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đź“– Chronicles of the Watchers
Chapter 19: The Sleeper in Chains
The Vale trembled.
The Hunters slowed, not from mercy but from caution. Their blank masks turned upward, toward the darkness above. Even their weapons lowered, as if sensing something greater than their own god's will.
The chain beneath Kairo and his companions shuddered again. From the abyss rose a sound—not metal, not stone, but something alive. A slow exhale, so vast it rattled the crystals in the walls.
Selene froze. Her eyes widened with terror.
"No… it can't be."
"What is it?" Kairo gasped, half-dragged along the chain.
She swallowed. "One of the Sleepers. Bound when the Watchers fell. A Nephilim that never died."
The dark shifted. And then eyes opened.
Two colossal orbs of molten gold flared in the shadows, peering through the abyss like suns behind smoke. The shape of the creature was lost in distance, but its outline scraped against the walls of the Vale—horns like shattered towers, wings torn and rusted with chains, a body bound by sigils that glowed faintly across its skin.
The Hunters stepped back, forming a circle, weapons raised—not at the mortals, but at the Sleeper itself. For the first time, Kairo saw hesitation in them.
The beast's voice rumbled across the chains:
"Who wakes me from the silence of ages?"
Kairo staggered, his mark burning like fire. The Sleeper's gaze fixed on him instantly.
"Ah. A vessel. A child of Azariel."
The chains snapped violently, sending the group tumbling toward another ledge. Liora seized Kairo and shoved him ahead, her face grim.
"We cannot fight that. Move!"
The Hunters clashed with the awakening Sleeper as the mortals fled. Sparks and screams echoed, metal against flesh, the Bell of the Hours tolling again and again as Hunters fell and rose anew.
Selene dragged them toward a crumbling stair spiraling upward, leading to a fissure of light in the Vale's ceiling. "That's our way out!"
The ground convulsed. Shards of crystal shattered into the abyss as the Sleeper's roar shook the world.
They burst through the fissure just as the chain beneath them tore free.
Air. Sky.
For the first time since the Abyss Vale, stars greeted them—scattered like shards of fire across a wide, endless night. Below stretched rolling plains of silver grass, glowing faintly under the moons. Strange trees rose in the distance, their branches like black lightning against the sky.
Kairo collapsed in the grass, chest heaving. He turned back, just in time to see the Vale sealing itself behind them, the Sleeper's roar echoing once more before silence returned.
Selene dropped beside him, lantern cracked but still glowing faintly.
"The world is wider than you know, Kairo. And so are its enemies."
Liora's gaze remained fixed on the horizon, her hand tight on her blade.
"And wider than that…" She nodded toward the plains, where faint lights moved—campfires, hundreds of them, far below.
They weren't alone in this land.
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⚡ End of Chapter 19.