The fire had burned low.
Lyssara lay curled on her side, cloak wrapped tight around her, breath slow but uneasy. Her notebook rested beside her, pages open to half-finished sketches of burning gods and black wings.
Vaeren did not sleep.
But that night, he dreamed.
It began with blood on marble.
The halls were endless — white stone veined with gold, echoing with distant choirs and chains. Banners hung from archways as tall as mountains. Each bore a different symbol — the flame, the sword, the crown, the sun.
And at the center of it all stood Vaeren, younger and unsealed, draped in war-born regalia. No cloak. No calm.
Only power.
"They fear you," said the man beside him.
Tall, gleaming, draped in celestial robes. One of the Seven. One of the High Gods.
"Good," Vaeren replied. "They should."
They stood over a map — not of nations, but of realms. His hands marked them with lines of ruin. Kingdoms that no longer existed. Empires now dust. Monsters slain. Worlds burned.
"Your victories disturb the balance," the god murmured. "You are… not like the others."
"I was never meant to be."
In the dream, the memory jumped — as if something refused to be remembered clearly.
Suddenly, Vaeren stood in chains.
Massive, living chains that screamed when they moved. He bled from a hundred wounds — wounds not made by blades, but by betrayal.
Before him, seven thrones.
Empty.
Above him, the gods who once praised him now whispered judgment like cowards behind veils of light.
"You are not a god," they said.
"You are a calamity."
"Good," Vaeren whispered.
"Then I will show you what a calamity truly is."
And then… fire.
Light. Collapse. The world folding inward.
And silence.
Until…
"Vaeren."
A voice.
Soft. Mortal. Now.
He opened his eyes.
The dream vanished like smoke. The ruins returned. The cold.
Lyssara knelt beside him, her hand lightly on his shoulder — trembling slightly, but not from fear.
"You were murmuring something," she said. "You… don't usually sleep."
Vaeren sat still.
He said nothing for a while.
Then:
"They chained me because I would not kneel."
"To the gods?"
"To anyone."
The fire crackled quietly.
Lyssara didn't ask more.
But when he turned away again, she looked at him — this man who had shattered realms and dared to defy divinity — and for the first time, she didn't see a monster.
She saw a wound.
And she wondered how much of him still bled.