Time no longer moved cleanly for Asher Veinheart.

It blurred — an ever-thickening fog of days and dusk, sleepless nights bleeding into battle-scarred mornings. Only training grounded him. That, and Lunira, who had become a near-constant presence at his side. She shadowed him not out of fear or obligation, but with the fervor of a soul desperately seeking shape — trying to understand what kind of force she was becoming.

And Vicky... Queen Vicky Veinheart... was visibly pregnant now. The child she bore had begun to radiate faint pulses of Aether — not magic, not yet, but something older. Something waiting.

The people of Ashhold saw it all.

They saw what Lunira had become to their king — heir, shield, light in his long shadow. They saw the queen, luminous and defiant, still giving orders as though the war had never paused. And they saw Asher himself — god-forged, void-cored, no longer wholly Sylvari, no longer wholly mortal — but still theirs.

He sat now in the volcanic depths beneath the city's heart, where molten stone met ancient Aether veins and the air shimmered with elemental weight. Here, the gravity pulled differently. Time moved like oil. Breath felt thick with magic.

He sat cross-legged in absolute stillness. Breathing slow. Controlled. Every breath a calculation. Every moment a razor held against the inside of his mind.

Then, without warning, he stood — a single, fluid motion — and unleashed the Core.

A pulse of impossible energy flared outward. The reinforced walls of the arena blazed to life, glyphs igniting as containment fields snapped into place. The protective shields — runed with Void-dampening alloy and living Aether circuits — caught the backlash, hissing as spacetime bent subtly around him.

He moved into the next phase of his brutal ritual.

Draining. Rebuilding. Draining again.

It was a cycle forged in madness. A tethered singularity around his body distorted light itself, warping the stones beneath his feet as the Void Core fed and folded. The violet runes etched into his skin shimmered constantly now, threading through his golden arm and spine like a second bloodstream. His right eye — the abyssal one — swirled with the color of dying stars, while the left blazed with a solar flame.

This was no longer a man learning to use a weapon.

This was a man becoming the weapon.

And still… it wasn't enough.

He drew harder. Pushed deeper. Until his legs trembled and his lungs burned and the lines between flesh and power thinned to near-collapse.

Then — clenched fist. Recontain.

The gravity snapped back. The shield dimmed. Asher exhaled, steam rising from his skin. He wiped his brow and stared down at the blackened stone floor.

Who built this Core? What purpose had it once served? And what would the Skyward Throne do… if he sat upon it?

The thoughts barely formed before a presence interrupted them.

Lunira's voice echoed from the stairway: "Father... you're holding it longer. The gravity used to flicker by now."

Asher turned toward her. Her eyes, those familiar shades of spring and ash, traced the glowing runes that ran across his chest and along his golden arm.

He smiled — tired, but proud. "Thank you. There's still a long road ahead… but I can feel it now. The Core isn't resisting me anymore. It's quiet. Present. Almost like it was always supposed to be part of me."

Lunira stepped forward, smiling. But as her foot touched the threshold of the arena — she froze.

Her body convulsed.

Her eyes rolled white, and she collapsed in a sudden seizure. Her limbs jerked violently as a shriek of Aether bled from her lips, disrupting the resonance of the room itself. Asher was at her side in seconds, cradling her, shouting her name.

"Lunira! What's happening?! Stay with me!"

Then — her breath steadied. Her eyes flickered open.

But she was pale. Drenched in cold sweat. Shivering.

"I… I saw something," she whispered. "Memories. Or visions. I don't know. They felt like mine… but not."

"What did you see?" Asher asked, voice calm but iron-threaded with concern.

"A woman… already dead. Lying beside me. And I was dying too. Looking up at this… figure. A man, smiling. Watching me bleed out like it gave him pleasure."

Her voice cracked. "And it felt real. Like I've been there before. Like it was me on that floor."

Asher held her tighter, his mind already racing through every potential cause — the leyline attunement, the rise in her Aetheric resonance, the living memory of the Veins themselves…

"We'll find the cause," he said. "No more training today. Go rest. Eat. We'll call Sylthara and Aetheros."

