23. Aeryn
AERYN
The moment my foot crosses the fractured threshold of one of the ruin’s structures, something inside me fractures with it, not gradually, not with warning, but with the clean and merciless certainty of something that has been waiting for this exact proximity.
The world does not dim or blur the way it sometimes does when a vision begins, it vanishes entirely, replaced by something far more complete, far more invasive, as though I have not stepped into a memory but been forced to live inside it.
I do not breathe. I do not move. I do not exist here.
Stone rises around me, whole and unbroken, towering columns unmarred by time, their surfaces etched with sigils that hum with restrained force.
And at the center of all—him. Vaedros stands before the artifact.
It is not as I imagined it, not some radiant object calling attention to itself, but something quieter, something wrong that resists definition.
Its surface shifting between forms that refuse to settle, as though it doesn't belong to a single reality long enough to be understood, and yet everything in the room bends toward it, every presence subtly pulled, subtly altered, like gravity that does not obey natural law.
He reaches for it. There is no hesitation.
The moment his hand closes around it, the world changes.
Not outwardly at first, not in any way that would warn those watching, but I feel it, deep and immediate, like a thread pulled too tight through fabric that was never meant to hold it, and something answers him. Something ancient. Something patient.
Hazeran. His father.
That man is not a memory. Not a ghost. A will pressing through the artifact before the gate is fully open, using every weak passage it can find. Blood is one. Vision is another.
The name does not come as thought but as certainty, embedding itself into me with the same force as the vision itself, and suddenly everything aligns, every fragment, every flicker that has haunted me since the beginning, every presence I could never fully name or understand, it has never been random, never been uncontrolled, it has been him, always him, reaching, guiding, shaping through the bloodline that binds them all.
Through Vaedros.
The artifact does not grant power. It opens something—a gateway, not through distance, but through possibility. And he takes it willingly. The shift is immediate. Subtle, but irreversible.
His posture remains unchanged, his expression composed, controlled, but something beneath it warps, something that it’s not him settles behind his eyes.
I see it, not as it appears to others, but as it truly is, a fracture masked as strength, a corruption that does not consume all at once but seeps, slow and deliberate, altering choice by choice until there is nothing left untouched.
The vision does not stop there. It never does. Time fractures forward.
The brothers stand together in House Drazharel, but the air between them is different now, sharp with something unspoken, something building, and it does not take long for it to surface.
Suspicion turns to accusation, accusation to confrontation, and I watch as loyalty collapses under the weight of something none of them fully understand.
Each of them reacting in their own way, each of them convinced they are right, that they are justified, that the others are the problem.
Vaedros stands in it all. Not shouting. Not losing control. Directing.
Every word placed with precision, every reaction accounted for, every fracture widened just enough to ensure it cannot be repaired.
I understand then that the artifact does not simply corrupt, it amplifies what is already there, sharpens it, removes restraint where restraint once existed, and what remains is something far more dangerous than madness.
It is clarity without limit. The house does not fall in a single moment.
It collapses inward, piece by piece, brother against brother, trust eroded until nothing remains but conflict, and through it all, through every shift, every break, every loss, Hazeran grows stronger.
Not because the artifact belongs to him, but because the Deceiver’s gate gives him a way back, and Vaedros’s blood gives him something to hold onto.
Because he is not returning through force. He is returning through them. Through their blood. Through their choices. Through the path Vaedros has already begun to walk.
The final image burns into me with brutal clarity.
Vaedros alone. Not victorious. Standing in the aftermath of everything he has destroyed, the artifact still in his grasp, the world around him reshaped by decisions that cannot be undone, and behind his eyes, something else entirely. He is completely lost…his soul.
Then it ends.
The ruin slams back into place around me, broken stone, cold air, the weight of the present crashing in so violently that my body nearly fails to keep up with it.
For half a second I am nowhere, suspended between what I saw and what is, my balance gone, my breath locked somewhere between my lungs and my throat.
Warmth spills over my lip. Blood.
