The Blood of Vampire: Chapter 20 - The Chronicle of the Sleeper
The instant the Gem of Frozen Tears locked Jatex's Sanguine Stain into Stillness, the Ward performed its function: it injected Jatex with the pure, terrifying Truth it contained.
A vision, clear and absolute, flooded his mind. This was the Chronicle of the Sleeper.
He saw the universe not as a cosmos of stars, but as an infinite, turbulent Aethyr Sea. And in the center, a cosmic entity that was not malicious, but absolute hunger. The Sleeper.
The Sleeper was not a demon; it was a fundamental constant—the black hole of existence, consuming energy and reality simply by being.
Jatex saw the first Vaelanar—the Luminary who tried to contain a fragment of this hunger and failed, becoming the first monster, the source of the Shadow-Blood and the Thirst. He saw the creation of the Wards—three spiritual anchors designed to stabilize the continental flow around the Sleeper's prison.
The Gem's final revelation was crushing: The Sleeper is not waking up. It has always been awake. It is simply becoming louder because the Wards are failing.
The Stillness locked Jatex's emotions, but the Truth paralyzed his will. The fight was not against a villain, but against a fundamental reality. His entire quest to gather the Wards was only accelerating the inevitable, by testing the fragile spiritual anchors.
Jatex stood on the spire, utterly motionless, physically and spiritually frozen by the Gem's power and the terrifying truth it had revealed. He was a statue of ice, the perfect, silent vessel.
A low, guttural roar echoed from deep within the spire—the raw sound of the Thirst, contained but not defeated, screaming its eternal hunger into the absolute Stillness.
The Chronicle of the Sleeper was complete. Jatex had the first Ward, but now he was a frozen puppet of the ultimate, terrifying truth.