Chapter 70:
The Shadowborn Are Coming.
I. Beneath the Veil of Heaven
The stars had barely regained their shimmer when a low hum began to echo across the boundary between worlds. It was a sound not born of matter or vibration, but of intention—dark, ancient, and long-buried beneath the laws of creation.
In the dead space between galaxies, the first ripple split through the void. Then another. Like knives tearing silk, the fabric of the cosmos began to unravel… not fully, but enough.
Enough to let them through.
The Shadowborn—souls that were never supposed to exist. Children of regret. Beings made from discarded possibilities and severed timelines. And at their head, cloaked in strands of forgotten light, came the Herald of the Usurper—a fragment of his former glory, sent to locate and erase the divine child before fate could seal its promise.
> "The child lives," the Herald whispered to the void. "We must make sure it never becomes."
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II. The Child Dreams While Awake
In the sanctuary where the Fifth Root anchored heaven to earth, the divine child sat cross-legged, eyes half-open. The chamber hummed around them—soft, breathing, almost alive. Yet the child was not focused outward. No. Their gaze pierced the skein of reality, looking back across a thousand lives.
And they remembered.
Each memory, each echo of a life lived and lost, was a thread woven into their soul.
> "My name… was once Ar'miel, then Doro, then Iska… and now...?"
They touched their chest. No heartbeat. And yet, they lived. Beyond life. Beyond death.
Outside, Echo watched in silence. He no longer tried to speak. The child was becoming, and even his thoughts felt like thunder in the sanctity of that moment.
But deep inside him, a voice spoke.
> "Protect it. Or all this becomes meaningless."
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III. Errin Awakens—Changed
Errin's breath returned not with ease, but with resistance, as if the galaxy itself hesitated to return him to its rhythm. His wounds had closed, but not healed. Not fully. He had poured everything—blood, marrow, soul—into preparing the vessel.
Yet as he opened his eyes, he felt stronger.
Not in power. Not in spirit.
But in purpose.
He looked at the child, then at Echo. A weight settled on his shoulders, but it no longer felt like a burden.
> "The storm is coming," he said quietly. "But we no longer hide from storms. We command them."
And as if to prove his words, the air thickened. The sky outside the sanctuary darkened, though no sun had set. A cold wind whispered through the seals of the chamber.
Something was coming.
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IV. When the First Shadow Fell
High above the sacred valley, where clouds met the atmosphere's last breath, a shape emerged from nothing. Tall. Cloaked. Burning at its edges with reality undone.
The first Shadowborn stepped onto solid space and turned its eyeless gaze toward the ground.
It saw nothing. It saw everything.
With a twitch of its long, fingerless arm, it summoned a second, then a third. By the time the veil of darkness cleared, seven had come.
And they spoke in one voice:
> "The child must not be allowed to rise."
Their fall from the sky was not descent. It was judgment.
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V. Ancients Stir
Beneath the Valley, under roots so old even time had forgotten them, the ancient souls of the Valley stirred. They had watched Errin's sacrifice. They had felt the birth. And now, they felt the encroaching doom.
One by one, their tombs cracked open—not from death, but from readiness.
Ghosts of sages. Kings with halos made of stardust. Fallen warriors turned spirits of flame. They were Errin's ancestors, and they had not come to sleep again.
> "Let them come," one spoke, brandishing a blade made from comet bone. "Let them try."
> "We have lost before," another said, "but this time, we have a child worth dying for."
And their bodies, once shadows, began to glow.
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VI. The Battleline is Drawn
The valley began to change. Trees leaned back. Mountains groaned. The rivers thickened, heavy with divine essence.
Echo stood before the child, ready.
Errin unsheathed the blade he once forged from his will. His gaze was calm.
> "Let them come," he said again.
> "We are no longer running."
And in the sky above, the Shadowborn screamed.