The Vault of Eternity was a silent as ever . As though a cemetery for an old forgotten civilizations ; The chamber was dark , silent, dead and wider than any cathedral mortal hands had ever raised, The dark simply swallowed everything that was inside , it took the wind, took the drip of water, took even the ordinary noise of breathing, that is if anyone in that place had still needed to breathe.
At the center of the Vault , on a throne cut from stone so black it seemed to drink what little light the chamber allowed itself, sat a robed hooded figure, his hands protruding from the sleeves , were metallic and rusty.
What remained of him was wrapped in cloth the color of the dark around him.
As he finally moved , it was slow, careful, the way a man moves when every joint was in pain .
His hand found the arm of the throne. His
Fingers clenching the arm rest of the throne , he repositioned himself ; The runes beneath his palm glowed , a bizarre glow , the runes answered his touch with a pulse that climbed the stone and into him, and his eyes closed going into a trance .
As he spoke, his voice came from somewhere deep , his throat like an abyss echoing an ancient hum , low enough that it moved the air more than the ear.
"Eons went to dust and still the cycle shall hold ." He paused, as if trying to catch his breath." Chaos is bearing fruit , Order shall rise once more , The time has Come for the Fifteen to walk on earth once more ."
Nothing answered him. The whole vault was silent.
He raised his hand , the motion visibly had a toll on him , plain in the way his arm shook before it steadied , and traced a shape in the air with one finger. He Traced lines, unequal, meeting at a single point, like the spokes of a wheel that had forgotten how to be round. exactly 15 lines , the lines answered : not obediently, but like tamed servants , abiding by their masters orders , all moving past the columns and into the abyss , their destination a mystery.
"They shall be claimed once more. " he said. "Saelith sleeps in water no one has ever bothered to enter . Tharok , hasn't even gotten his birthplace yet. The rest are scattered the same as always , It's interesting how some are remembered as gods, some forgotten as Nature's characteristics, all of them waiting on someone who is yet to notice what he carries." His hand dropped back to the armrest and stayed there, as though lifting it had cost more than he had left to spend. "
" They will all stay put till one closest to him rises , One always does. Born of two things that were never meant to share a chest ."
The vault gave no answer but his sound echoed repeatedly as though reverberating through the world .
Elsewhere, On a Medieval Era Earth , each individual felt the decree pass through them like a change in pressure before a storm.
In a sea that touched no shore anyone had ever charted, suddenly waves were created.
Not far off suddenly abandoned forges lit up , though it wasn't more than a couple seconds till they died down .
Others stirred too, further out, harder to put a shape to: Shadows move in forms with no regard for what actually cast them , suddenly wind moved in chaotic directions . Fifteen of them, Exactly fifteen phenomena happened that day .
None of them has ever acted in the world , at least not in this place currently called the world.
Whatever bound them till now was older than the throne, older than the man slumped on it , older, maybe, than the cycle that has just begun .
Back in the Vault, the figure let his head fall forward. Barely mumbling under his breath.
"The weight goes to someone else now , I kept the balance in my own way for longer that I can remember , hell I can't even remember what my name sounded like . Let the next one do better. Let them do worse, even I don't care anymore. I only want to pass it on, and at last rest."
He did not sound cruel saying it. He sounded like a man setting down something he'd carried for longer than it made any sense to any human.
As the figure dropped his head completely ,
a single point of light broke loose from his forehead and crossed the dark of the chamber in a line too straight to be an accident, it didn't slow down it didn't need to. It already knew exactly where it was going.
ELSEWHERE ON EARTH
A City made of Stones and Gears , foggy and cold , with the smell of coal , smoke and greasy machines in the air , making every citizen feel heavier just breathing it's air .
The city was as lively as ever . Steam still rolled off the refinery stacks in the Lower district and settled over the rooftops like something with real weight to it, something you could taste if you breathed too deep , coal, hot metal, and underneath that, the particular sourness of the Aelthar River, which hadn't run clean in longer than anyone working the docks could remember. Gas lamps guttered along Cutter's alley, throwing more shadow than they gave light. A ragpicker argued with a foreman over the price of scrap iron. Two streets over, someone was playing a folk tune on a fiddle, horribly at that , and no one told them to stop, because bad music still beat the quiet.
Up above all that, where the air ran cleaner, the spires of the old merchant families caught the last grey light of evening on brass railings polished daily by servants who'd never once be invited past the gates for anything other than toiling and working.
From up there, the lower district looked almost pretty , smoke and lamplight gone soft and blurred, something you could paint. It seemed to mostly smell like a place people worked themselves to die in .
Down by the riverside where the Aelthar river ran shallow, a girl no older than six watched the water bend around a stone in an unusual way , but she was too young to pay it any mind . In a smithy off Ferrow Lane, a blacksmith three decades into the trade watched his forge flame flicker from orange to a blue so cold it raised the hair on his arms, blinked twice, and told himself it was the coal , probably. And in the back room of a gambling den that didn't officially exist, a gang boss with an old knife scar through one eyebrow rubbed absently at the tattoo on his forearm , cheap ink, done young, done badly , and couldn't have said why it had suddenly started to itch like it was trying to wake up.
In a stairwell off Pike Street , a boy sat with his back against cold brick and his knees pulled up to keep what little heat he had left to himself.
His name was Cairon, the last time He'd eaten was that same morning , half a meat pie, lifted clean off a cart while the vendor was busy arguing with someone about change , and he was trying to make the memory of it last him till tomorrow .
Cairon was an orphan growing up on the street , he usually got picked on by the other homeless and gang members , the reason was , his white hair , something a boy his age shouldn't have on his head.
Trying to to work a knot loose in his neck , He tipped his head back against the brick, watching the sky , what little of it the smog let through, a smear of stars behind haze, most too dim to even be noticed.
Strangely one of them wasn't behaving like the rest.
It was usually faint , fainter than it should have been to catch his eye at all , but tonight it glowed strongly as if pulsing , he looked at it and felt himself attracted to it , getting dazed , though that made no sense at all, by some old instinct built over three years and always being on high alert he tried his best and look away.
He looked down and started counting to ten with his eyes on his own boots , the left one had a hole around his toe, thinking to himself he'd need to deal with that before the cold started to set in , and when he looked up again, the light was gone like what had happened was all a hallucination. Just gone.
"Huh," he said, to nobody, because there was nobody, and pulled his knees in tighter.
"Apparently the hunger is kicking in. "
He didn't think about it again that night.
He could only think about being cold, hungry and alone .
The light was gone.
At least, that was what Cairon believed.
It had already found him.