Chapter 1 – Night Lamp of the Seventh Temple

The darkness of Iethan was never a pure black. It was a living entity, thick and shifting, lurking at the edges of perception for those who stood upon the Velmaer plateau. Tonight, the five hundred and first blood-moon cycle began its turn, pouring light as crimson as ripe honey over the seven sacred peaks, arrayed like a fallen constellation from five centuries past. I walked the stone corridor leading deep into the summit of the Seventh Temple—the temple of the unprayed god, the highest and most solitary place on the entire plateau.

Thick white mist, born from the black stone, rose from the deep fissures below the chasm, curling around my ankles like frigid silk ribbons, then slowly sinking into the gloom of the central sanctuary. Wind from the Velmaer Mist Chasm swept through the rough stone columns, carrying the breath of cold stone and ancient ash.

A small figure emerged from the shadows of the shrine, her shoulders trembling slightly in the grey-white ceremonial robes of a mist priestess. It was a junior temple acolyte, just finishing her first watch. She stopped before me, her slender hands raising a lily-oil lamp to her chest. The faint flame cast a weak glow on her pale face, reflecting the exhaustion of long hours spent guarding the void. "The mist priestess’s lamp," she whispered, her voice so soft it seemed afraid to disturb the fragments of divine souls slumbering within the millennia-old black stone. I bowed my head, taking the lamp’s cold bronze handle. "Go, rest."

The yellow lamp flickered on the stone stand as I placed it on the auxiliary altar. Its pale light barely pushed back a small circle of darkness, leaving the deeper recesses of the sanctum swallowed by long, dancing shadows that swayed with each gust of wind through the unglazed arched windows. I stepped to the edge of the open-air stone platform, which overlooked the endless abyss of the Velmaer Mist Chasm. The mist below swirled like a colossal beast breathing, devouring all light from the red moon above. Tonight was quieter than usual. The thought drifted through my mind, soft and natural, like a leaf falling onto a still pond. The silence of the Seventh Temple always held a distinct solemnity compared to the six other shrines on the plateau. Here, no prayers from the villagers echoed up from the mountain’s base, no plumes of incense rose, nor were there any statues of gods erected for worship. Only a colossal anchor stone lay solitary in the center of the sanctuary, serving as the sole anchor preventing the temple’s soul from being swept by the cold Velmaer winds into the cosmic void.

Following the proper vigil ritual of the Mist Priestess Order, I approached the monolithic black stone. Its surface was roughly hewn, covered in a thin layer of time’s dust. I slowly extended my right hand, pressing my palm against the rough surface of the ancient stone. The Seventh Temple’s stone was unusually warm beneath my touch. That warmth was not the heat of daylight, nor the glow from a hearth. It was a deep, living heat, subtly vibrating, as if a current of hot blood pulsed beneath meters of solid stone. I narrowed my eyes slightly, instinctively intending to withdraw my hand, but another, familiar sensation held me rooted in place.

The constellation birthmark on my ribs gave a faint throb. A fleeting, sharp pain, like an ice needle piercing the flesh just beneath my left ribcage. The strange, congenital mark—seven pale red points arranged like the lost Iruun-bird constellation—seemed to writhe beneath my thin ceremonial robes. I pressed my hand tightly against my side, taking a deep breath to suppress the sudden pang. Seventeen years had passed since my mother lay at the bottom of the Velmaer Mist Chasm. The mark occasionally throbbed when I touched ancient Velmaer relics, but never had it reacted so intensely to the warmth of the Seventh Temple’s anchor stone as it did tonight.

I stood motionless in the darkness, trying to regulate my ragged breathing. The shrine was so utterly silent that I could hear the drip of water at the far end of the room, each drop falling into a small fissure in the black stone floor, creating a steady, echoing sound like the tick of an ancient water clock. That dripping water became a guiding rhythm, drawing me back to the basic centering exercise of a mist priestess.

