Arc II: Veins of Mourndusk
The low hum of Mourndusk's pulse veins echoed through the hollow corridors like the breathing of a buried beast. Lanterns swung from bone-laced chains, casting pale blue flickers across the obsidian walls. Here, deep in the Soulweft Chambers beneath the Ashborn Quarters, Vrakon sat across from Asha Voarn, the Domain Carrier whose presence bent the air like truth unraveling.
The room was circular, carved from layered soulstone, each wall engraved with sigils of remembrance. Symbols from lost languages. Prayers offered to gods long devoured by the silence.
Asha leaned forward, her copper-toned armor catching the flicker of nearby flame-orbs. Her expression, always poised, held a different weight now — not command, but curiosity.
"You've changed since the lake," she said softly, eyes scanning the spiral mark faintly glowing across his back. "Or perhaps... you've simply awakened into what you always were."
Vrakon didn't respond immediately. The silence between them had never been uncomfortable. It was... understood.
"I didn't ask to be this," he finally said.
"And yet here you are," Asha replied, placing a hand over the central crystal orb on the floor. The chamber lit with lines of light — threads of memory stored within the stone. "You've crossed into the third realm. Core-Born. But your Genesis Pulse doesn't move like others'. It turns. Spirals. Devours itself before it burns brighter."
"It keeps me alive."
"Or keeps something else inside you alive," she muttered.
A pause.
Then she stood, and began to trace a large spiral on the stone floor with a chalk-dusted gauntlet. As she spoke, seven glyphs appeared along the spiral's rings.
"There are seven known Realms of Power in Varkai," Asha began, voice steady like ritual.
---
I. Mortal Realm
"Level One. Mortal Spark. No Pulse. The weak. The dying. The forgotten."
"Level Two. Essence Initiate. The first breath of Pulse. A flicker. Dangerous if unchecked."
"Level Three. Core-Born. Where you now stand. The Genesis Core forms — a second heart beneath the soul."
"Level Four. Law-Touched. They bend one natural law — flame, shadow, blood, memory, even death."
"Level Five. Domain Carrier," she said, touching her own chest. "We walk with our own truth made real. A field of power. A reality scar."
---
II. Ascendant Realm
"Level Six. Echo Ascendant. Few reach it. Their souls leave echoes through space-time itself. Ghosts that live in tomorrow."
"Level Seven. Myth-Tier Entity." Her voice dropped lower. "Semi-divine. Able to rival Pulse-Eaters. Able to destroy realms... or merge with them."
---
Asha stepped back, letting the spiral fade.
"Most Fracta-Wielders die before they reach Level Four. The world itself eats us alive before we learn to master what breathes within us."
Vrakon tilted his head. "But not you."
"I earned every inch of my power in the Scarspire, where names rot and truths scream back at you."
He paused.
"And these places—Scarspire, Hollow Nest, Abyssum Maw—"
She nodded, tension settling behind her eyes.
"They are where Genesis Pulse twists into hunger. Where the soul forgets itself and becomes... need. The creatures that dwell there aren't just monsters, Vrakon. They are Pulse-Eaters—born from corrupted wielders or soul-beasts that devoured too many echoes. And now they hunt us."
She stepped forward, her hand reaching toward him—then stopping just short of his chest.
"But your Pulse…"
The air shifted.
Vrakon closed his eyes.
And let it bloom.
The chamber darkened—not from light fading, but from something else bleeding through. The markings across his spine ignited like molten silver, burning through the back of his tunic. From his sternum, a deep black Pulse surged outward—dark as void, edged in silver like fractured starlight. The spiral shape rotated slowly, rhythmically, pulsing with life far older than the present moment.
Asha stumbled back, her domain briefly unraveling as her field of influence collapsed inward.
"Impossible..." she whispered. "No Core-Born should carry a Pulse like that. It's not—it's not mortal."
Vrakon didn't speak.
Because something inside him had begun to breathe with him.
Not a voice. Not a memory. A weight.
Asha steadied herself, then stared. "That color… black and silver. It's not tied to any known element or law."
"No," he said flatly. "It's tied to pain. To... surviving what shouldn't be survived."
A long silence passed.
Asha finally whispered, "You are not a Wielder. You are a... mirror of something vast and undone."
He said nothing. But in that moment, she looked at him not as a soldier — but as a question.
One that scared her.
---
Elsewhere, near the outer edge of the Mourndusk underbelly, Nemea sat beneath a shivering obsidian archway. Her silver eyes stared into the cracked pool below — not at her reflection, but at the echoes within it.
Nemea (murmuring to Yarri): "You know asha over forty, right? Doesn't look it at all."
Yarri: "That's what being near Lv. 5 does to you, I guess. Pulse keeps the soul fresh… or something."
"Too many voices today," she whispered, rubbing the spiral tattoos across her collarbones. "But one... is louder. Clearer."
She closed her eyes.
And there it was.
A heartbeat, spiraling backward. A scream caught in time. A throne made of fractured light.
Her lips parted.
"Vrakon," she murmured. "You're not just broken. You're returning."
From the shadows nearby, Yarri painted on the cracked stone wall with ash-mixed pigment. Her fingers moved slowly, reverently — and the image that emerged was unsettling.
A dark figure standing over a sea of spirals.
Eyes burning silver. A black-and-silver crown floating above his skull.
She didn't know what she was painting.
Only that the ash wanted it painted.
She turned slightly, looking toward Nemea.
"Do you think he knows?"
She shook her head.
"No one knows what they are... until it hurts too much to deny."
They both went silent, their bond unspoken — she heard the echoes, and she painted them.
A voice drifted in from the Pulse-winds crawling through the undercity.
"The Hollow is watching."
---
Back in the chamber, Asha Voarn sealed the room with her domain once more. The pulse-surge from Vrakon's release had left hairline fractures along the chamber walls.
"Keep it sealed," she whispered. "Don't let them see it. Not yet."
Vrakon nodded once.
"Will it destroy me?"
"No," she said, eyes sharp. "But it will try to use you."
Then her voice softened.
"You've survived more than anyone here could imagine. That Pulse... it's your scar. Your weapon. Your curse."
Vrakon stood.
The mark on his spine pulsed again—slow, calm, unending.
"Then let it try."