Chapter 73 – The Dream of Chains
Nightfall brought no peace.
Jean sat by the fire, muscles aching from the day's clash with Kael. Beside her, Whitney snored softly, and Silvia meditated in silence—still as stone. The Guardian Grounds pulsed faintly under the stars.
But sleep came quickly.
And when it did, Celeste called.
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She stood within a vast cathedral of light and shadow.
Celeste's voice echoed before her form appeared, shaped from starfire and grace. Her wings were folded. Her face, once serene, now bore a rare edge of urgency.
"You touched the Spiral," Celeste said, her voice layered with echoing harmonics. "And the world felt it. The gods felt it."
Jean nodded. "Kael came. He said the prison is weakening."
Celeste stepped forward, lifting her hand—and reality fell away.
Jean was suddenly suspended above a great chasm, filled with chains of light stretching across a black void.
At the center of it all pulsed a grotesque mass—the Bound God, bound in silence. Its form was too vast to comprehend: eyes without eyes, mouths closed by divine sealants, tendrils curled inward like a rotting seed of stars.
Chains trembled.
Some had cracked.
"One has already broken," Celeste whispered. "The Architect is not the only one at work."
Jean clutched her arms. "Can he be killed?"
Celeste looked at her with mournful certainty. "He is older than death. He can only be bound again. But to bind him once more… a price must be paid."
"What price?"
But Celeste did not answer.
Instead, she extended her hand, and light flowed from her into Jean's chest.
"You will need the Second Spiral. It is the dance of resilience. The spiral that defies despair."
Jean gasped as warmth spread through her—visions of ancient battles, of Martin Luther spinning through monsters of abyssal form, of swords cleaving time itself in radiant arcs.
"You are more than my emissary now," Celeste said. "You are the last light."
Jean's eyes opened—
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And the fire had burned to embers.
She sat up with a sharp breath.
Whitney stirred. "Bad dream?"
"No," Jean whispered. "A warning."
She stood, drawing Luxclade, and in the morning light, began to move.
The Second Spiral had begun.
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