The storm had quieted, but the world had not.
Kael walked through a plain of white dust — the remains of what once had been mountains. The air trembled faintly, as though the sky itself were breathing in fear. Mira followed a step behind, her cloak tattered, her hand gripping the hilt of her sword that no longer gleamed.
They had come upon the wound.
Across the horizon, a black line cut the earth in two — not a crack, not a river, but something alive. It pulsed faintly, like a dying heartbeat trapped within stone. The black glow shimmered through the dust and twisted the sunlight into shapes that had no name.
Kael stopped. He could hear it whisper.
"This is the vein," Mira murmured. "The scholars of the Vault spoke of it. They called it the Heaven's Bloodline."
Her voice was quiet, reverent, yet full of dread.
He crouched beside it, the ash crunching beneath his boots. The black matter was neither solid nor liquid — it swirled sluggishly, reflecting faces that weren't theirs. A thousand faint eyes blinked from its depths before melting into shadow again.
When Kael reached out, the air shivered.
The soul-sight awoke within him — unbidden, ravenous. The world folded into layers of light and memory. He saw the ghosts of the past flowing through the vein: gods, kings, nameless beasts — all reduced to this single current of oblivion.
And beneath it all, a pulse that called his name.
He pulled his hand back sharply. His fingers shook, not from fear, but recognition.
Mira's eyes were on him. "You saw something, didn't you?"
He nodded slowly. "It's… everything. All that died. All that's left. It's the memory of the gods — leaking into us."
Her jaw tightened. "Then it's poison."
"Or power," Kael said quietly.
For a long time, neither spoke. The black vein stretched endlessly northward, like a trail left by a bleeding world. The air above it shimmered — bending light, distorting distance. Somewhere beyond, Kael could see the ruins of a cathedral, floating in fragments.
He felt drawn toward it.
"If this vein connects heaven and earth…" Mira whispered, her voice barely a breath, "then maybe the gods didn't die. Maybe they're just… dreaming beneath it."
Kael's eyes darkened. "And if they wake, what happens to us?"
She looked up at him — and in her silence, he already knew the answer.
They continued walking, each step accompanied by the faint pulse beneath their feet. As the sun began to sink, the vein's glow deepened, threads of crimson weaving into the black — as though night were being born inside the earth.
Kael's hand brushed his chest. His heart beat in rhythm with it.
Too perfectly.
By nightfall, the world bled starlight.
Kael and Mira set camp on the edge of the vein, a small fire trembling between them. The wood hissed each time a spark flew too close to the black flow — as if the two forces of the world refused to exist side by side.
Mira sat cross-legged, silent, her blade laid across her knees. Its reflection shimmered — sometimes silver, sometimes black.
Kael watched her from across the flame.
"You're quiet," he said softly.
"So are you."
"You're thinking about what we saw?"
"I'm thinking," she murmured, "that maybe the gods were never what we believed. Maybe they were just… the first to fall."
The wind pressed low, brushing through the ash around them. In the distance, faint echoes — the cries of beasts twisted by divine residue — rose and faded into the night.
Kael closed his eyes. The fire's light painted his skin in flickers, but within his mind, the soul-sight still burned. Every flicker of shadow bore faces — the lingering souls trapped within the vein, whispering, Feed… follow… awaken.
He felt them crawling beneath his skin.
Mira's voice cut through the silence. "You feel it, don't you?"
He opened his eyes. "Yes."
"Then we should leave this place before it takes more of you."
Her concern lingered like warmth in a cold room. But it was too late for warmth. He could feel the pull of the vein threading through his veins now — calling him something closer to what slept below.
Kael turned his gaze toward the horizon. "If this vein runs through the world, it must lead somewhere. A source. Maybe that's where all this began."
"Or where it ends," Mira replied.
She stood, her cloak whipping softly in the wind. The stars above had turned pale — their light dimmed by the shadow of a vast shape crawling across the heavens.
Kael," she whispered. "Look."
He did.
And saw it — high above, stretched across the night like a scar in the firmament — a great black web, pulsing faintly, mirroring the vein below.
It was as if heaven itself was veined, bleeding slowly into the mortal world.
Mira's voice trembled. "It's alive…"
Kael's jaw tightened. "Then this world isn't dying. It's changing."
For a long time, they stood in silence — between fire and shadow, between two living wounds that connected everything that had ever lived or died.
The fire crackled once, then flickered out. The ash wind swallowed it whole.
Kael turned to Mira, her face caught in the faint black shimmer of the vein. "When the gods fell," he murmured, "something had to take their place. Maybe this… is that something."
Her hand brushed against his, tentative, uncertain — a human gesture in a world that was losing the meaning of being human. He looked at her, and for a moment, their souls aligned — two broken lights in a dying sky.
Then, from below, the ground stirred.
A faint tremor. A pulse stronger than before. The vein brightened, pulsing crimson through its black flow, and for an instant, Kael heard a voice — low, ancient, vast:
"Child of ruin… bearer of the hunger… the blood remembers you."
His vision swam. His veins lit up with the same dark glow. Mira caught his arm, her eyes wide with panic.
"Kael! Don't—"
He gasped, his voice raw. "It's calling me."
And in the distance, where the vein met the horizon, something opened — a faint glow, a doorway of bone and ash.
Mira pulled him back, but his eyes were fixed on it. "That's where it begins," he whispered. "The heart of the vein."
The wind carried no answer, only the sound of a faraway hum — the heartbeat of heaven itself.
------
"Vein of the Fallen Sky"
Beneath the dark, a pulse remains,
A song that hums through mortal veins.
When heaven cracks and stars grow blind,
The end shall wear a human min