The forest thinned after the battle.
Raen, Nira, and Talin moved in silence, the glass trees growing sparser until they entered a clearing where the earth sloped into a bowl-like depression. At the center of it sat a shard of obsidian embedded in a cracked stone altar—faintly pulsing with blue and red light.
No plants grew around it. No insects moved. Even the wind died at its edge.
Talin broke the silence. "That's definitely cursed."
"It's whispering," Nira murmured, staring at it. "Not like before. It's clearer now."
Raen didn't respond. He could hear it too.
Not hundreds of voices—just one.
A single whisper, deep and sharp like a sword slicing water.
"Who holds my edge?"
Raen stepped forward.
The whispers inside him hissed. Kavran's voice echoed, concerned:
"That is a Jyothra Fragment. It remembers what it was—before the war shattered it."
"What happens if I touch it?" Raen asked.
"It'll show you its last truth. Maybe you survive it. Maybe it takes something from you."
Raen drew a breath and reached out.
Nira grabbed his wrist. "Don't. You're already carrying one cursed blade. You touch this thing, and who knows what part of you it'll eat?"
Talin watched, arms crossed. "We came for answers. Not ghosts."
Raen stared at the fragment.
It pulsed once.
Then again.
And he let go of fear.
His fingers brushed the obsidian surface.
---
🌀 [Memory Surge – Echo Vision Begins]
The sky turned to smoke.
Raen stood not in a forest—but on a battlefield made of swords. Endless weapons pierced the earth, shattered and buried. Blood rivers ran between them. Screams filled the horizon. Above all, two figures clashed in the sky—
One cloaked in stars, wielding a blade of void.
The other wrapped in chains of light, bearing the Veinblade.
And Raen understood: this fragment came from that blade—shattered during the final scream of a Whisper War no mortal remembered.
The Veinblade wasn't just cursed.
It was unfinished.
The memory ended in a sudden, crushing weight.
Raen staggered back, coughing blood.
The shard in the altar had changed—it now floated slightly above the stone, humming in resonance with the sword on Raen's back.
"It recognized you," Nira whispered.
Raen wiped his mouth. "It showed me something. Two whisper gods. One wielded the Veinblade… but it wasn't whole. I think the fragments scattered into the world."
Talin let out a low whistle. "So we're collecting pieces of a god-killer. Just another Tuesday."
Raen turned to the others.
"This was a test. A seal. There are more."
"And if the Crimson Fang gets to them first?" Nira asked.
"Then they'll rebuild the Veinblade—and someone will wield it without hearing it first."
A pause.
Then Raen reached into his pouch and pulled a binding scroll.
"We take this fragment. And we find the next one before they do."
---
📍 Elsewhere, Watching From the Mist...
A figure in a crimson mask watched the clearing from atop a shard tree.
Her breath fogged in the cursed air, but her aura never wavered. Slender and tall, she wore ceremonial fang robes, marked with twin serpent runes.
The Coilblood commander, Seyra of the Unspooling Vein, whispered to herself:
"Little whisper boy found a piece…"
She smiled.
"Good. Now let's see what he does when we break the next one first."