The pain in Selene's hand was no longer pain. It was something deeper — an ache that whispered in forgotten tongues, curling through her veins like molten ice. She stumbled back from the obsidian altar, shards of the shattered sphere still glowing faintly around her feet.
The man in the cloak did not move. He stood as if carved from the night itself, his gaze unwavering. The lightning's afterglow clung to him, painting his silhouette in silver.
"You've awakened it," he said, his tone heavy with an emotion she could not name. "And now… it will hunt you."
Selene's breath came ragged. "What will?"
He tilted his head slightly, and for the briefest moment, she thought she saw something ripple behind his eyes — not light, not shadow, but a third thing, unnameable. "The Veins are not rivers of light," he murmured. "They are arteries. And you have just torn open the heart."
Before she could speak again, the ground beneath them trembled. From the cracks in the earth seeped threads of radiant gold, winding upward like vines, pulsating with a rhythm that matched her heartbeat. The air grew thick, humming with a pressure that made her teeth ache.
Then came the sound — a low, mournful cry that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. The golden veins around her writhed, coiling tighter until they split open, spilling a blinding luminescence.
Through the light stepped… something.
It was not a creature in the way mortals understood. Its form bent the edges of reality — a shifting lattice of light and darkness, its presence both beautiful and unbearable. Eyes bloomed across its form like constellations, each one watching her with ancient hunger.
Selene's knees weakened. "What… is it?"
The cloaked man's voice was barely a whisper. "The first thing the gods buried."
The being moved without moving, closing the distance between them in an instant. Every breath Selene took tasted of metal and ash. Her pulse was no longer her own; it belonged to the thing, thundering in perfect synchrony with the glow in its chest.
She wanted to run, but the veins of gold had already crept up her ankles, binding her to the earth.
The creature's many eyes focused on her. One voice spoke from them all, layered and harmonic.
**_You are the fracture. You are the bridge._**
Her mind screamed, *I am neither.*
The cloaked man stepped forward then, placing himself between her and the impossible being. For the first time, she saw him clearly — and what she saw was not human. His face shimmered like a reflection on disturbed water, features rearranging faster than her eyes could follow.
He turned his head toward her. "If you wish to survive, Selene… step into the shadow."
The veins pulsed harder, the golden light now streaked with crimson, like sunlight through blood. The sky above split again, this time wider, and from it fell droplets of scarlet rain.
She hesitated. In the golden creature's gaze, she felt both destruction and promise. In the man's words, she sensed betrayal and salvation intertwined.
Somewhere far above, the sky learned to bleed.
And Selene had to choose where to stand.