What happens when a city is alive? When the ground beneath you hates you? When every breath you take… feeds its lungs?
The world didn't freeze. It convulsed.
When the Heart of Velvora opened its eye — that colossal, slit-pupil thing, neither beast nor divine — time didn't stop in the usual way mortals describe it. It hesitated. It recoiled. As if the laws of motion were afraid to move forward.
Asher's legs refused to function. His mind throbbed with cold recognition. That eye — it wasn't just seeing him.
It remembered him.
"Asher… Blackwood."
The name rippled through the chamber, not as sound, but as sensation. A thousand nerves firing at once, rewriting memory, seizing blood and bone. Not shouted, not whispered — declared.
Rosa's breath caught in her throat. Her blade trembled in her grip. Lucien stepped back unconsciously, hand sparking with unstable glyph energy, already braced for the worst.
And then the glyph-chains snapped.
Not all at once — but one after the other. Each burst sent a concussive wave through the air. The once holy-looking scripture burned violet, then crumbled into ash. The chamber shook with the agony of release.
Crack.Crack.CRACK.
The last chain shattered with a blinding pulse, and Rosa screamed — not from pain, but from instinct. She threw her hands forward, conjuring a blue shield of runic glass just in time as the Heart of Velvora let out a roar.
But this roar wasn't a sound from a throat — it was like tectonic plates grinding together, a cry from the core of the planet, ancient and anguished. A soundless howl that pressed on the soul.
Above them, far beyond the crypt-cathedral…
----------------------------------------
Velvora — Surface Level
Cracks webbed across the central plaza like veins forming on glass. Statues wept dust. The sky dimmed, not by clouds, but by intent. Magic flickered, gutters groaned, and glyph-streetlamps hissed into nothing.
Succubi mid-seduction in back-alley dens froze in mid-movement, spines arching. Masked cultists in the ash district dropped to their knees and began chanting in old tongues. Even the hounds of the Abyss, known for their silence, howled in unison — as if mourning something not yet dead.
In the topmost level of the Watchtower, Commander Blythe stood at her window. She clutched the edge of the frame with white knuckles.
"Something's bleeding beneath the city," she muttered. "Something old… is waking up."
----------------------------------------
Back Beneath the Cathedral
The Heart pulsed — once.
And the shockwave wasn't physical. It was psychic. A silent scream that knocked all three down as though gravity had betrayed them.
Asher hit the wall hard. Lucien bounced across the obsidian floor. Rosa was flung into one of the vein-tunnels that pulsed like arteries.
"You three," said the voice again, deeper this time, like mountains speaking in sleep."Are the final defiance."
The glyphs lining the walls began to spin. Not randomly — they spiraled like clock hands made of burning silver. Patterns emerged. Languages formed. Sentences.
Asher blinked — and somehow, he understood them.
"This world is a prison.""You are the key.""All doors must bleed."
He pushed himself up. His blade buzzed violently with raw glyphic feedback. Purple and black energy crackled around the hilt. His chest heaved. Sweat rolled down his temple, despite the freezing temperature of the chamber.
"We can't let this continue," he said through clenched teeth. "If this city's alive, then we're putting it down."
Lucien gave him a grim smile. "Killing a city. Sounds like a you kind of plan."
Rosa, quieter than either of them, stood slowly and placed a hand over her heart. She didn't look at them. Just at the chamber around them. The walls. The veins. The curse.
"I loved this city," she said softly. "I was born in its gutters. Raised on its rooftops. I've lost more friends here than I can count." She inhaled, slow and painful.
Then she whispered, "Forgive us. We loved you once."
And then she charged.
Rosa was first — her twin blades gleaming like dying stars. She danced between the hanging arteries, slicing at them with precision. Where her weapons met flesh, ichor hissed and spat. But the city fought back. The arteries shifted mid-swing, turning from sinew to iron. Blade met metal with a scream of sparks.
Lucien knelt, inscribing rapid-fire glyphs into his forearm's gauntlet. With a flick of his fingers, they exploded outward — glowing bullets of unstable rune-energy. They struck the Heart's bindings, fracturing bone-like braces and throwing chain fragments into the air.
Asher sprinted straight at the core. His blade — alive with rage — connected with the Heart's outer layer. The moment it sliced through flesh, he saw it.
A memory.A child.An altar drenched in candlelight.The child offered. The city's pact renewed.And in the distance — five spires. Five names. Five betrayals.
Each cut he made weakened the Heart — but weakened them, too. The entire chamber began to quake. The walls beat in sync with the Heart — a failing lung gasping its last.
"It's not just cursed," Asher whispered. "It's… a machine. A prison-engine. Feeding something underneath… even this."
Then it split.
------------------------------------------
The Original Watcher Emerges
The Heart peeled open, not like flesh but like a chrysalis. Something stepped out.
Or rather, floated.
A humanoid figure. Skeletal. Wrapped in glyph-chains that slithered across his body like snakes. His eyes — not eyes — time. Glass lenses filled with shifting calendars, forgotten hours, and broken timelines.
His voice was dust. His presence was age.
"I am the Watcher," he croaked. "The first. The last. I made the pact."
Rosa gasped. Lucien took a step back. Even Asher felt his legs falter.
"You cannot end this," the Watcher said. "You are inside the contract. Your breath is ink upon its terms. Your blood is the clause."
Asher raised his sword again.
"Then we'll break it."
The Watcher did not attack. He smiled — and pointed at Asher's chest.
"The curse is bound to you, child of Blackwood. You carry the last tether in your blood. To end the city…"
He opened his palm. The heart pulsed behind him.
"…you must die."
[End Of Chapter 115]
---------------------------------------
Next Chapter:
Chapter 116 – "Contract of Blood and Bone"The truth of the pact is laid bare. The Watcher reveals the full cost of undoing the curse. But Asher soon realizes — his life may not be enough. Because the curse runs deeper than blood. It runs through memory.