Chapter 02
Chapter 2
The first warning was not a scream.
It was silence.
Across Avelia, the night creatures ceased their songs. The silver-winged moths that circled the towers of Luminosus fell motionless upon the palace windows. In Hydranas, the rivers slowed as though an invisible hand had seized the pulse of the kingdom itself.
Even the wind seemed afraid to breathe.
Beneath the ancient foundations of Gathorio, in a chamber concealed from kings and commoners alike, stood the Bloodgemstone.
It was a colossal crimson jewel, taller than the gates of a royal fortress, its surface polished to an unearthly brilliance. Within its translucent depths drifted countless pale souls, their spectral bodies suspended in an endless twilight. Some reached toward the outer world with desperate hands. Others wandered in circles, trapped within memories they could neither escape nor forget.
For generations, the gemstone had been revered as a sacred vessel and feared as a prison.
Its secrets were guarded by ancient laws.
Its power was spoken of only in whispers.
And its destruction, according to the oldest prophecies, would release a vengeance capable of swallowing all ten kingdoms.
Now, a hairline fracture had appeared upon its surface.
A thin scar of darkness crept through the crimson crystal.
One of the imprisoned souls turned its face toward the crack.
Then another.
Then thousands.
Their eyes opened in unison.
Far away, beneath the Weeping Veil, Shaynna slowly drew away from Finio.
Her smile faded.
“Did you hear that?”
Finio looked around the moonlit clearing.
“Hear what?”
She stared into the pool.
A whisper rose from its depths.
Not Finio's voice.
Not the voice of any living creature.
It spoke her name.
Shaynna.
She stumbled backward.
Finio caught her before she fell.
“Who is calling you?” he demanded, searching the shadows.
The water began to glow once more.
This time, the light was not blue.
It was the deep, unmistakable red of blood beneath moonlight.
Shaynna pressed a trembling hand against her chest. Beneath her skin, an unfamiliar warmth pulsed in rhythm with the strange light.
“I don't know,” she whispered. “But I think it has been waiting for me.”
Finio tightened his hold around her.
“Then we shall leave this place. Now.”
But the waterfall had changed.
Its cascading waters hung suspended in the air, each droplet glittering like a tiny crystal beneath the moon. The ancient runes returned, circling the pool in spirals of blue and crimson. One by one, the symbols rose from the water and drifted toward Shaynna.
She could not move.
A voice stirred within her mind.
The forgotten daughter.
Shaynna gasped.
Finio gripped her shoulders.
“What did you hear?”
She shook her head violently.
“Someone is speaking to me.”
“Who?”
“I don't know!”
The final word escaped her as a cry.
The suspended droplets shattered.
Water crashed against the stones, sending a wave of magical light across the clearing. Finio threw himself in front of Shaynna as the force struck them, scattering leaves and splintering the branches overhead.
When the light faded, the pool was black.
Not dark blue.
Not silver.
Black as a starless sky.
Finio drew his sword, its golden blade igniting with the ancient radiance of Luminosus.
“Show yourself!” he commanded.
His voice rang through the forest with all the authority of a prince born to a royal throne.
No creature emerged.
Instead, a single crimson ripple spread across the pool.
Then came a sound that neither of them would ever forget.
A thousand voices crying from a thousand distant graves.
Shaynna covered her ears.
Finio turned toward her, his royal composure crumbling beneath the weight of the impossible.
“Shaynna, look at me. Whatever happens, do not let go of my hand.”
She reached for him.
Their fingers intertwined.
For an instant, the golden light of his sword mingled with the crimson radiance rising from her skin. The two colors twisted together in the air, forming a symbol neither had ever seen.
A crown encircled by a fractured gemstone.
Then the symbol vanished.
Far away in Luminosus, the royal bell began to toll.
King Levarro would soon awaken.
The ancient guardians of Gathorio would soon discover the fracture.
And the powers that had slept for centuries would begin to move once more.
But beneath the waterfall, Shaynna knew only one thing.
Something had found her.
Something that knew her name.
Something that had been waiting for her long before she had ever laid eyes upon Prince Finio.
She looked into the blackened pool, and for a fleeting moment, she saw a woman's face staring back.
The stranger possessed Shaynna's eyes.
Her features.
Even the same small mark upon her cheek.
Yet her expression carried the sorrow of a thousand lifetimes.
The woman lifted one translucent hand and pressed it against the other side of the water.
Her lips moved.
Though no sound emerged, Shaynna understood the words as clearly as if they had been spoken beside her ear.
You must remember who you are.
The vision shattered.
Shaynna cried out.
Finio caught her in his arms as the waterfall resumed its thunderous descent. The red light disappeared, the ancient runes dissolved, and the forest returned to its familiar moonlit stillness.
But nothing was familiar anymore.
Finio sheathed his sword and held her close.
“We are going to Luminosus,” he said. “My father must know what has happened.”
Shaynna lifted her head.
“No.”
He stared at her in disbelief.
“Shaynna, you nearly vanished before my eyes!”
“And what if your father knows why?”
The question stopped him cold.
“What are you saying?”
She looked toward the waterfall.
“I have spent my entire life wondering where I came from. Tonight, something answered me. I cannot run from it now.”
Finio searched her face, struggling between his duty to protect her and his fear of what the night had revealed.
“And if the truth destroys everything you believe about yourself?”
Shaynna took his hand.
“Then I would rather face the truth than spend another lifetime afraid of it.”
For a long moment, he said nothing.
Then he bowed his head and pressed his forehead against hers.
“Whatever waits for you,” he whispered, “it will have to face me, too.”
Above the forest, the moon slipped behind a wall of storm clouds.
And deep within the crimson heart of Gathorio, the fracture widened.
A sliver of red light escaped into the chamber.
One imprisoned soul stretched its fingers toward the opening.
Then another.
Then thousands upon thousands.
Their whispers merged into a single voice that reverberated through the foundations of the kingdom.
The blood remembers.
The light shall answer.
And Avelia shall pay.
The Bloodgemstone pulsed once more.
This time, the entire chamber shook.
The first seal had broken.