I closed my eyes, placing a hand on my chest to gauge my breath. According to the teachings of Grand Matron Esh Vorrim, counting one’s heartbeat during the night vigil was the only way to keep the mind from being overtaken by the Velmaer mist’s illusions. I felt my heartbeat—two subtle rhythms intertwined, the second deeper and a tenth of a second slower, beating just beneath my primary pulse, like a faint echo from some distant space. A distinct thump, followed by a whisper-soft beat so faint that without complete focus, I would have dismissed it as merely the vibration of blood in my fingertips. I didn’t recognize what this anomaly signified. As a twenty-four-year-old mist priestess who had never stepped beyond this misty plateau, I simply attributed it to my body’s reaction to the harsh cold of the five hundred and first blood-moon night, or perhaps an aftershock from the recent pang of my constellation birthmark.

I continued to slow my breathing, attempting to synchronize my count with the steady drip of water behind the shrine dedicated to departed gods. That night, I counted to thirty heartbeats before realizing I’d lost my rhythm.

The morning mist in Velmaer always possessed a dense white hue, as if woven from the breath of gods slumbering beneath the black earth and stone. I awoke as the night’s vigil darkness had just receded from the cracks in my room’s stone walls. My small room, located in the eastern corridor of the Mist Priestess Order, was stark and cold, furnished only with a simple wooden cot, a fired-clay water jug in the corner, and a small lacquered wooden box resting quietly on a low table. Wind from the mountaintop whistled through the narrow wooden window slit, carrying bone-chilling dampness that touched my skin. I pulled the coarse wool blanket tight to my chin, trying to preserve what little warmth I had before stepping out to face the new day.

Before stepping down from the sleeping platform, I habitually placed my right hand over my left breast, just above the simple linen shift. Beneath my palm, I counted the steady rhythm of my heart. A normal, regular beat, undeniably human. Then, immediately after, a second, fainter beat, slow and indistinct, as if another entity slept deep beneath my ribs, its breath a silent echo of my own. This dual heartbeat was a secret I’d carried for seventeen years, ever since the night I fell into the Velmaer Mist Chasm and was miraculously saved. Its existence was like an invisible phantom, a silent parasite I had never shared with anyone, not even with Soren, my closest cousin.

I walked to the wooden table, my fingers trembling slightly from the cold as I opened the lid of the worn lacquer box. Inside, nestled on its faded red velvet lining, lay the precious jade comb my mother had left me. When my fingers brushed the smooth jade surface, a cool sensation immediately spread through my palm, chasing away the last vestiges of sleep. The dark green jade comb was the color of ancient, mist-laden pine needles on Velmaer’s peaks, its teeth perfectly rounded by an ancient artisan’s skilled hand. But the strangest thing was the faint warmth that bloomed in my palm when I picked it up, a subtle heat, as if from another’s skin that had just departed, even though I knew it had rested undisturbed in its sealed box through the long, cold night.

I raised the comb to my thick black hair, drawing it slowly from crown to nape, listening to the soft crackle of dry strands in the morning breeze. My mother once used this very comb to prepare my hair before every ritual offering. Now, each stroke across my scalp brought a peculiar sense of safety, an invisible amulet against the biting cold and the desolation of this black-stone plateau. I gathered my hair into a neat bun, securing the jade comb tightly at the nape of my neck to keep stray strands from falling across my brow during the daily morning rites.

I adjusted the folds of my white ritual robe, smoothing the creases around my wrists before stepping into the hallway. Morning mist poured through the doorway, coiling around my ankles like damp, frigid silk ribbons. The gray-stone courtyard of the Mist Priestess Hall stretched before me under the Velmaer plateau’s somber dawn. The black Velmaer flagstones, soaked with night’s dew, gleamed slick and frigid beneath the thin soles of my fabric shoes. From the ancient bell tower at the center of the vast courtyard, the morning mist-bell tolled. Each deep, prolonged note vibrated through the thick, heavy air. Its sound was the signal for all mist priestesses and novitiates to begin their day, rousing them from slumber to face the hallowed silence of the temples.

From the opposing hallways, figures in white robes began to emerge, gliding silently like specters through the dense fog. They carried bronze trays laden with lamp oil, baskets of fragrant incense, or buckets of fresh water, preparing for the daily cleansing of the shrines. A profound silence enveloped the entire Mist Priestess Hall, an unwritten rule every child learned to obey upon entering its hallowed grounds. All whispers, all laughter, were strictly forbidden until the morning rites concluded.

