Chapter 40: Gloamspire Beckons
Cloamspire. The name lingered in ancient texts like a whisper turned brittle with time.
Ashen stood with Lysanthe at the jagged edge of the valley where the Whispering Vale gave way to sheer ravines and shadow-laced cliffs. Beyond them, half-shrouded by layers of warp-mist and cloaking glyphs, lay the forgotten city.
It had once been the capital of a sub-faction of the Stellar Conclave—built to guard a vault sealed by chaos and time. The Third Veil had records of it being buried after the First Disruption, but no living soul had dared approach it in centuries. Not until now.
The Heart Pulse fragment still thrummed softly in Ashen's core, amplifying his perception. He could feel it: threads of space around Cloamspire had bent unnaturally, folding in on themselves, and somewhere within that storm, another fragment pulsed—stronger, wilder.
They had to reach it. But not unprepared.
Ashen and Lysanthe set up a camp just below the final ridge before the descent into the crater where Cloamspire waited. The dusk fog glowed faint violet, shimmering with chaotic traces. He traced a rune into the rock, setting a temporal anchor—enough to hold their camp stable if the warps intensified during rest.
Lysanthe studied the glyph with quiet interest.
"You've trained in multi-threaded temporal weaving?"
Ashen gave a slight nod. "More instinct than training. The dragon's memories—what little I've inherited—seem to guide my hands."
"Then you're evolving faster than any Vessel before you," she murmured.
Ashen didn't answer. Instead, he sat beside the fire, gaze distant.
Lysanthe joined him, sitting opposite the flickering flames. After a long silence, she spoke. "Do you know why Cloamspire fell?"
Ashen shook his head. "The archives called it an 'internal collapse'. But the words were scrubbed."
She nodded grimly. "Because the truth was dangerous. Cloamspire didn't fall to an enemy. It imploded—from a failed experiment."
Ashen looked up.
"They tried to bind a living fragment of the Stellar Chaos Dragon," she said, voice hushed. "Not just a memory or shard… but a still-aware remnant."
A chill crept down Ashen's spine. "They tried to enslave it?"
"Control," Lysanthe corrected. "Or so they claimed. But you can't control chaos incarnate."
The silence that followed was heavy. Finally, Ashen spoke. "Then it might still be alive."
Lysanthe hesitated. "Possibly. But twisted. The records said the fragment began warping the city itself—changing its geometry, its people. They called it the Spiral Contagion."
That term—Spiral Contagion—reverberated through Ashen's bones.
He remembered the throne from the vision. A spiral sun devouring itself. A wound upon reality.
Ashen stood, the fire casting long shadows behind him. "We leave at dawn. If there's a living fragment… I need to reach it before it warps further. Before it escapes."
---
They entered the crater of Cloamspire the next morning, wrapped in silence. Mist swirled unnaturally, rising in spirals that bent gravity. Ashen felt space fold gently beneath each footstep, like walking on layers of old glass.
The outer rings of the city were broken towers, suspended mid-collapse. Some hung upside down in the air, held by invisible force fields. Others looped into impossible angles, gravity shifting with every stair.
"This city's geometry is alive," Ashen muttered. "It's adjusting to us."
Lysanthe drew a line of light from her pendant. "We're being watched."
Ashen didn't need to confirm it. Every step sent echoes—not through sound, but through the plane. Something inside Cloamspire responded.
They followed the central path toward the Heart Atrium—the rumored vault of the living fragment. But with each hundred steps, the environment twisted further. Halls turned into open sky. Streets bent into vertical spirals.
At one point, they walked up a staircase only to find themselves standing on the ceiling of the same building.
"I'm anchoring myself to your core field," Lysanthe said quickly, brushing his shoulder with her sigil. "You're the only constant in this place."
They passed through the Gate of Tongues—a structure covered in runes that spoke directly into the mind. As they crossed, each rune whispered different things.
To Ashen: "We remember your pain."
To Lysanthe: "You wear the colors of betrayal."
Neither responded.
Then they reached the Heart Atrium.
It was not a chamber.
It was a floating nexus—a spherical arena suspended in a void, connected by bridges made of thought and resonance. The space bent inward around a pulsing core—a massive fragment of soul flame, far more vibrant than the Heart Pulse Ashen had consumed.
This was not memory.
This was consciousness.
Ashen stepped forward. Instantly, the fragment pulsed.
> "You are not me," it boomed across his mind. "But you carry us."
Ashen gritted his teeth. "You're a part of what I lost."
> "I am what was left behind," it hissed. "The rage, the fracture, the hunger to tear them all down."
Lysanthe shuddered. "This isn't just a fragment—it's the Wrath Core."
The floating flame twisted, revealing vague outlines—a partial dragon head formed from memory, its eyes hollow yet burning.
> "Do you want my power?" it asked. "Then prove you can hold it."
The void around them shifted.
Suddenly, the bridges cracked. The platform began to spiral into fragmented pieces. From the edges emerged mirrored reflections—four versions of Ashen, each cloaked in a different form of chaos.
One wielded raw entropy.
Another shimmered with accelerated time.
A third controlled molecular decay.
The last radiated controlled stillness—the antithesis of motion.
They charged.
Ashen shouted, "Lysanthe—stand back!"
She raised a barrier of woven intent, shielding herself.
Ashen struck first, clashing with the entropy clone. Their blows sent ripples through the void, unraveling parts of space. He twisted time briefly, stepping backward into his own shadow to evade a pulse from the time-based copy, then retaliated with compressed gravitational strikes.
Two were down—shattered into fragments of chaos.
But the third—stillness—approached with unnatural calm. Ashen's blows passed through it like water, distorted by null fields.
He closed his eyes. Focused.
Instead of resisting stillness, he mirrored it—adopting its vibration.
He became a void within chaos.
And then struck.
The final clone shattered.
The Wrath Core pulsed, impressed.
> "You do not suppress me. You understand me."
Ashen knelt, exhausted. "Then merge with me—or fade."
Silence.
Then a surge of warmth. Light. Fire.
The Wrath Core shot forward, embedding itself into Ashen's chest.
His body convulsed, vision flaring. He screamed—not in pain, but in clarity. The wrath, the agony, the betrayal—all emotions of the fallen dragon—coursed through him. And something more:
The memory of a betrayer's face.
A man cloaked in the sigil of the First Human Dominion.
Ashen collapsed, breath ragged. But he stood a moment later.
His aura had changed. Threads of red and gold laced through the chaos flame. His comprehension surged. His regenerative field doubled. Time no longer moved around him in a straight line—but bent gently, responding to his will.
He turned to Lysanthe.
"We're not alone in this war."
She nodded. "And now you know who some of the traitors were."
Ashen looked back once at the fading atrium.
Cloamspire had been a tomb.
Now, it was a signal.
---
Far above, in the hidden folds of space, an ancient satellite blinked awake for the first time in centuries.
The signal had been received.
The Vessel had found the Wrath Core.
And in the shadows of the Veiled Conclave, unseen hands began to move.
---