Veyra looked away. "The monarchs. When the city fell, I was blamed. My network of lies, my shifting allegiances….I was just their scapegoat. They cursed me with a fractured spirit, forcing me to drift through the Abyss. Not dead, not alive, just a drift."
"Until I found you."
Veyra faces a bitter smile. "Yes, until you free me."
Silence grew between them like a rift.
The Voice stirred in Aelric's mind, whispering without emotion. [She is telling partial truths. Her curse was real. Her past is somewhat real. But she has not revealed everything. There is a second name bound to her essence, one redacted from the city's records. It is masked even from me.]
Aelric clenched his fists. "I want the whole truth. No more lies."
Veyra's eyes met his. For the first time, something cracked in her. Carefully controlled mask, vulnerability, flickering like a candle's dying flame.
"You will get it," she said. "But not yet. Because if I told you what I truly am, you might use those chains on me."
Aelric turned away slowly. The glow of the forge had faded now, leaving only the darkness of old stone and the embers of secrets long buried.
He didn't speak again as they left the ruined chamber, walking deeper into the Abyssal ruin. The shackles coiled tighter around his arms, and the silence between them stretched like a blade drawn thin.
But in the silence, Aelric made a vow. He would find the truth behind Veyra. And if she ever betrayed him, he would bind her soul to the Abyss itself.
The descent grew colder with each step, the air dense with moisture and silence. The narrowing tunnel leading away from the forge dropped into a dark, spiraling downward for what felt like hours.
Aelric's torch flickered without hesitation, shadows dancing unnaturally along the walls, elongating like tendrils.
Veyra walked ahead, her pace steady, unaffected by the gloom. Her silence after their confrontation was almost more unsettling than her secrets.
The Voice remained quite good, as if the depths themselves demanded reverence.
Eventually, the tunnel widened, opening into a cavern so vast it swallowed the torchlight whole. Aelric stepped forward and gasped.
Before then stretched a subterranean lake of impossible size. The lake was called The Whispering Tides.
The water shimmered with hues of sapphire and ghostly silvery, casting reflections that made no sense, like staring into broken mirrors scattered across different worlds.
Waves lapped silently against obsidian rocks, though there was no wind or anything.
Above the lake, ghostly vapors twisted into shapes; faces, half-formed and writhing, mouths agape in silent screams or laughter.
Whispers echoed from the waters, endless and unintelligible at first, then sharpening into fragments of language, freedom, power, memory, destiny…
Aelric took a cautious step forward. "What is this place?" He murmured aloud.
The Voice spoke. [The Whispering Tides. A sacred repository, if anything can be called sacred in the Abyss. This is where lost souls, stripped of their bodies and names, are absorbed into the Abyssal current. It is both a graveyard and an archive. Danger and temptation.]
Aelric knelt near the water's edge. He could see his reflection, except it wasn't quite his. His face flickered with other features, an older version of himself, a monstrous one with horns, another with hollow eyes and bleeding hands.
He tore his gaze away. Veyra approached, gazing out at the endless expanse. Her expression was unreadable again, but her voice was soft.
"Here, the Abyss remembers," she said. "It whispers truths too old for language. Here, even the damned can glimpse possibility."
Aelric shot her a sideline look. "You brought me here on purpose."
"I brought us here because there is no other way forward," she replied. "Beyond this lake lies the next descent. But the waters are more than a passage. They are a test."
The Whispers intensified. Aelric staggered slightly, clutching his head. Voices clawed at his mind, memories that were not his, names he had never known, languages he didn't speak.
He saw images flash behind his eyes, a burning sky raining chains, a crowned figure bleeding golden light, a tower built from screams.
"Make it stop," he growled.
[Then listen carefully,] the Voice said. [The Tides respond to desire. They feed on your thoughts. They amplify what you crave, what you fear, what you hide.]
Veyra knelt beside the water and dipped a finger into the glowing surface. The ripples spread slowly, like silk unraveling. Aelric stared, half expecting her to melt into it.
[You are not supposed to drink it.] The Voice warned. [Not unless you wish to sacrifice part of yourself.]
But Veyra turned to Aelric, her eyes strangely calm. "They want to show you what you can become. The lake offers to show you your potential future, but not freely, but it also doesn't lie.
Not like the Abyss above. If you drink, you will see."
"See what?"
"Your other selves. You dates. What lies within you, what could be shaped from your soul."
Aelric hesitated, torn between revulsion and curiosity. The Tides pulsed gently now, as if aware of his indecision.
The Voice's tone hardened. [It will change you, subtly at first. But you will not leave unmarked. And the Abyss will watch.]
Aelric stared at the water. His reflection had changed again; now he wore black armor veined with red, and his eyes glowed with fire.
In another flicker, he was kneeling before a throne made of thorns. In another, he stood alone on a battlefield of corpses.
Then came the image that froze him.
Aelric stood over Veyra's crumpled body, the Soulbound Shackles coiled around her throat.
He stepped back with a gasp.
"It's just a vision,* Veyra said softly.
"But it could be real."
"Yes," she said. "So could all the rest."
They stood in silence.
Aelric's mind raced. The power he had gained since falling into the Abyss was monstrous, unnatural, but it had kept him alive.
The Whispering Tides tempted him with more insight, strength, and clarity. But at what cost? Would it become something unrecognisable?