Chapter 14 - The Nukara Waits

Darkness. Cool stone.

Within the cleft, she lies coiled, like thought before it takes the shape of speech.

They carved the breach—two soft-bodied things—young, clumsy in their movements, their breath loud in the stillness. The taller one glanced upon her but did not see. The shorter one felt. His skin prickled where her shadow brushed. His soul held the taste of brown.

Through the taller one, she hears the thrum of distant song—low, bright with ages, ancient beyond their knowing.

Not his own… an echo clinging to his presence, a resonance of someone near. The song of one unfinished—raw, rising like a wounded cry.

Her mana pulses—old-world drums beating in the void. Temple gates flung wide to a forgotten dawn. Morning light splintering through shattered glass. Like… Kullo.

She could feed the gate.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

She could unravel the ruin.

She could guide me home.

She peers into the abyss of their awareness.

I wait. I watch.

Foolish, yet touched by a flicker of bravery, she seals me in. A barrier woven for lesser entities. Old magic, deftly spun, possessing strength… yet brittle as spun glass.

She believes it will hold.

It does not. It never could.

Still… I remain.

Not by force of their frail bindings. But by the pull of curiosity.

She does not recoil when my whispers seep through the cracks in her defenses.

She senses my presence and sharpens her awareness instead of succumbing to flight. Most would scatter like startled dust.

She listens.

And so, I wait, silent beneath the weight of her unseen gaze.

She is gone, but the threads of fate draw her back.

----------------------------------------

They return. I observe their passing.

She has not yet offered the song to the gate.

She does not yet comprehend its power.

And still, I endure.

I do not expend the merest sliver of my being to follow.

Curiosity… it is a perilous bloom, a dangerous kind of hope.

I have known years that spiraled inward, consuming themselves.

I have waited through the slow, inevitable dying of empires… The long sigh of eroding stone.

I have known centuries where even the echoes of memory grew faint.

I can abide a lifetime. Because she will return.

She must.