Chapter 51
This chapter contains mentions of stillbirth, loss of a child and disturbing scenes involving stillbirth.
Excruciating sobs tore from Nora’s throat, raw and animalistic, the kind that scraped the soul on their way out.
“Where is he? Why was he blue? Shouldn’t he be crying?”
The words were barely legible through her devastated wailing. She already knew; in the deepest, most terrified part of herself, that she didn’t want the answers.
Selia squeezed her hand tightly, forcing her own expression into something steady, something calm, something that wouldn’t shatter Nora further. But her eyes betrayed her; wide, glistening, terrified.
“Nora, you can see your son soon,” Selia murmured, brushing trembling fingers across her sister’s tear-streaked cheek. “Let the midwife see to him. For now, you must find your calm.”
“Your daughter is waiting to be born, take long deep breaths for me Nor,” she demonstrated slow, deep breaths, guiding Nora through them as another contraction seized her body. Nora crushed Selia’s hand, a guttural scream ripping from her throat.
“Good, Nora. You’re doing beautifully. Slow, steady breaths. She’s coming.”
The midwife reappeared between Nora’s legs, her face composed but tight with urgency.
“Lovely, Nora. Her head is almost out. I need a big push on the next contraction—then another—and she will be here with us. You’re almost done, my Queen.”
“Why isn’t he crying?” Nora panted, panic rising again but the next contraction hit, ripping another roar from her chest.
“Push, Nora. Keep pushing.”
With one final, agonising effort, the baby slipped free. Silence followed; a silence so sharp it felt like a blade pressed to the throat.
The midwife rubbed the tiny back, firm and practiced.
A newborn’s cry split the air.
Relief crashed through the room; ragged breaths, trembling exhales, a collective release of tension. But beneath it all lingered a quiet, suffocating grief for the child who had not drawn breath.
The pink-skinned newborn was placed on Nora’s chest. She whimpered, her sobs softening as she looked down at her daughter.
“Hello, Skylar,” she whispered.
The little one nuzzled instinctively, rooting for her first feed. Selia kissed Nora’s head, tears slipping silently down her cheeks.
“They are so beautiful, Nora. I am so proud of you.”
Nora looked up, searching her sister’s face and found the truth there.
“Bring him to me,” she said, voice hoarse but firm. “Please. Kern needs to be by her side.”
The midwife nodded, sorrow etched into every line of her face. She set aside the placenta, then lifted the wool-wrapped bundle she had swaddled earlier.
Nora said nothing as she took him.
Her son.
Her silent, perfect son.
She cradled him close, studying every tiny feature, frozen, peaceful, heartbreakingly still. Her tears dripped onto his cool skin, each one a testament to the love pouring out of her.
Beside him, Skylar fussed, her mouth forming a tiny O of displeasure, her cry rising in protest.
Then—
The eyelids of the eternally sleeping baby fluttered open.
Piercing, pupil-less icy-blue eyes stared up at her.
A chill swept through the chamber.
When he spoke, his voice was not one but thousands.
“Help me.”
The plea echoed around the stone walls, unnatural and ancient.
Blackened veins erupted across his delicate skin, crawling outward like living shadows. They slithered over the wool blanket, across the bed, spilling onto the floor; twisting, reaching, hungry.
The room dissolved.
Warmth vanished.
Light died.
The chamber melted away, reforming into a cavern of darkness.
Water dripped steadily from above; each drop echoing like a heartbeat in the void.
Jagged shapes flickered at the edges of vision, shifting in the shadows.
Then — a pulse of colour.
An aura of prismatic light hummed in and out of existence, each pulse sending violent shadow-veins surging across the cavern floor. They writhed like serpents, converging toward the only source of illumination.
The light beckoned; a shimmering spectrum that grew brighter, deeper, more intense.
Then it revealed itself.
An iridescent Aetherchrome formation.
Magnificent.
Ancient.
Alive.
Its veins glowed with magical currents, casting prismatic reflections across the cavern walls.
The tendrils surged.
They multiplied, swarming, engulfing the formation in a frenzy of shadow. The shimmering veins dimmed, smothered beneath the encroaching blackness. The radiant structure disappeared; swallowed whole.
From the void, a newborn’s cry pierced the darkness.
Prismatic light shuddered violently, trapped within thorned vines.
Then—silence.
A mummified infant face flashed before him, hollow and horrifying.
“Help me!”
Rain gasped.
He jolted awake, dragging in a desperate breath as he tore himself from the vision. His heart hammered against his ribs, frantic and painful. Sweat clung to his skin, chilling him despite the heat of the room.
It was just a dream, he told himself.
But he knew better.
He had seen the shadowing vines before; countless times. As a child, they had meant nothing. Now, he understood too much.
He ran trembling hands over his clammy brow, pushing his fingers through his hair as he forced himself to breathe.
In.
Out.
Stay present.
But the images clung to him; the baby’s eyes, the voice of thousands, the Aetherchrome consumed by darkness.
Skylar.
He remembered the name.
The last Rainbow Monarch.
His ancestor.