It comes without restraint this time, a thin, steady line that I cannot fully stop before it betrays me, and I turn my head slightly, angling my face away from him under the pretense of examining the broken wall beside us, my hand rising just enough to catch it before it falls further, before it becomes something he cannot ignore.
I am lucky he walked forward and didn't see my eyes glow.
Then I move again. Because he is watching.
“You stopped,” he says, his voice cutting through the quiet with that same measured precision he applies to everything.
“I’m fine,” I answer, too quickly, and I know he hears it, knows the shape of what I am avoiding even if he cannot yet see all of it.
His steps slow beside me.
“That’s blood,” he says.
I exhale once, controlled, steadying myself before I turn just enough for him to see that I am still standing, still moving, still functional, even as I press my sleeve briefly beneath my nose, wiping away what remains.
“It happens,” I say.
“That isn’t an explanation. You had a vision.”
“Yes,” I agree quietly, meeting his gaze before letting it drop again, careful, deliberate, “and you’re not getting one right now.”
Silence follows, but it is not empty. It sharpens, tightens, his attention settling fully on me that feels almost physical, like a hand closing around something fragile just to test if it will break.
“You expect me to ignore it,” he says.
“I expect you to trust that I know when it matters,” I reply, my voice low, steady despite the lingering ache behind my eyes, despite the way the vision still echoes at the edges of my thoughts, “and I will tell you when it does.”
His gaze does not leave me.
“And if I decide it already does?”
“Then you’ll ask again,” I say, “and I’ll still give you the same answer.”
The tension holds between us, stretched thin but unbroken, and I can see the calculation in him, the instinct to push, to take, to demand clarity where I am deliberately denying it. Then, unexpectedly, he lets it go.
“For now,” he says.
Agreement, not surrender. It is enough. I shift my head slightly, acknowledging it without making it larger than it is, and continue forward, matching his pace, keeping close enough to remain useful, controlled enough to remain unreadable.
Inside, the vision still burns. But he does not get to see that. Not yet.
We move deeper into the ruin, and I let him take the lead more often than before, offering direction only when necessary.
Withholding it would create suspicion, because I need him relying on himself, not on me.
I need him making choices without my guidance, because every step closer to the artifact is a step closer to something I will not allow to happen.
I see the ruin differently now. Not as a place to navigate. As a weapon.
Every cracked column becomes a potential collapse. Every narrow passage a choke point. Every unstable section of ceiling a delay waiting to be triggered, and I map it all silently, storing each possibility, each advantage, each way I can slow him, stop him, if it comes to that.
Because it will.
The decision settles into me with a weight that feels almost calm. I will not let him take it. Not because I hate him. Not because I fear him. But because I have seen what happens if I don’t.
And yet, the thought does not come cleanly.
It does not sit without complication, because the image of him standing alone in that vision does not leave me, not the destruction, not the aftermath, but him, unchanged in ways that matter, still controlled, still deliberate, still himself and not himself all at once.
I do not trust him. I cannot. But I do not want that future either.
Which means I am walking a line I do not fully understand, between stopping him and protecting him from something he does not even know. And that is far more dangerous than choosing a side.
“Which way?” he asks, pausing at a split in the structure where two corridors stretch into shadow, identical to anyone who cannot see beyond the present.
I step closer, just enough to appear engaged, just enough to maintain the illusion that I am still what he believes I am. Useful. Cooperative.
I glance left. Then right. I already know which path leads closer. I also know which one buys me time.
“This one,” I say, indicating the longer route, the one that winds through narrower sections, through areas I have already marked as unstable, areas that can be used if I need them.
He watches me as I speak.
“Confident?” he asks.
“No,” I reply.
A truth, shaped carefully.
His gaze lingers, then he nods once and moves forward, accepting the direction without comment, and I fall into step beside him.
Inside, everything has already changed. I know that whatever this is between us, whatever fragile, shifting understanding has formed, it will not survive what comes next if I let that future happen.
So I won’t. Even if it means becoming exactly what he expects. Even if it means he never understands why.