She didn't argue.

He lifted her in his arms and began the long climb through the ascending staircases of Ashhold's inner sanctum. By the time they breached the final tier into the palace, she was asleep in his arms — her expression soft, haunted, but peaceful for now.

The palace was alive with purpose. Masons shouted orders across scaffoldings. Couriers raced through the halls with letters bound for mountain enclaves and desert tribes. Architects shouted designs for the rebuilt Aether College. Young recruits sparred in the halls with instructors, their blades echoing with defiance.

Ashhold wasn't just growing.

It was becoming inevitable.

Asher passed Lunira to a trusted staffer. "Take her to her chambers. Keep her warm. Send for a healer."

Then he saw her.

Vicky. In command as always.

She stood in the lower plaza, hands on her hips, issuing orders to a pair of stunned architects.

"Tell the masons we expand outward if we run out of space. Stack higher if you have to. Build more walls. Reinforce the bastions. These people left everything — and they will have homes. I want shelters, foundries, irrigation lines and flame grids by dawn."

The architects bowed in unison. "Yes, my queen. At once."

They fled.

Asher walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her from behind, his palms settling gently over the firm curve of her belly.

"How are you feeling, my love?"

She leaned into him — just for a second — before exhaling. "Tired. Edgy. It's different when I'm not holding a blade. Statecraft is its own battlefield."

Her voice lowered. "And I miss her."

Asher didn't have to ask who.

"I do too," he said quietly.

She turned to face him, one hand resting on his chest. "How's her training going?"

"She's attuning quickly. She can hear the Veins now. Not manipulate, not yet — but she's close."

He paused. "But something happened. She collapsed. Seizure. Aether-induced, I think. She saw something — not a vision, but a memory. Her own. But from another life, maybe. A woman's death. Her own death."

Vicky's eyes darkened. "That's not normal. She's touching something older than Aether lines. You should call Aetheros. Or Sylthara."

"I will," Asher nodded. "I'm heading to the council chamber now. Meet me there?"

She gave a faint smirk. "Always."

Asher turned and began to climb the long spiral leading to the tallest spire in the kingdom — the war tower of Ashhold, where gods, monsters, and kings all had their turn at fate's table.

The Void Core pulsed quietly in Asher's chest as he crossed the threshold of the high council chamber — a vaulted sanctum near the summit of Ashhold's war-tower. Its walls were ringed with ancestral banners and blades, each a fragment of a broken world reforged. The floor was laid in soft Durnvar furs, woven with emblems from every allied hold, and the air held a constant hush — as though the room remembered each strategy whispered into its stone.

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The hearth, as always, burned with a gentle, blue flame. No smoke. No scent. Sustained by a weave of Aether and shadow, it consumed nothing, yet radiated endless warmth.

Asher moved without ceremony to the head of the crescent table — a massive slab of Voidglass shot through with starlight. He lowered himself into the throne-like seat carved for him alone, its frame layered in metals no forge could name.

A moment later, Vicky entered. She walked with quiet authority, the swell of her belly now unmistakable beneath her reinforced robe. Despite the pregnancy, she moved like a queen forged in fire — and sat beside him without a word, her presence anchoring him as it always had.

Then Asher exhaled, and spoke into the unseen tether that bound them all.

"Come. We have something to discuss."

The bond flared silently in his mind — four souls braided across distance and thought.

Before the final word could finish forming, light bent beside him — not as a ripple, but as a knowing smile.

Aetheros emerged from pure illumination, stepping into the chamber like a dream coalescing into flesh. Her expression was warm, amused even, and her braided silver hair shimmered with constellations as she lowered herself into the seat at Asher's left.

"You called, my Champion?" she asked, her voice like velvet across a bell's chime. Her eyes glinted with quiet concern beneath the usual serenity.

Before Asher could answer, shadow twisted upward from beneath his chair.

Sylthara rose with practiced silence, her form blooming from the blackness like ink in water. Half her body remained submerged in that unnatural fold of darkness — a throne of shadow wrapped around her waist — while her jet hair curled like tendrils around Asher's shoulders. She draped over him with the familiar intimacy of a promise never spoken aloud.

