The sigil beneath Aurelianth pulsed like a living thing.
Silver-black light throbbed in spirals around his feet, sinking into the stone, rising into the air, imprinting itself into the cliffs as though the world wanted to remember the exact shape of him.
The elders trembled.
Lioren clung to his arm.
The matriarch dropped her lantern-staff in shock.
Deviation.
The word echoed through the cliffs.
Through the sea.
Through Aurelianth's veins.
He didn't understand what it meant.
Not fully.
But he felt the weight of it...the burden baked into the syllables.
Like the universe had handed him a truth with the sharp edges still exposed.
He swallowed hard.
"What…" His voice cracked. "What does this mean?"
The runes on the cliffs twisted again, forming a new pattern...shimmering, shifting, refusing to stay still.
The matriarch's voice cracked with awe and fear.
"It means the world does not know you."
Aurelianth froze.
"What?"
"You are not a continuation of the first Aurelianth," she said. "Not his return, not his replacement, not even his echo."
She gestured toward the sigil that branded the stone.
"You are something the world did not plan for. Could not predict. Something… unprecedented."
Her gaze met his.
"A being the world cannot categorize."
The silver-black sigil flared.
"Deviation."
Lioren shook her head hard. "But that doesn't mean he's dangerous! It doesn't mean he's wrong....."
"Child," the matriarch whispered painfully, "everything in this world fits a purpose. A place. A form."
Her trembling hand pointed at Aurelianth.
"Except him."
Aurelianth staggered backward. "I didn't choose any of this...."
"No," the matriarch said. "You arrived. That alone is violation."
His pulse spiked.
The clicking heartbeat buried deep inside him flared:
clickTHUMP
clickTHUMP
clickTHUMP
Lioren gasped. "Aurelianth...your veins...!"
He looked down.
His veins were glowing brighter than ever... silver light so intense it bleached the air.
The runes on his skin writhed violently, forming and unforming shapes he didn't recognize.
Something inside him...was trying to answer the cliffs.
Trying to define itself.
Trying to fit into a category the world did not have.
"No," Aurelianth whispered, clutching his chest. "Stop...stop.....please...."
The heartbeat-click grew louder, vibrating through the stone floor.
The cliffs quaked.
Lanterns swayed.
Elders cried out.
The matriarch raised her staff. "Contain it!"
But Aurelianth wasn't doing anything.
The world was reacting to him, not the other way around.
The rumbling grew sharper, like something beneath the stone was clawing upward.
A crack tore across the altar....a thin fracture that glowed with silver-black fire.
Lioren pulled Aurelianth back. "It's reacting to you! You're triggering something ancient!"
"I don't mean to!" he gasped.
The clicking sound reached a crescendo...
a rhythm that didn't belong to his body or the world.
A rhythm that belonged to the Hollow Pulse.
clickclickclickTHUMPclickTHUMPclickclick
The matriarch paled.
"It's listening…"
Aurelianth blinked. "What?"
"The Hollow Pulse!" she yelled. "It hears the cliffs judging you! It hears the world doubting you! It...."
Her voice cut off.
A tendril of cold wind rose from the altar crack
like a whispering shadow trying to escape.
The runes dimmed.
The cliffs silenced.
Even the sea stilled.
Aurelianth's breath caught painfully.
Something inside him....opened its eyes.
The Voice in the Veins
A sound filled the summit.
Not audible.
Not physical.
But undeniable.
A voice formed from pressure in the air, vibrating through bone, through breath, through every living thing on the cliff.
A voice born from hunger.
"Deviation."
Aurelianth froze.
The word struck him in the skull like a brand.
Lioren stepped in front of him protectively. "Get away from him!"
The shadow-wind responded by wrapping around her ankle.
Aurelianth grabbed her arm instinctively.
The moment his skin touched hers.....
Her markings flared with white fire.
A shock jolted through her.
She gasped in pain and collapsed.
Aurelianth dropped beside her.
"Lioren!" he whispered, panic spiraling. "I'm sorry.....I didn't mean....."
Her trembling hand touched his cheek weakly.
"It's… not you… it's the cliffs… reacting to you…"
But her voice shook.
Her markings flickered like dying embers.
The matriarch's voice boomed.
"REMOVE HIM FROM THE ALTAR!"
Elders rushed forward.
Aurelianth's veins pulsed dangerously.
"No.....don't touch me!"
But they didn't listen.
Hands grabbed his arms...and the moment skin met skin....
The runes erupted.
A shockwave tore through the summit.
Elders were hurled backward.
Lanterns shattered.
Stone cracked.
Aurelianth stood alone at the altar, chest heaving, vision blurring.
The world felt too loud around him.
Too aware.
Too reactive.
His runes pulsed like wildfire.
His veins glowed like rivers of starlight.
His breath came out in broken tremors that distorted the air.
"What… am I?" he whispered.
The cliffs answered.
"Deviation."
The wind carried the word through the sky.
"Deviation."
The sea echoed it.
"Deviation."
The very stone beneath him vibrated with it.
Aurelianth sank to his knees, choking back a sob.
"I didn't ask for this…"
"But it is what you are," the cliffs whispered.
"And what I am supposed to do?" he whispered hoarsely.
"Exist."
Aurelianth's heart stopped.
"That's it?" he whispered. "Just… exist?"
The cliffs' runes shifted.
"Exist...
long enough...
to decide what becomes of the world."
Lioren managed to push herself upright.
"What… what does that mean?"
The cliffs answered:
"Deviation chooses the path.
Creation will follow."
Aurelianth felt cold all over.
He wasn't a prophecy.
He wasn't a savior.
He wasn't a replacement.
He was a branch point...a fracture in the world's destiny.
Everything that happened from this moment forward...would hinge on the choices he made.
He was the fork in the universe.
A single tear slid down his cheek.
"I don't want this," he whispered.
The cliffs dimmed.
"Then learn to want something."
He raised his head.
"What?"
"The first Aurelianth wanted purpose.
The world consumed him."
A pause.
Stone trembling like breath.
"You must want something it cannot devour."
Aurelianth stared into the glowing runes beneath him.
Something inside him shifted.
Not the parasite.
Not the world.
Not the runes.
Him.
A choice awakening.
But before he could understand it....
The cliffs shook violently.
A scream tore through the air.
Lioren's voice.
"Aurelianth! The sea....LOOK!"
He turned.
The Shadow Sea was rising...wave after wave, towering higher and higher....forming a shape in the moonlight…
A silhouette.
Tall.
Thin.
Hollow.
Watching him.
The Hollow Pulse was manifesting for the first time.
Aurelianth's breath froze.
Lioren clutched his arm. "Get back....get away ....get away...."
But the silhouette did not move toward him.
It bowed.
A gesture of acknowledgment.
Of recognition.
Of hunger.
The cliffs' final verdict whispered through the stone:
**"Deviation…is valuable."**
Aurelianth's skin went cold.
He had been judged.
Not accepted.
Not erased.
Claimed.