He had just witnessed her birth or the beginning of it, before the vision twisted into prophecy.
He was certain the dream had been a true vision up until the creepy baby.
He shivered.
A clear image still hovered behind his eyelids; he fought a blink as though the very action alone would pull him back under.
The first vision he’d ever had of Skylar resurfaced; the Gods showing her as a child, delivering a riddle, warning of darkness yet to come.
Now, the pieces were aligning.
The iridescent Aetherchrome.
The shadowed vines.
The newborn’s plea.
Skylar’s prophecy.
The connection crystallised; sharp, undeniable, terrifying.
Something was coming.
Something ancient.
Something hungry.
Something tied to him.
And Rain knew he needed answers.
Before the darkness reached him too.
He jerked upright, breath catching in his throat as the remnants of the dream snapped into place like shards of glass forming a single, terrible image.
Skylar wasn’t alone.
She had been born alongside a twin; a brother whose death now pulsed at the centre of the vision like a rotten core. A brother whose existence, and demise, were somehow entwined with the shadowed corruption devouring the Aetherchrome.
Rain’s pulse hammered as he recited the riddle aloud, dragging it from memory with new, chilling clarity.
“The birth of the royal rose twinned with the shadowed seed,
Twisted at root; it should have been destroyed.
In mourning’s grip, you cursed the source.”
He finally understood the beginning.
Skylar—the royal rose.
Beloved. Celebrated. The last Rainbow Queen.
And Kern—the stillborn twin—the shadowed seed.
But why. In mourning’s grip…
His mind replayed Nora’s anguish, the raw, primal grief that had torn through her. Rain had felt it in the dream; a grief so powerful it had clawed at his own heart, threatening to split him open.
Could grief alone curse the Aetherchrome?
Could a mother’s despair twist the very magic of the realm?
It seemed impossible… yet the riddle said otherwise.
Still, doubt gnawed at him.
Nora, in his earlier vision, had been gentle. Loving. Concerned. Not a woman who would curse anything, let alone the sacred source of Aether.
The contradiction unsettled him.
There were still pieces missing; pieces the Gods had not yet revealed.
He pushed on, working through the riddle with more insight than he’d ever had before.
“It is she who will be the last of great power.”
Skylar, the last singular monarch.
The last Rainbow ruler.
The last to hold more than one gift.
“For he will ensure.”
Rain frowned.
Kern?
The corpse-child with the thousand-voiced plea?
The mummified face screaming ‘Help me?’
No.
That couldn’t be literal.
The Gods loved their twisted metaphors; their riddles wrapped in illusions.
So, if not Kern… then who?
His stomach tightened.
“Three hundred years of her reign, the Darkness will rise,
Until a worthy sacrifice.”
He remembered Isarion’s recounting of that night; Skylar sacrificing her kingdom, her sons, perhaps even her own life. Rain wondered what had become of the palace. Had they survived on the other side? Or had her life been the sacrifice that sealed the darkness away?
“The vines will be slowed, not stopped, just stalled.”
The shadowed tendrils from his dream flashed behind his eyelids; relentless, hungry, unstoppable.
“Welcoming a millennium of weakened star blood,
Until a Rainbow emerges beside the snow
Where the last seed of hope will reside.”
This part was no longer cryptic.
It was him.
And Snow.
Their names, once strange, once mocked, had been spoken by their ancestor a thousand years ago. Their destinies entwined long before their births.
The last seed of hope.
Rain exhaled shakily.
It was one of the kinder titles he’d been given… but the word seed lingered.
Shadowed seed.
Seed of hope.
Two sides of the same coin.
He hated the parallel; hated the thought of being compared to a child who never had a chance to live.
With a heavy sigh, he pushed himself out of bed and stumbled into the shower. Hot water pounded over his tense shoulders, steam filling the small room. He pressed his forehead to the cool tiles, letting the heat ground him as the remnants of the vision clung to him like morning fog.
The baby’s face; hollow, mummified, pleading, hovered behind his eyelids. He fought the urge to blink, terrified the dream would drag him back under.
He forced his thoughts elsewhere.
The red citizens.
After leaving the bar, he’d taken to the rooftops, shadowing the clusters of Red travellers weaving through the city. He followed them to several hotels near the station; all packed, all buzzing with excitement.
Tournament tourists, Elijah had said.
But the tournament wasn’t for two more days.
And Red hadn’t qualified this year.
Their presence made no sense.
Yet none of them had acted suspiciously. Their emotions were genuine; joy, anticipation, drunken camaraderie. Nothing sinister. Nothing hidden.
Still…
The unease gnawed at him.
Something about their timing, their numbers, felt wrong. Like a puzzle piece forced into the wrong place.
Or like he was missing something crucial.
Then again, maybe he was searching for danger where there was none. His mind had been spiralling all night.
He shut off the water and stepped out, wrapping a towel around his waist.
Today, he resolved, he would seek answers; no matter how deeply buried, no matter how harrowing the truth.
But first…
Training.
He needed the grounding.
He needed the discipline.
He needed the distraction.
And he needed to be ready for whatever the prophecy was warning him about.