's worried glances, of Syralis's reluctant exit. Even her sisters, who loved her, couldn't understand this restless longing the stories had awakened.
She had tried, once, to stop listening. She hadn't tried again—even if the stories were never meant for her. She looked toward the mound where Kaelira had buried Miku, then back to the golden lake. Her wings fluttered restlessly.
"I don’t know who you are," she said at last, her voice trembling between resolve and wonder. "I don’t know where you speak from, or who you’re speaking to. I’m just... somehow hearing you across whatever distance separates us."
The golden lake shimmered faintly as her reflection wavered on its surface. Doubt flickered within her. Was she foolish to feel so much for a voice unseen? What if Kaelira was right?
She shook her head, dispelling those thoughts.
Even if those words were never meant for her, they had filled her world more completely than the endless light of Antithesis.
"I wish..." she began, her lips parting as if to form a plea—but the words caught, snagged like thorns in her throat. Something within the air, or perhaps within her own being, resisted.
It was as though an unseen hand pressed against her voice, forbidding her from finishing the wish. She wasn’t certain if it would make any difference.
Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and spoke.
"I wish... that you get the angel you yearn for…" she whispered, tears running down her cheeks. She pressed a hand flat against her sternum, as if she could hold the feeling still long enough to name it. "And you no longer feel lonely."
For a moment, silence stretched across her realm. Even the golden lake seemed to hold its breath.
The entire realm trembled. Golden leaves cascaded from Golden Trees, Virelya’s flame dimmed, and Nhalrien’s ice melted.
Aurenya spun around, sensing a shift in her realm.
The golden lake rose, towering into the fractured sky of Antithesis, then crashed down upon her with all its might. A crushing weight pressed against her chest, rendering her immobile.
Her body flickered. Once. Twice. And then the light failed.
Aurenya vanished from her realm.
