Chapter 14 – The Betrayer's Gift
---
The wind that followed Vel Saren's collapse was unlike any that had come before. It wasn't cold, nor cruel, but heavy. As if the very air had thickened under the weight of truth, of severed dreams and the thousand empty echoes that rose when a false world fell.
The people wandered now—free, yes, but untethered. Some screamed for their lost perfection. Others clung to what remained, re-learning how to weep. A few whispered Anterz's name like a curse. Others like a prayer.
He ignored them all.
---
He and Elaria didn't linger. They left the city by nightfall, after ensuring the Well was nothing but fractured dust. No sermons. No speeches.
Just silence.
They walked east, past the old scar hills and into lands where the stars no longer moved properly.
---
"Two down," Elaria murmured as they crossed a forest turned to glass by memory storms.
"Four left," Anterz replied.
Neither sounded victorious.
Each Well they destroyed took a piece of the world with it. Not physically—worse. A possibility, erased. A comfort unmade. Each blow to the Choir was a blow to the lie people wanted to believe.
But they had to keep going.
Because the only thing more dangerous than a tyrant god was a dream that asked for your name and promised to remember you better than you ever could.
---
By the third day, they reached a canyon split by lightning.
It had no name.
Only a wound—a straight, violent gash in the earth that breathed warm air and the smell of old songs.
The third Well was rumored to lie beyond it.
But they weren't alone.
---
He appeared at dusk.
A flicker of movement in the haze.
No weapon drawn.
No banner raised.
Just a single figure stepping from the mist of fractured dust, cloak fluttering in silence.
Anterz recognized him instantly.
A memory-stitched helm.
A single pauldron carved from obsidian teeth.
A blade like a flute of war.
General Sirael.
One of the Choir King's most feared hands.
And, once—long ago—his former companion.
---
Anterz raised Valteris without a word.
Elaria mirrored him, stance low and sure.
But Sirael did not draw.
He held up one hand.
Palm bare.
Eyes unreadable behind the half-broken mask.
"I'm not here to fight," he said.
His voice was unchanged. Still smooth, still deep. Still wrapped in a thousand remembered tones.
That was the problem.
---
"Then leave," Anterz growled.
"I can't."
Sirael stepped forward once.
Just once.
Anterz didn't move. He didn't sheathe Valteris either.
"Speak," he said coldly.
"Quickly."
---
Sirael looked... weary.
Not wounded.
Not afraid.
But strained.
As though carrying something too vast for one mind.
"The King is changing," he said.
"Changing how?" Elaria asked, voice hard.
Sirael's jaw tensed.
"He's begun rewriting his own faithful. The dream no longer honors loyalty. It consumes it."
He removed his helm slowly.
What lay beneath wasn't just a man.
Not anymore.
His face was cracked—not from age or injury, but from contradiction. Different selves pulling in different directions beneath the skin. A man constantly overwritten. A mind layered.
---
"I was once many things," he said. "But now? Now I am what he needs me to be, every time he speaks. And every time he sings, I forget one more thing I chose."
Anterz lowered Valteris a few inches.
Not much.
Just enough to listen.
---
"Why come to us?" he asked.
Sirael stepped to the canyon's edge.
Looked down.
Below, the world shifted—colors melting, cliffs rearranging, as if reality itself were unsure of the script.
"Because you're the only ones left," he said.
"Who still remember why we chose to break the Tower."
---
He turned to them again.
"I can't stop him. I can't fight him directly. But I can help you."
He reached into his cloak and pulled free a shard of glass—dark, humming softly.
Anterz tensed, stepping forward.
Elaria's eyes narrowed.
"What is that?"
---
Sirael held it out.
"Memory-forged steel," he said. "Refined from a Choir Well's heart. It won't be overwritten. And it won't forget."
Anterz took it slowly.
The shard pulsed in his hand.
It felt... alive.
No. Not alive.
Aware.
---
"It'll fight beside you," Sirael said. "But it will also test you. It remembers too much."
He hesitated.
Then added:
"And it contains a map. Of the third Well."
That made Anterz look up sharply.
Sirael nodded.
"I stole it. I'm not sure I even know why. I think... some part of me still remembers when I was yours."
---
Anterz stared at him for a long time.
Then turned.
And walked away.
Elaria followed, glancing back once.
Sirael stood at the edge, silent.
Waiting.
Not forgiven.
Not redeemed.
But not forgotten.
---
They made camp at the canyon's mouth.
Anterz sat by the fire, the shard between his hands.
It pulsed slowly.
Faint heat.
Faint song.
When he closed his eyes, he saw it:
A tower of bone and light.
A Well suspended over a chasm filled with mirrors of every version of himself.
Thousands.
Millions.
Each one calling.
Begging.
Daring.
And below it all—
The Choir King's throne, no longer empty.
Filled.
With something vast.
Something wrong.
Something awakening.
---
Anterz opened his eyes.
Elaria sat across from him, watching.
"You saw it?" she asked softly.
He nodded.
"The third Well's guarded by the Reflected Choir."
"What is that?"
He looked at her, voice flat.
"A memory of everyone who was never me."
She inhaled slowly.
Then said the only thing she could:
"Then we destroy it."
---
The fire cracked.
The stars trembled.
And far below, in the deep dream-wells of Elaran, the King sang a new note.
A deeper one.
A crueler one.
Because now, he knew:
The Ruin-Bearer would not break.
He would have to be rewritten.
---