"Hello, Master," she purred, her voice silk over daggers. "How may I serve?"

Asher leaned forward, one hand running through the faint glow of the Void runes on his golden arm. His face was drawn, thoughtful.

"It's Lunira," he said. "Something happened today. During training, she collapsed. Her eyes went white, and Aether poured from her mouth. When she woke… she spoke of visions. She saw her own death — or what she believed was her own. A woman lay dying beside her. A man was watching. Laughing. She said it felt like a memory. Hers. But also… not."

The room stilled.

Aetheros was the first to speak. Her fingers laced together atop the table, expression sharpening.

"That kind of collapse… it sounds like a sympathetic resonance," she murmured. "A soul memory. They occur when a spirit begins to brush against echoes of past selves — sometimes ancestral, sometimes karmic. But in Lunira's case…" She hesitated. "It shouldn't be possible. Not unless—"

"She's like me?" Asher interrupted, his voice low.

"Not identical," Aetheros said carefully. "But… adjacent. A mirror with a different reflection."

Sylthara's eyes narrowed. Her voice dropped into something more serpentine. "A blood-bound reincarnation, perhaps. Or a spiritual tether lost across lifelines. If Lunira touched the Veins too deeply, she may have awakened something not meant to surface yet."

Asher ran a hand down his face, breath tight. "That's what worries me. If she's glimpsing the death of someone she was… how did that soul return? Why now?"

Sylthara tilted her head. "That… depends on where her soul has traveled. And who's been watching it."

Vicky spoke then, her tone calm but edged with maternal fire. "You're saying this could be the result of something inside her — or something tracking her?"

"Possibly both," Aetheros admitted. "Sometimes, when a soul is reborn from trauma… the scar travels with it. Especially if it was claimed, even briefly, by a power greater than death."

The words hung like a guillotine.

Asher's jaw tightened. "So we don't know if what she saw… was prophecy. Or memory."

"No," Aetheros said. "But there is a way to find out."

Sylthara's smile was slow. "The Echoing Veins."

Asher glanced between them. "What are they?"

"A river of memory beneath the Vein network," Sylthara said, her voice almost reverent. "Hidden deep, where souls sometimes leave impressions behind. Only a few can walk them. Fewer survive it."

Aetheros nodded. "It's dangerous. But if Lunira's visions are bleeding through, it may be the only way to trace the thread."

Asher didn't hesitate. "Then we go. Tomorrow."

Vicky nodded without speaking

Asher gave a reluctant nod

"I want answers. I've felt like I was becoming something unknown for too long. But if Lunira's walking a path like mine… I need to know if she's meant to stand beside me…"

He paused.

"Or replace me."

No one spoke.

Because in that moment — none of them knew.

Asher didn't sleep that night.

He lay in silence while the hours bled dry around him, the sheets twisted with restless weight. His body, despite its divine resilience, had grown taut with unease. No amount of Void mastery or meditative breath could quiet his mind.

He kept seeing her — Lunira — sprawled on the stone, her eyes eclipsed in white, her voice trembling as she whispered about death that felt like memory. A memory not of someone else… but herself.

It echoed too close. Too familiar.

He had lived this. The soul displaced. The world reborn. But where he had carried the burden of remembering everything, she bore the strange ache of remembering nothing… and yet feeling it all.

And beneath that fear, another shadow stirred — the thought of Delaney, his lost daughter, her smile still stitched into the hollows of his mind. The ache never dulled. And now, as if fate were pulling threads tighter, the past seemed to be calling again — through Lunira, through the Veins, through memory made real.

Eventually, exhaustion claimed him.

And dreams, as always, betrayed him.

He awoke with a start, drenched in sweat, eyes catching the first gold of morning flooding through the tower's crystalline slats. The heartbeat of Ashhold thudded faintly in the stone around him — a city rebuilding itself through hope and heat and hammer blows.

Vicky stood by the mirror, already dressed in her tailored combat robe reinforced with storm-threaded silk. She adjusted the bracers over her arms, catching his reflection behind her.

