Chapter 4 The Veins of the Forgotten
"To awaken is not to rise but to remember."
The mountain breathed.
Not in the way living things did but in the silent pulse of ancient veins. Deep beneath the jagged obsidian cliffs, under the rain-bled moss and shattered pillars of long-lost empires, something old stirred. The cave Icaris had stumbled into after the Trial of Streams was not just a hollow wound in the world it was a vein.
He had thought he would rest. After the torrent of pain and illusion in the Trial, his limbs had been heavy, soaked in exhaustion. But when he crossed the boundary stone etched with runes too old for even Saela's tongue the world had shifted. The pressure in the air doubled. Light seemed to bend.
And then the stone beneath his feet had breathed.
Thrum.
Like a heartbeat, but colder. Hungrier. Older.
Icaris didn't run. He couldn't not because he was brave, but because something in him recognized this rhythm. As if his bones, deeper than blood, had once moved to this same pulse.
He walked.
Each step echoed. Not just in the air but in his mind. The voice from before the one that had spoken when he first awakened in Aetheris was silent now. But its absence felt intentional, like a teacher watching a student solve something on their own.
The cavern ahead widened. It was massive. More like a forgotten cathedral than a cave pillars of black crystal twisted upward into the ceiling like veins, pulsing with soft, violet light. At the center stood a monument: a statue half eroded, faceless, cloaked in a mantle of thorns and flame. Its arms were outstretched as if holding something invisible.
Beneath it: an altar of stone. Cracked. Stained.
But more than anything it was familiar.
Icaris didn't question. He stepped forward and knelt.
Something shifted.
The light in the cavern dimmed, all at once, like a great eye closing. The pulses slowed. The air grew thick with Aetherium so pure it felt like it was dragging emotions out of him, memories he hadn't wanted to relive.
His death.
His life before.
The feeling of being average. The rejection. The futility.
The rage at being nothing.
The guilt of wanting more.
"You do not kneel to power," a voice growled from the dark. Not ethereal. Not divine. Human. Bitter.
"You rip it from the bones of those who buried it."
Icaris stood.
A figure stood at the edge of the altar's circle shrouded in layered armor like forged bark, half machine, half flesh. One eye glowed with red circuitry; the other, black and dead. A hybrid. Machina and Vara. Impossible.
"I am Kaelreth. Warden of the Forgotten Veins," the man said.
"Icaris Thanis," Icaris replied, breath steady, even as his instincts screamed at him.
"You passed the Trial of Streams," Kaelreth said, circling. "Most break. You broke… and rebuilt. That was not the stream testing you it was you testing yourself."
Icaris said nothing.
Kaelreth stopped, his one living eye narrowing.
"There are veins under the world, Thanis. Ancient flows of Aetherium that cannot be touched by raw will. They require synchronization not just with power, but with truth. Self-deception severs access. Only one who has shattered their illusions can walk the Veins."
Icaris slowly stepped toward the statue. "And if I want to walk them?"
Kaelreth gave a sharp laugh. "Then first… you bleed."
Scene The Baptism of the Vein
Kaelreth struck without warning.
Aether surged a jagged beam of blue flame that curved midair, an unnatural arc of Machina-forged Lux.
Icaris raised his arms on instinct. The Etherblade, newly-formed and still unstable, surged from his palm not a sword, but a shard of energy, wild and jagged. It sang against Kaelreth's beam, shattering both in a thunderclap.
He slid backward, boots scraping sparks.
Kaelreth didn't press. "You didn't dodge. Why?"
"Because it didn't feel like death," Icaris said softly. "It felt like a lesson."
Kaelreth's gaze sharpened.
"You're not just remembering. You're relearning."
Suddenly, the statue behind Icaris shifted. Not physically. Spiritually. The outstretched arms
began to emit a faint hum, and from between its fingers flowed threads Veins of light. They slithered through the air like serpents made of memory.
Five of them.
Each a color.
Lux. Machina. Vara. Nox. Etherion.
Icaris stepped toward them. And one by one they recoiled.
Except one.
Etherion.
The rarest. The forbidden.
The thread touched his chest.
Scene Memory Collapse
The moment Etherion touched him, the world unraveled.
His vision turned inside out.
Suddenly, he wasn't in the cavern but standing on a battlefield, watching himself kill someone. Not as Icaris. As another man.
A king. A tyrant. Clad in violet flame and bone-forged armor, his voice cold with righteousness.
"You will kneel to the will of Aetheris," he had said, driving his blade into a crying child with silver eyes.
Icaris screamed.
Back in the cavern, his body arched, choking. Kaelreth stepped back, eyes wide.
"Your Etherion… it's not pure," the Warden whispered. "It's inverted. You are the echo of a broken god."
Icaris fell to his knees. "Then I'll rewrite him."
Scene Legacy Claimed
The threads twisted around his arms like shackles. Not harming but reminding. Of what he had been. What he might still become.
But Icaris didn't reject them.
He embraced.
The pain was monumental.
Each Vein pulsed once, twice and then locked into his body, like his soul had just been sewn back together with thread soaked in flame.
When he stood, his eyes were dimly glowing. Not with power.
With clarity.
Kaelreth nodded once.
"You have begun."
MVP Segment Icaris Thanis
"The Name That Remembers"
"To be born again is not a blessing. It is a challenge to your former self, a call to war.
If I must wear the face of a tyrant in memory, then I will earn the soul of a rebel in truth.
Power does not forgive. It remembers. So I shall give it something worth remembering."
Icaris Thanis, upon forming his first Etherion Vein