Chapter 12: Breach
It began with the shimmer of false starlight.
Kael stood at the edge of the shattered observatory, their soul-mark pulsing faintly beneath the folds of their tunic. Above them, the Vein was alive more than it had ever been. The constellations had changed again. Shapes that didn't belong to any known sky now hung above Elaris like premonitions. A crowned serpent eating its tail. A veiled figure bound in threads of fire.
"It's moving faster now," Aeris said, her voice breaking through Kael's thoughts. She joined them on the ledge, her silver-gold hair fluttering in the unnatural breeze. "The Vein. The fractures. Time is... unraveling."
Kael turned slowly. "You feel it too."
Aeris didn't answer immediately.
"There's something bleeding through the rifts," she said. "Not just Remnants anymore. Something older. More intentional."
Kael looked down at their hands. The soul-bond mark still burned faintly around their wrist, tethered to Riven. They hadn't spoken since the night Kael had fled into the ruins.
"We should move," said Thorne from behind them, his coral-armored form looming near the stairwell. "The wardlines on this peak are weakening. If something wants through... this is where it will try."
Laeth appeared next, his twin, Kiel, flanking him like shadow and echo.
"We're already too late," Laeth said. "Look."
A tear opened in the horizon.
It was vertical. Silent. A wound in reality. At first it looked like a mirage heat-rippled air folding inward. But then the wind reversed direction, pulling toward the rift with unnatural hunger.
And then they saw them.
Riders in mirrored armor. Gliding across the broken plains without horses, their capes flickering like aurora-fire. Masked figures with robes stitched from living silk.
"Prism Order," Riven said, appearing from the darkness like a curse whispered from memory. His voice was low. Flat.
Kael tensed. "How did they breach the border wards?"
"Doesn't matter," Kiel muttered. "They're here."
The first arrow hit the outer shield in silence.
It didn't shatter it. It rewrote it. Kael watched as the protective dome around the observatory collapsed like a dying thought.
"Scatter!" Aeris shouted.
Everything broke at once.
Kael turned to run and that was when the world folded in on itself.
A hand, invisible and massive, yanked them from the stone floor.
They screamed.
Light. Then dark. Then nothing.
Kael awoke in chains.
They were spread across a slab of smooth obsidian, glowing with runes that pulsed in rhythm with their heartbeat. The room was circular and impossibly vast. A dome of mirrored glass covered the ceiling, reflecting not their face but thousands of veined, luminous versions of themselves some screaming, some silent, some wearing crowns made of thorns.
"W-Where am I?" they rasped.
A soft chorus answered them. Singing. Dozens of voices. Harmonized. Haunting.
Figures moved in the darkness. Robed. Hooded. Their masks shimmered with starlight, carved to resemble beasts and birds, monsters and angels. Each bore the same sigil etched in gold across the heart: a broken prism bleeding seven colors.
The Prism Order.
"You have arrived," a figure said, stepping into the light.
Their mask was full-face, carved into a sun with an eye at the center. The voice was neither male nor female. It echoed with layers.
"We welcome the Veinborn. The key. The seed."
Kael strained against the bindings. Magic bit into their wrists.
"Why am I here?"
"You are here to complete the circle," the Eye said. "To become the bridge between now and what was lost. Through your blood, we shall resurrect the last true god."
Kael's heart pounded. "Ilias is dead. His soul is gone."
"Souls do not disappear," another voice answered. A second priest stepped forward. "They wait. They echo."
"Through you," said the Eye, "we will awaken the Vessel."
The cult began to hum.
Kael thrashed as knives of godsteel were raised. The first cut traced the soul-bond glyph on their wrist. It bled silver and gold.
Kael screamed.
The altar drank.
Visions slammed into them.
Ilias. Golden eyes. A tower burning. A blade through Riven's chest.
Kael convulsed.
They felt their identity unraveling.
Then the Eye said, "Bring the Offering."
A new figure approached. Hooded. Silent.
And then the mask came off.
Kael's heart stopped.
They knew that face.
Someone they had laughed with. Trusted. Someone who had once sworn they would die protecting Kael.
The betrayal tasted like poison.
"You?" Kael whispered.
The figure's expression didn't change.
"I told you I would do anything to bring him back."
They raised the blade.
The ritual began.
And Kael's screams echoed into the mirrored stars.