Chapter 7: "The First Portal"

  "When a god bleeds, the whole world trembles – but when a god weeps, their tears open doors that should never be opened."

  — Torn page from the Book of Thresholds, Forbidden Library of Valtherion

  The Blood of Nytheris

  Veylis felt the air turn leaden before she saw the change.

  The Spider-Queen shuddered violently, her grotesque body convulsing. Her arachnid legs retracted against her abdomen as her face—Veylis's own face—twisted into pure agony.

  "She’s waking," the creature screeched, her voice splintering into dissonant tones.

  The living loom pulsed in response, its threads vibrating like strings of a colossal instrument. The suspended bodies thrashed in unison, mouths open in silent screams as amber fluid leaked from their eyes, noses, and ears.

  Veylis fell to her knees as the ground moved beneath her. What she’d assumed was rock now revealed its true nature—living flesh, wet and pulsating, veined with thick cords pumping silver fluid.

  Then came the smell.

  Metallic like blood, but with a sweet, sickly undertone of rotting fruit. Veylis covered her nose, but it was too late—the scent seeped into her lungs, bringing fleeting visions:

  A tall, slender woman with hair floating like seaweed in stagnant water, weeping tears that shone like fallen stars.

  Those tears hitting the ground and tearing holes in reality.

  Things crawling out of those holes, ravenous.

  "Nytheris," Veylis choked, recognizing the Weaver in her vision.

  The Spider-Queen laughed, a wet, needle-filled sound.

  "She abandoned us first," the creature hissed, dragging closer. Her breath reeked of decaying meat. "Left her mistakes behind like a mother abandoning deformed children. But now... now she weeps again."

  A violent tremor shook the chamber, chunks of the ceiling collapsing. Veylis rolled aside as something that wasn’t quite stone crashed where she’d been—a petrified bone fragment that twitched like living flesh when she touched it.

  "Why bring me here?" Veylis shouted over the cacophony.

  The Spider-Queen tilted her head at an impossible angle.

  "So you witness what comes. So you remember when all others forget."

  Then, in one sudden motion, a foreleg stabbed through Veylis’s chest.

  No pain—only an icy cold spreading from her sternum like melting frost. When the limb withdrew, it pulled something glowing with it: a golden thread, thin as hair, pulsing with its own light.

  "Your most precious dream," the Spider-Queen whispered, devouring the thread with a wet snap. "Thank you for the gift."

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  Veylis collapsed, darkness swallowing her vision. Her last sight was the Spider-Queen rising over the loom, her lower body splitting like a grotesque flower to reveal a pulsating portal where her abdomen should be.

  And something from beyond that portal looked back.

  The Dreaming Blade

  The sword wept silver blood.

  Kael, Gorin’s last surviving apprentice, watched with equal parts fascination and terror. The blade Thrain had sacrificed himself to complete now lay on an oak table, its runes throbbing like a heartbeat.

  With each pulse, a new drop of metallic fluid welled at its tip, pooling on the earthen floor. But worse were the whispers—barely audible voices rising with the tears:

  "...they shouldn’t have forgotten me..."

  "...the cut still hurts, even after centuries..."

  "...find the broken blade before he does..."

  Kael stumbled back. These weren’t just voices—they were memories, fragments of lives now trapped in the cursed metal. And they were growing louder.

  When the barn door burst open, Kael nearly screamed. In the doorway, bloodied and soot-streaked, stood someone he never expected to see again.

  "Gorin?!"

  The old smith was unrecognizable. Half his face was burned away, revealing muscle beneath. His right arm ended in a bandaged stump, and his favorite hammer—now chipped and warped—dripped that same silver fluid as the sword.

  "Little time," Gorin rasped, his voice smoke-ravaged. "They’re coming."

  Kael didn’t need to ask who. The low hum from the abandoned mines was answer enough.

  "What do we do?" he asked, helping the smith sit.

  Gorin looked at the sword, his weary eyes reflecting its pulse.

  "We learn," he said simply.

  Then, to Kael’s horror, Gorin grabbed the blade with his good hand—and plunged it into his own chest.

  The scream that followed wasn’t human. It was a thousand voices shrieking in unison, a chorus of agony that vibrated the very air. The light that erupted from the sword blinded Kael, throwing him backward.

  When his vision returned, Gorin was dead—but the sword now floated midair, wreathed in silver mist. And within that mist, a shadowy figure began to take form...

  A figure holding what might’ve been a sword—or just the hilt of a broken blade.

  The Portal of the Forgotten

  The Golden Spires were burning.

  Silaris sprinted through ruined halls, his lungs scorched with every breath. The Council was dead or worse—he’d seen Elyrion dissolve like wet sand, revealing the yawning void beneath the flesh.

  And the screams...

  By the gods, the screams.

  Not of pain or fear, but of forgetting. Vanire men and women shrieking their own names, clawing at memories slipping like water through their fingers.

  Silaris turned a corner—and froze.

  Where the Grand Hall of Eternal Verdict should’ve stood, there was only void. Not darkness—absence, a hole in reality even light dared not enter. And along its edges, shapes writhed, emerging like swimmers from black water.

  Voids.

  Hundreds. Maybe more.

  Silaris staggered back, his heart pounding painfully. Then he felt it—a presence behind him.

  He turned slowly, already knowing what he’d see.

  Elyrion—or what remained—stood there. His body was now mere smoke threaded with those same starlike pinpricks.

  "You were always the cleverest, Silaris," the not-Elyrion whispered, its voice coming from everywhere at once. "So I’ll give you a gift."

  A shadow-hand touched Silaris’s forehead.

  And he remembered.

  The truth of the Spires. The Council. The Vanires.

  The First Portal, opened millennia ago by Nytheris’s mistake.

  What the Voids truly were.

  When the knowledge peaked, Silaris Vanire began to laugh.

  And laugh.

  And laugh.

  Until his throat tore and blood ran down his chin.

  Yet still, he didn’t stop.

  How could he?

  It was all so hilariously tragic.