Chapter 6: The Seer of Dust
The Wastes of Vire were not land—they were memory made into sand.
Darien walked for days. The wind here didn't howl; it whispered, like voices buried beneath the dunes. Each night, the stars refused to return. Each morning, the sun rose dull and red, like an old wound reopened.
He followed the map the priest had drawn, a scrap of faded cloth with symbols in charcoal. The only direction was a name carved into a stone: The Mouth of the Earth.
On the seventh day, he found it.
A canyon split open like the jaws of a buried beast. At its heart was a temple built from bones bleached white by sun and time. The doors opened for no one—but they opened for him.
Inside, the air was still. No torches. No sounds. Only dust, thick as smoke.
Then he saw her.
An old woman sat upon a throne of ash, her eyes covered by a veil of gold threads. Her skin was cracked like dry earth. And yet, her voice was young.
"You bring the hunger of the gods with you."
Darien stepped forward. "You are the Seer?"
"I was," she said. "And will be again."
He knelt. "I need to know how to stop what's inside me."
She tilted her head.
"There is no stopping what was born before time. But perhaps… you can change what it becomes."
She raised her hand.
A light bloomed between them—dust swirling into images: the masked man in fire, the village burning, the world collapsing.
She looked at him without eyes.
"If the blood awakens fully… the gods will return. Not as saviors. But as hunger."
Darien whispered, "Then what do I become?"
Her voice cracked like thunder:
"The first god… or the last man."