The Forbidden Vaults beneath the Sacred Flame Church
Deep beneath the scorched stones of the Sacred Flame Church—far below the sermons, relics, and the illusion of divine order—the vaults throbbed with a silence more ancient than the city itself. Blue witchfire flickered in hanging braziers, their ghostly glow painting stretched, shifting shadows across endless shelves of chained tomes and scripture so old the parchment had become brittle with forgotten truths. The air here was dense—laced with the scent of ink, ash, and things meant never to be known.
High Inquisitor Seraphin Vale moved through the stillness like a shadow given form, his crimson and black robes whispering behind him. Each step he took was deliberate, heavy with the burden of memory. Behind him followed Inquisitor Mairen—young, sharp-eyed, and visibly uneasy. Her boots echoed across the stone floor with the crispness of uncertainty.
"Every lie we've told was meant to shield them," Seraphin said, his voice low and deliberate. "But lies, like walls, must be rebuilt before they crack."
Mairen's gaze wandered across the dim alcoves and sigil-etched doors. "This is where we kept the oldest texts? The Pre-Rift scriptures?"
He stopped before a heavy iron door, its surface crisscrossed with warding sigils and chains that pulsed faintly with heat. "The ones too dangerous to burn. Too true to forget."
With a motion practiced and solemn, Seraphin pressed the seal of his ring to the door. The chains slithered back like recoiling serpents, and the vault creaked open with the groan of a dying cathedral. The air inside was dense with static, as though the parchment within still remembered the voices of gods.
"There are whispers," Mairen said as they stepped inside. "Among the clergy. They wonder why no revelations have come. Why the altar flames dimmed. Why the stars no longer speak."
"They ask the wrong questions," Seraphin murmured, stopping before a table carved from obsidian and lined with velvet-draped tomes. "They kneel to empty thrones."
His face, half-swallowed by the flickering light, seemed carved from stone. "The High Flamebearers, the Hierophants, the Seven Exalted Speakers—gone. Dead… or taken. I remain. And I know why the heavens are silent."
Mairen's voice dropped to a hush. "The gods… left?"
"No," Seraphin said, turning to face a mural etched into the stone—a depiction of twelve figures rising through rings of fire and starlight. "They fight."
He ran his gloved fingers over the blood-and-gold imagery, then moved to an immense tome resting under wards of sealing wax. As he opened it, the divine script within pulsed faintly, its light dim and ancient.
"Mount Tambora. The rupture lines. The ash-choked skies. These are not omens—they're scars. Collateral wounds from gods at war."
Mairen's breath caught as she scanned the page. Her voice barely rose above the crackle of witchfire. "The Twelve Rites… they were real?"
"Real," Seraphin said, "and more dangerous than any weapon forged by man."
He turned the book toward her. Twelve concentric rings surrounded a human silhouette, each inscribed with glyphs that shifted subtly when stared at too long.
"The Rites are not trials of strength, but of influence. Each is a step in shaping the world's perception of you. Spread your name. Cultivate your myth. Belief is the hammer. Perception is the fire. Through it, the soul bends. It changes."
He closed the tome slowly, as though to trap the knowledge within. "Be seen as virtuous, and you ascend as a god of virtue. Be feared in silence, and you become the god of secrets. A sage guiding empires? The Keeper of Lore. A tyrant born in tragedy? Eternal Darkness. The gods we know were forged not from divinity—but from belief."
Mairen whispered, "They became gods because of how we saw them."
"Not just saw," Seraphin said. "Believed. Repeated. Sanctified in story and song. The Rites guide the transition. But no one ascends alone. The world must echo the change."
He paused, expression sharpening. "But the path is not open to all. Only the fated—those born beneath rare stars, marked by prophecy or bloodline—can walk the Twelve. For others, the attempt brings only madness… or worse."
Mairen's voice trembled slightly. "Why wasn't this ever taught?"
Seraphin's tone darkened. "Because knowledge is a blade. And we have run out of whetstones. If this truth spreads, it will call out to every dreamer and tyrant left breathing. The world will burn again—and this time, there will be no gods left to stop it."
Mairen was quiet for a long moment. Then: "What must I do?"
"Collect them," Seraphin said, his voice now steel. "Every tome. Every scroll that names the Twelve. Every hymn, fragment, ritual, anatomical sketch—seal them. Ward them. If questioned, quote doctrine. If pressed... silence them."
"And if someone already knows?"
Seraphin didn't hesitate. "Then we bury them alongside the books."
They turned back toward the exit. Above them, carved into the archway of the vault, a mural showed gods ascending a staircase of stars—each step etched with mortal acts.
Seraphin looked up, voice low and grim. "We are not the keepers of truth, Mairen. We are the dam. We hold back the flood. Not because the world deserves ignorance… but because it cannot survive truth."
Epigraph"The stars do not choose the worthy. They choose the willing. And through twelve veils of fire and faith, the willing become divine—shaped not by truth, but by belief."—The Ashen Codex, Fragment III (Sealed by Order of the Sacred Flame)