She turned, expression soft but edged.

"Morning, my love," she said. "Are you ready to find out the truth?"

Asher sat up, rubbing his eyes, still half in the fog of memory. A whisper of dread pressed against his ribs — old instinct. "Yeah," he muttered. "I'll go get Lunira."

He dressed quickly, donning his reinforced armor. The new plating had been crafted by Ashhold's best — Void-containment alloys laced with rune-threaded Aethermesh. An innovation born from collaboration: Sylthara's shadow-weavers, Aetheros's channelers, and the alchemists of the palace had turned pain into purpose.

Strapped across his back was the obsidian longsword Kaelen had forged him — a blade carved from bedrock taken from the first battle outside Aetherhold. Vein-infused. Alive. Etched with Aether-script that pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat synced to his own.

Asher cinched the final buckle, gave Vicky a soft nod, and turned toward the eastern hall.

Her hand brushed his as he passed.

"Whatever you find down there," she said gently, "don't lose yourself to it."

He didn't answer.

Not with words.

Just outside Lunira's door, Sylthara's voice curled into his mind like silk sliding beneath skin.

"Don't fret, Master," she whispered. "This could be a blessing. You never know what lies in the Echoes. We may even glimpse Brynn's soul... if it lingers."

Asher froze. "Is that even possible?" he asked, silently, tightly.

"Yes. But… echoes fade over time. Brynn gave everything to shield this kingdom. What remains of her may be scattered, thin — if it still endures at all."

He didn't reply.

The silence between them was heavier than any thought.

He exhaled, lifted his fist, and knocked once.

"Come in!" Lunira called almost instantly.

He stepped inside.

The room was still dim with morning. The scent of lavender oils lingered in the corners — a calming blend the attendants used to soothe magical fatigue. Lunira sat near the arched window in soft training garb, brushing out her hair. The faint pulse of Aether rippled around her skin — gentle, natural now. She was adapting. Evolving.

Her smile was small but sincere when she saw him.

"You look like you haven't slept," she said.

"I didn't," he replied.

She set down the brush and stood. "Is it about what I saw?"

He nodded.

And then, before she could speak again, a swirl of shadow pooled in the corner of the room — not with menace, but with elegance.

Sylthara stepped forth, her bare feet soundless against the stone.

Her eyes were unusually serious.

"If we're going to find answers," she said, "we must descend. To the rootlines. The true depths. Beneath even the old crypts of Ashhold. Down into the earth's unspoken places — where memory sinks like marrow into bone."

Lunira glanced at Asher. "That's where the Echoing Veins are?"

Sylthara nodded slowly. "Yes. The Echoes run beneath the living veins of this world. A place where time folds in on itself. Where trauma, birth, death, rebirth — all of it leaves a scar. The Veins remember. And if Lunira's soul is bleeding across lifetimes… that's where the blood is pooling."

Asher crossed his arms. "How do we get there?"

Sylthara's eyes glinted. "We Void-step. Like we did to escape Nyxhold. Only this time, we follow my signal. I'll lock onto the rhythm of the Echoes from here, and guide us through."

He raised a brow. "Will it be more precise this time?"

A sly smile touched her lips. "I've improved. Besides, the Core won't resist you now. You are the anchor. I only need to thread the path."

Lunira swallowed. "And when we arrive?"

Sylthara's gaze settled on her. "You will see what is meant for you. And possibly, who you were."

Asher placed a hand on Lunira's shoulder.

"You don't have to do this," he said.

But she shook her head.

"No. I do. I need to know what I am."

And just like that — the path was chosen.

Asher unchained the Core.

The air bent with pressure, then split — not with sound, but with absence. He closed his eyes, locking onto the echo Sylthara threaded into his thoughts, a tether of shadow and memory leading into the unknown.

Reality folded inward.

Light vanished. Form unraveled. Time forgot its name.

And in the next breath, the chamber was empty — as if the three of them had never stood there at all.

Only silence remained.

And the faintest flicker of starlight in the stone.

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