"You’re later than usual, Yvera."

A familiar voice chimed beside me, soft yet potent enough to shatter the pervasive stillness. I paused, turning to Soren Thaal. She was my cousin, a second-tier mist priestess like myself, but her countenance always shone with a vibrancy that starkly contrasted my own habitual somberness. Soren hurried to catch up, her dark hair braided to one side, her ritual robe slightly askew from her hurried dash from the western dormitories. Her cheeks were flushed crimson from the cold, her breath blooming in faint white plumes in the early mist.

I offered a slight nod, my pace remaining as composed as ever. "The watch night stretched longer than anticipated."

"Were you at the Seventh Temple again?" Soren murmured, tugging her robe straight as we walked along the gray-stone corridor. "That place is always the coldest, the mist thickest. The Grand Mistress always prioritizes you for it, and I truly don’t understand why. Everyone else shuns the Seventh Temple, fearing the chill that rises from the Velmaer Mist Chasm, yet you always volunteer for the night shift there."

"The temple needs tending, Soren," I replied curtly, my gaze fixed straight ahead. I had no desire to explain to Soren the peculiar warmth I always found at the Seventh Temple’s anchor stone, nor how the second heartbeat within my chest seemed to pulse more steadily when I stood beneath the shadow of the Seventh Ancestor God—the deity long forgotten by this realm.

Together, we passed through the main corridor leading to the central area of the Mist Priestess Hall. As we neared the main ritual chamber, where the mist priestesses gathered to receive their daily duties and lamp oil allocations, the fog parted slightly. From the far end of the corridor, a tall, gaunt figure slowly advanced, carrying the absolute stillness of those who had spent lifetimes guarding the darkness.

Grand Mistress Esh Vorrim.

She was the matriarch of the Velmaer Mist Priestess Hall, a woman well past seventy, yet she moved with an unyielding dignity and resolute stride. Esh’s white ritual robe—its hem far longer than any other mist priestess’s—glided silently over the gray flagstones, sweeping through the thin mist like a wisp of moving white smoke. Her power and seniority were evident in the length of her robe and the intricate silver embroidery adorning its cuffs, embellishments that mist priestesses like Soren and I were never permitted to wear. Her presence always brought an invisible, crushing weight, causing all younger priestesses to instinctively fall silent and bow their heads.

Soren hastily bowed low, stepping aside to yield the path. I, too, stood still, bowing my head, hands clasped before my abdomen in the ritual greeting for the Grand Mistress.

Grand Mistress Esh stopped directly before us. Her sharp gaze, though softened by time, still held a weight that could pierce the deepest thoughts of anyone she faced. She gave a slight nod to Soren, then her eyes shifted to me. They lingered for a long moment on the crown of my head, where the green jade comb secured my coiled hair.

The air around us seemed to thicken, holding its breath for several seconds. She studied the jade comb longer than usual, a pause far too protracted for a typical morning greeting between a Grand Mistress and a junior priestess. Her gaze didn’t just rest on the emerald surface; it seemed to probe for something hidden deep within its intricate carvings, or perhaps a memory from seventeen years past that she had never once spoken of in my presence.

"Your mother’s comb is beautiful today." Her voice was low and hoarse, resonating steadily as the last chime of the morning mist-bells faded.

I subtly tightened my fingers beneath the wide sleeve of my ceremonial robe, striving to keep my voice unwavering, even as a faint pang seemed to echo in the deeper pulse of my chest at her unusual attention. "Yes. I wear it every morning."

Grand Mistress Esh did not reply immediately. She took another step closer, near enough for me to catch the scent of ancient incense and the chill of the wind that clung to her robes. Her wrinkled, gaunt fingers lifted slightly, as if to touch the jade comb in my hair, but then she lowered her hand, the long white hem of her ceremonial robes stirring at her feet. A flicker of hesitation crossed her aged eyes before vanishing behind her usual stern composure.

"Beautiful. Don’t lose it." She spoke, her words carrying a strange weight, more a warning than a simple compliment.

"Yes, Grand Mistress," I murmured, bowing my head lower to conceal the rising confusion within me.

