The blood in his veins burned.
Not from fever. Not from poison. Not even from magic in the usual sense of the word. No, what coursed through Vaelric Thornvein's body now was something older than magic, older than history itself. It burned with memory—alive, pulsing, and waiting. As if it remembered a world that had long since forgotten it.
He stood beneath the broken bones of the moon-temple, the ancient colonnades sheared by time and trembling skyfire. Shards of star-glass littered the floor, and ash rained in slow, silken sheets from above. The heavens burned dim now, as though the gods had drawn their curtains closed.
Vaelric's breath steamed faintly in the twilight chill, though the night was not cold.
He ran trembling fingers over the weatherworn sigils carved into blackstone pillars, their edges still sharp despite centuries of erosion. The stone radiated warmth, faintly alive—like skin over bone. Sigils flared under his touch, flickering in colors no mortal eye was meant to see.
Words meant for the vanished. And yet, they whispered.
> "He Who Carries the Flame Carries the Fall."
A simple line. But tonight, it coiled through him like a snake of fire. The air tasted of scorched copper and regret. He'd read the line a thousand times before—hells, it was etched into his dreams—but now it felt different. The weight behind it had changed.
Or perhaps… something beneath them had stirred.
From the distance, a dry wind blew through the broken arches and carried with it the scent of dying leaves and something older still—like dust from a sealed tomb. Mourna-petals drifted through the ruins, last remnants of the season's final trees, their crimson edges curling as they caught in the wind.
And then a voice broke the silence.
"Your father stood here once," it said softly—like falling ash, like the break of old glass. "Before the fire unmade him."
Vaelric turned sharply, heart lurching.
A figure moved through the half-light—a woman carved from moonlight and exile, her robes stitched from strands of silver dusk and soot-darkened linen. Her eyes caught what little starlight pierced the fog, and reflected none of it back.
Nyshara Vexilune. Moonborn sorceress. Exile of the Pale Courts. Keeper of Forgotten Doors.
She stepped forward, and with her came the scent of scorched parchment and night-blooming sage.
"He saw the flame in the stone," she continued, nodding toward the awakened runes. "Just as you do now."
"And it destroyed him," Vaelric said, voice low.
Nyshara smiled faintly, but there was no joy in it. "No. It revealed him. And once revealed… he couldn't look away."
"I'm not him."
"Are you not?" she asked, studying him like one might study a blade turned inward.
He didn't answer.
Nyshara stepped past him and placed her hand on the pillar. The runes blinked like opened eyes, then vanished. She frowned.
"The Codex doesn't care who reads it," she said. "Only that they are willing. It follows bloodlines like a hound. And you, Vaelric Thornvein, reek of inheritance."
---
That night, sleep did not come. Not in the ruined temple, not by the fire, not even in dreams. For Vaelric, there had been no true sleep in months. Not since the night the flame first woke within him—rising without warning, turning his brother's voice into cinders before the screams had even stopped.
He sat now beside the flickering remnants of their campfire, bare hands outstretched, palms upward.
Silver lines traced across his skin like cracks in a mirror filled with starlight. The veins gleamed faintly, almost pulsing to the rhythm of a heartbeat that wasn't entirely his. The curse, they called it in the North.
But in the East, in the vaults of the Ember Archives, it bore another name:
The Waking Vein.
A sign not of punishment—but of selection. The Codex's mark. Its key. Its curse.
And its voice.
He didn't ask for it. Didn't want it. But the Codex was never a thing one found. It found you.
Not a book. Not anymore. It had once been words. Now, it was will. A sentient, smoldering relic of some forgotten god's final breath. A relic that whispered only to those it meant to consume.
Vaelric had bled—and the Codex had spoken.
And ever since, it had whispered in his bones, like wind through a grave.
"You're too still," came a voice behind him, gruff and warm, like gravel soaked in wine.
Draum Ironfell appeared at the edge of the firelight, dragging a limp wildhare by the ears. His beard glistened with dew, and his copper-ringed armor creaked as he dropped the carcass beside the flames.
The dwarf sat heavily on a stone and leaned close, sniffing the air. "That means you're either brooding again, or the voices are back."
Vaelric didn't respond.
Draum shook his head. "Let me guess. The Codex told you your toast will betray you and your bedroll is cursed."
Vaelric offered a half-hearted smile. "Something like that."
