Velmire's heart was dying.
Not metaphorically—literally.
Beneath the city, deep under cobbled roads and cathedral foundations, lay a divine leyline: a river of raw holy essence, woven by Serathiel's hand during the Dawn Wars.
The priests called it the Vein of Light.
Ashen had found it.
And now… he would corrupt it.
In the crumbling crypts beneath the Temple of the Third Sun, Ashen knelt before a broken statue of Serathiel.
The face was missing. The wings snapped. The halo cracked.
A fitting altar.
Around him stood six cultists: Lira, two former monks, a disfigured noblewoman, and two children rescued from a flame-cleansing.
Tahlon did not attend.
He must remain pure—for now.
Ashen spoke softly, as if not to wake something sleeping in the stone.
"We are not here to desecrate.
We are here to reclaim.
The gods stole our hope and fed us silence.
So now we drink from their bones."
He placed a shard of the Sunshard Dust—the defiled remains of Serathiel's icon—into a stone bowl filled with rainwater gathered from church gutters.
He added his blood.
Lira added tears.
The children added ashes from their parents' prayer books.
And the ritual began.
The ground trembled faintly.
A single line of gold light cracked through the floor, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Then it turned gray.
Then black.
🔸 You have corrupted a Divine Leyline
🔹 + Echo Rank: B (Now Desecrator)
🔹 + Corruption: 35.7%
🔹 + Divine Infamy: 24 (Leyline corruption detected by all major Churches)
🔹 + Relic Gained: "Blightroot Core" – grants Scourge influence in radius
🔹 + Territory Gained: 1st Cult Domain – "The Hollow Pulse" beneath Velmire
🔹 Cult Trait Gained: "Leybound"—All rituals within Domain gain +50% potency
🔹 Divine Awareness Risk: Critical
🔹 Watchers Deployed
🔹 First Divine Dream Mark received
That night, Ashen slept.
He rarely dreamed. But now… they dreamed of him.
He stood on a field of burning thrones.
He walked among golden bones and weeping angels.
At the center of the dreamscape, Serathiel's eye opened—vast, lidless, divine.
It saw him.
And then it blinked.
Ashen awoke sweating.
Lira stood at his bedside, pale and shaking.
She had dreamed it too.
Meanwhile, Inquisitor Virelle had begun systematic interrogation of the Velmire court.
She burned scrolls. Tortured scribes. Called nobles to kneel and swear under celestial brands.
But she could not touch the prince.
Not without risking rebellion.
And Ashen knew it.
He sat behind Tahlon during court sessions, quiet, deferent.
But when Virelle spoke, he smiled with his eyes.
Three days after the corruption of the leyline, miracles began to fail in the city.
A holy well turned sour
Blessed crops withered overnight
Priests found their words lost mid-prayer
The people began to whisper:
"The gods are leaving us."
Ashen whispered back:
"No… they were never here."
From the far north, a divine envoy was dispatched.
Not a mortal.
Not a priest.
A Watcher, cloaked in wings of broken glass and voices.
It descended toward Velmire.
And in its shadow, crops died before its feet touched ground.