The Grand Mistress gave a faint nod, then continued on her way. Only after her shadow disappeared around the bend of the corridor leading to the main sanctuary did Soren and I dare to breathe a sigh of relief, resuming our path toward the eastern auxiliary temples to complete our early shift.

This place was an ancient temple-school complex, built against the black cliffs of the Velmaer plateau, where generations of priestesses had lived and served for five hundred years. Along the corridors we traversed, moss-covered curved tile roofs of the auxiliary temples peeked through the swirling white mist. Thick, verdant moss clung to every ancient gray tile, a testament to centuries of battling the cold and damp of this highland region. Each time we passed an auxiliary temple, Soren and I paused, clasped our hands before our chests, and bowed in daily ritual.

The scent of early temple incense began to waft from the bronze censers placed before the shrines. It was a familiar aroma, a blend of decaying pine wood, dried pine resin, and the pungent spice of wild herbs harvested from the black mountain peaks. The fragrance snaked through the gaps in the corridor, clinging to our ceremonial robes, creating an atmosphere of solemn, desolate reverence that temporarily masked the truth: these temples had long been devoid of residing divinity. We were merely worshipping ruins, empty names etched on cold stone tablets.

Soren beside me let out a soft sigh of relief, nudging my elbow to urge me faster towards the ritual chamber before the other mist priestesses noticed our delay. I pulled back my gaze, steadying my breath, refusing to let curiosity or stray thoughts disrupt the composure expected of a mist priestess. Yet, deep within my mind, the image of Grand Mistress Esh and her strange gaze still haunted me.

Grand Mistress Esh looked at me as if I were a question she had long kept hidden.

Afternoons on the Velmaer plateau always wore a somber, bleak gray, biting cold like frost. I stood bent over in the vegetable garden behind the Mist Priestess Hall, my mud-stained hands struggling to loosen the stiff soil around the withered gray cabbage stalks. The highland wind shrieked through the jagged rock crevices of the Velmaer range, carrying the bone-deep chill of this land bordering the dark realms, lashing my back with relentless icy gusts.

The pungent scent of wet earth rose from the freshly turned furrows, mingling with the solemn incense wafting from the main temple on the afternoon wind. The breeze seeped through my thin white ceremonial robes, making my skin shiver and my stray hairs cling to my temples. Lately, an invisible unease had weighed heavily on my chest, like an unknown stone pressing down on my breath, even though no obvious changes stirred around me. I wondered if it was a premonition of the approaching 502nd blood-moon cycle, or merely the accumulated exhaustion from long nights spent tending the flickering oil lamp in the seventh sanctuary of the seventh Ancestor God, the Un-prayed-for.

"Sister Yvera, lift your hands a little higher, you’re about to step on the new seedlings," Soren’s voice chimed beside me, pulling me from the swirling chaos of my thoughts. My cousin was diligently weeding a few steps away, her mist priestess robes also smudged with black mud, but her eyes still sparkled with their usual mischief.

I started, stepping back, giving a slight nod, and resumed clearing the pile of decaying roots at my feet. Just then, from the pine wood gate of the Mist Priestess Hall, an unfamiliar voice rang out, shattering the familiar quiet of the late afternoon on the solitary plateau. It was a wayfarer who had stopped at the threshold of an auxiliary temple to ask for warm water, now conversing with a young mist priestess on gate duty.

The distance was considerable, yet the strange highland wind carried the words straight to my ears, clear as a whisper at my nape, cold and sharp.

"The Cleansing Hand came to the western village last week. They burned an ancient temple."

The leather cord binding my hair seemed to tighten under the sudden, violent shift of the wind. I held my breath, straining to hear the gatekeeper’s anxious reply, her voice trembling in the gray expanse:

"Are they coming here?"

The wayfarer sighed, a rattling in his throat like stones tumbling into the endless depths of the Velmaer Mist Chasm.

"They are on their way."

My palms suddenly slicked with sweat, despite the biting cold. A strange jolt shot through my chest, a pulse of unfamiliar energy coursing through veins that usually moved with a slow, measured rhythm. The Cleansing Hand—the brutal puritanical cult that hunted vessels and razed ancient temples in the name of Iethan’s pristine purity—they were coming. Coming to this remote Velmaer highland, where the last vestiges of the Ancestor Gods still clung to life.

