Chapter 20: Echoes Beneath the Godfall Spire
The crimson dusk bled across the sky like torn parchment, painting the ruins of Emberreach in hues of decay. The Godfall Spire loomed over the shattered horizon—a monolith of broken divinity. Its surface was jagged, blackened by time and war, yet somewhere beneath its core, something ancient stirred.
Shen Nightfall stood at the edge of the abyss, breath shallow, his cloak fluttering like a dying flame. The battle with the Thorned Saint had left him marked. Not just in wounds—but in memories.
[Voidbrand Synchronization: 62%]
[Emotion Sync: Unstable. Memories leaking.]
He clenched his fist. The veins across his arm flickered with pale silver light—the Voidbrand expanding, stretching further up his neck, its pattern shifting with every heartbeat. Not pain. Not yet. But something worse. Recognition.
"Are you feeling it now?" Nyxria asked beside him. Her obsidian eyes glimmered faintly in the gloom, one hand pressed against the relic-root she pulled from the Saint's corpse. "The Godfall Spire resonates with your brand."
Shen's gaze lingered on the spire's fractured silhouette.
"It's calling," he murmured. "Like it remembers me."
Below the Spire
A hidden stairway unfolded from the roots of the structure—ancient, etched with glyphs long forgotten. Shen led the way, Nyxria just behind. Every step down felt like peeling back a layer of silence. Dust hung like memory. The air was thick with old divinity and something colder. Emptier.
[WARNING: You are entering an Echo Chamber of the Old Cycle.]
[Entity: Voidbearer Fragment Detected.]
[System Locklift Required: Proceed?]
He hesitated. "What's an Echo Chamber?"
Nyxria stepped forward, brushing her fingers over the glyphs. "A place where the dead gods whisper. Where the past still bleeds."
Shen gave no answer—he simply pressed his palm to the seal.
Vision: The First Voidbearer
Light consumed him.
In the vision, he was not Shen Nightfall. He wore armor of spiraling onyx and silver flame. Worlds burned behind him. Stars screamed.
And before him knelt the same Thorned Saint they just killed—alive in this memory. Weeping.
"Forgive us… we didn't know the cost…"
The First Voidbearer's voice echoed through Shen's own skull.
"You fed on hope. Now choke on the Void."
A spear—his own Voidbrand—extended and shattered the Saint into white petals.
Shen stumbled back as the memory snapped.
His breathing was ragged. The floor beneath him had changed.
They were no longer just underground.
They were inside the spire's living memory.
The Godfall Pulse
Above them, the ground rumbled. Somewhere in the spire, a pulse echoed outward—a wave of energy that triggered thousands of system notifications across the continent.
[Global Alert: The Godfall Pulse has been released.]
[All System Users above Tier III will experience awakening instability.]
[The Voidbound Protocol has advanced.]
Far beyond Emberreach, kingdoms stirred. Eyes turned toward the skies. A new age was breathing its first unstable breath—and Shen was its catalyst.
Nyxria's Secret
Nyxria knelt beside a wall—etched in markings of blood and bloom.
"They erased everything… but not this," she said, tracing the glyph of a rose in reverse.
"What is it?"
"A sigil. Of the Bloomroot's origin. They weren't born from the earth… but from a god's severed heart."
Shen stared at her. "You've known more than you've let on."
"I only remembered now." Her eyes narrowed. "And I remember him too—the one who cursed you. The Celestial Warden."
His blood chilled. That name had never passed her lips before.
[System Update: New Path Revealed – 'Ascension Through Ash']
[Reward: Forbidden Branch: Sovereign Voidbrand]
Shen's Choice
The system asked him—clearly this time.
[You stand at the threshold of evolution.]
[To accept this Path, you must sacrifice one memory: one name you no longer wish to carry.]
He stared at the prompt. Behind it, his reflection shimmered in the black crystal of the spire's heart. His name.
Shen Nightfall.
A gift, or a lie?
"I'm not ready," he said.
But the system didn't care.
[Timer Initiated. Choice must be made within 72 hours.]
Chapter End Teaser
Above Emberreach, the sky split in two.
And from the rift fell a figure clad in gold and rot.
The Celestial Warden had arrived.