The dwarf unslung a short dagger and began cleaning the hare. "You know what I'd do if some damned flaming artifact kept whispering into my ear?"
"Shove rocks in your skull?"
"Exactly," Draum said, grinning wide. "At least then I'd control what nonsense I hear."
Vaelric chuckled once, and it felt strange. Foreign. The firelight glinted off his silver-veined hands. They didn't feel like his anymore.
---
By dawn, the runes had vanished.
Where once the sigils had glowed, now there was only blank stone—untouched, unwritten, erased.
Nyshara swore under her breath.
"This shouldn't be possible. Sigils this old don't fade—they last millennia."
"Not erased," Vaelric murmured, running his hand across the pillar. "Fed upon."
The stone was warm. Too warm. As if something had licked clean the letters of old magic and swallowed them whole.
Nyshara's expression twisted in worry. "Then the Codex is no longer dormant."
She pulled a sheaf of raven-feathered parchment and an obsidian quill from her satchel and began sketching what she could from memory.
"If it's feeding, that means the seals are weakening."
"What seals?" Draum asked, scratching behind his ear.
Vaelric rose slowly. "The gate beneath the Weeping Hollows."
Draum blinked. "That crater full of ghosts and fog?"
"That's the one," said Nyshara without looking up.
The dwarf folded his arms. "Bloody brilliant. Let's go to the spooky pit full of whispering shades and ancient death. Why not?"
---
They reached the Weeping Hollows three days later.
The land changed slowly at first—green giving way to grey, stone giving way to splinters, and wind giving way to silence. Soon, all that remained of the valley was petrified wood and blackened roots. Mist lay thick as wool, clinging to their ankles and breathing like a living thing.
Ghostlights moved through the branches—some drifting aimlessly, others watching.
Vaelric felt the change in his blood before he saw it. The silver in his veins burned hotter here, responding to something in the earth. Or beneath it.
They crossed what had once been an orchard grove. The trees were long dead now, but their twisted trunks bore scars of magic—runes half-melted, glyphs seared to cinders. Something had passed through this place long ago, and the land had not recovered.
Nyshara read aloud from one of her recovered fragments:
> "Beneath the hollow flame, a scream is buried—not by stone, but by silence."
Draum made a rude noise. "I still say you lot should just say 'haunted as balls' and leave it at that."
"It's more than haunted," Vaelric said.
"What is it then?"
"It's sealed."
They found the gate beneath a tree that wasn't a tree.
Its roots were obsidian. Its bark was flesh. Its leaves were shadows.
Rings of runes circled its base like scars, growing deeper the closer they came. As Vaelric reached toward it, the fire in his blood snarled and recoiled.
He staggered back, gasping. "It doesn't want me."
"No gate does," said Nyshara gently. "Not without a tithe."
Vaelric frowned. "What kind of tithe?"
"A memory."
"Whose?"
Nyshara didn't answer. She simply drew a thin dagger from her robe, turned her palm skyward, and made a cut across the flesh.
---
The gate opened with a scream that didn't belong in this world.
It sounded like thunder dragged beneath the ocean—like centuries of silence breaking all at once.
The cavern beyond wasn't built. It had grown—veins of molten light ran through the walls like arteries, casting dim, throbbing illumination. The shadows between them moved as if alive, coiling and stretching when no one looked directly.
And at the heart of it all sat a figure.
Not human.
Not demon.
Not dead.
Not alive.
It sat wrapped in chains of bone and burning script, each letter searing itself into the air around it. Its face was hidden by a veil of black flame, and its mouth was stitched shut—not with wire, but with strands of moonlight.
And yet—it watched them.
Vaelric staggered as the fire in his chest ignited without warning. It screamed in his ears. His heart raced. His body tensed.
"What… is that?" Draum whispered.
Nyshara knelt slowly, reverently. "The First Reader."
"The what?"
"The one who spoke the Codex's name when it was still a star. The one who burned the sky to learn the truth."
The veiled figure raised its head, chains clinking softly. It did not move. It did not speak.
But Vaelric heard it.
Not with his ears.
With his blood.
> "Child of fire… cursed of vein… I see you."
The cavern shook.
The shadows deepened.
The stitched mouth moved in silence—and Vaelric felt something beneath the world crack.
And the Codex… awakened.