An invisible, yet utterly real, fear clawed at my mind, urging me to act. I dropped my small hoe, ignoring Soren’s surprised call from behind me. I hurried past the drenched vegetable rows, heading straight for the main temple porch where Grand Mistress Esh Vorrim stood, gazing contemplatively towards the black, mist-shrouded mountain peaks.

Hearing my hurried footsteps and ragged breath, Esh Vorrim slowly turned. Her long, open ceremonial robes fluttered in a sudden gust of wind, revealing the deep-etched wrinkles on an aged face that had witnessed countless upheavals in Iethan—and the night, seventeen years ago, when my mother fell into the abyss.

"Grand Mistress," I began, struggling to suppress the tremor rising in my throat. But instead of asking about the Cleansing Hand, a secret obsession, buried for years, suddenly surged forth, inextricably linked to the unease tearing at my chest. I met her gaze, asking a question I’d whispered to myself a thousand times in the dark: "Grand Mistress, why do I always gaze at the stone of the Seventh Temple?"

Esh Vorrim did not answer immediately. She looked at me with dull gray eyes, a gaze as deep and heavy as the bottom of the Velmaer Mist Chasm seventeen years ago. The silence stretched, so profound I could hear the slow thrum of my own heartbeat, before a strange shiver, like a faint warmth, slid through my ribs.

She sighed softly, her voice low and hoarse, cutting through the howling wind, cold and full of mystery:

"You have died once. You just don’t know it yet."

Her words hit me like a blast of frigid air, freezing me in place, my entire body stiff beneath my thin ceremonial robes. I wanted to ask more, to press her for meaning, to understand the death she spoke of, but Esh Vorrim had already turned and stepped inside. Her white-gray robes vanished behind the heavy wooden doors, leaving me stranded on the cold stone steps with a thousand unanswered questions.

"Sister Yvera, what’s wrong?"

Soren’s voice, right beside me, shattered the thick atmosphere that had enveloped me. He must have followed me without my noticing, his young face still smudged with dried mud from the garden, but his eyes now fixed on me with a strange curiosity. Soren tilted his head, a slight, unserious smile playing on his lips, then whispered teasingly:

"You have a strange aura. I feel it whenever you’re near."

My heart gave a defensive lurch at his observation. I took a half-step back, forcing a strained smile to dispel the tension that had sprung up between us.

"I’m just kidding," I replied, my voice feigning calm even as my fingers clenched tight.

Soren shrugged, his faint smile lingering as he looked at me, then murmured in a half-jesting, half-serious tone before turning to walk away:

"I’m kidding. Perhaps."

Soren returned to the garden to finish his work, but I couldn’t move a single muscle. Grand Mistress Esh Vorrim’s words were like a sharp thorn plunged deep into my soul, bleeding in the darkness of unanswered questions. The Cleansing Hand was drawing near, a horrifying secret about a death seventeen years ago shimmered behind the mist, and a strange pulse was rising beneath my skin. I didn’t understand, but my hand had already tightened around my jade comb before my mind could react.

Thick white mist blanketed the peak of the Seventh Temple, swallowing the stone steps that led up to its highest sanctum. This was my second consecutive night on lamp duty, standing between the four cold, black stone walls of the Velmaer highlands, where the biting wind howled through the crevices like the sighs of gods dead for five hundred years. Only the flickering yellow lamp on its rotting oak stand offered any light, keeping the encroaching darkness from closing in around me. I lifted the hem of my pristine white ceremonial robes, gently placed the storm lamp back in its niche, and watched the swirling mist outside through the unglazed arched window. The mist in Velmaer never fully dissipated; it was like an eternal shroud embracing the seven peaks, concealing secrets the Mist Priestesses had sworn to guard for generations.

The biting cold air filled my lungs, carrying the familiar ozone scent of night mist and the salty tang of ancient stone. I was twenty-four, and I had spent more than a decade learning to be silent in the temple’s silence, learning to walk without a sound on stones that never warmed. But tonight, something was profoundly different.

I walked slowly towards the center of the sanctum, where the Seventh Temple’s anchor stone rested. It was a monolithic block of black stone, rising from the earth, its surface rough and flat, the anchoring point for a fragment of the forgotten soul of the malevolent seventh Ancestor God. No one prayed here. The Seventh Temple had been built only to seal it, for the white mist to bury it. I raised a trembling hand, gently touching my fingers to the ancient stone surface.

A sudden surge of heat ran up my arm.

The anchor stone was unusually warm. Not the gentle warmth of a stone basking in the afternoon sun, but a smoldering, living heat, radiating from deep within the black stone as if hot blood circulated just beneath its rough shell. I startled, but I didn’t pull my hand away. Curiosity, mingled with a vague dread, held my palm fast to the stone.

At that exact moment, the constellation-shaped birthmark along my left ribs throbbed distinctly. The pain wasn’t intense, but it was sharp and real enough that I could feel every line of skin contracting, as if stars fallen from the ancient Iruun constellation were deliberately tearing at my chest from the inside. I pressed my lips together, my other hand instinctively going to my chest to stifle a gasp.

Beneath my palm, a heartbeat began to throb.

A beat. Then another, slower, deeper, a tenth of a second behind the first, creating a strange, echoing double rhythm through my chest. Two heartbeats — this time, I recognized them with chilling clarity, sharper than any illusion of fatigue from two nights of constant vigil, louder than the panicked rush of blood in my ears. There was a second heart contracting beneath my ribs, synchronized yet independent, a parasitic pulse that had evaded my notice for seventeen years, ever since that horrifying night in the Velmaer Mist Chasm.

My chest constricted. I tried to draw a deep breath, but the cold air of the sanctum seemed unable to fill lungs already claimed by an alien presence. And then, beneath my own shallow breaths, I felt a second — a deeper, hotter exhalation, carrying the scent of eternal darkness, moving in a rhythm utterly distinct from my own body.

The space around me plunged into an absolute silence. The flickering yellow lamp on its wooden stand ceased its sway, even as the wind outside the arched doorway still shrieked madly. And in that moment, time itself seemed to stretch into infinity, pressured by an ancient magic rising from the depths of my own flesh, before a hoarse, guttural sound, imbued with the power of a distant, desolate realm, suddenly echoed.

Don’t cast me aside.

That whisper froze every drop of blood in my veins.

It wasn’t a sound carried on the air to reach my ears, not the wind whistling through stone cracks or the mist lashing against the ancient temple walls. It was a deep, warm male voice, carrying the weariness of millennia and a profound, primal fear, speaking directly from the depths of my consciousness.

I stood frozen, my hand feeling nailed to the anchor stone, which now pulsed with heat. I didn’t breathe. I couldn’t move a single finger. My entire body rebelled against this intrusion with a violent tremor that shook me to my very marrow.

Someone. Inside me.

The thought bloomed in my mind, sharp as a blade severing every steadfast belief I had ever clung to. I looked down at my chest, where the constellation birthmark pulsed with a faint, eerie light beneath my white ceremonial robe, casting its ghostly glow onto the black stone. Horror descended then, fierce and brutal, sweeping away every shred of composure a long-trained mist priestess was meant to possess.

I was going mad.

Surely, I was going mad. Was this the Ancestor Gods’ punishment, or an evil curse from the depths of the Velmaer Mist Chasm seeking to devour my soul? With a surge of desperate strength, I tore my hand from the now-searing anchor stone. The sudden severing of that arcane link sent me stumbling back several steps, nearly toppling the yellow lamp stand beside me.

Heedless of the flickering lamp, heedless of my sacred duty to guard the sanctum this night, I spun and fled. I ran as if a thousand specters clawed at my heels, my bare feet scraping over the frigid stone steps, my white ceremonial robe fluttering wildly in the thick, swirling mist that now pressed in. I burst from the Seventh Temple of Velmaer, plunging into the vast darkness of the Velmaer plateau, desperate to escape the thing that had just awakened within me.

But no matter how fast I ran, no matter how fiercely the night wind shrieked in my ears, I knew I could not escape it.

The voice hadn’t come from outside; it had come from within my ribs.