Chapter 2 – The Hand Comes to the Mist Priestess’s Way

The morning mist of the Velmaer highlands had never known gentleness. It billowed up from the black rock crevices, thick and frigid, swiftly engulfing all seven peaks where ancient temples stood like spectral guardians of a silent past. This morning, a light rain fell once more. Tiny droplets clung to the moss-covered roof tiles of the Mist Priestess’s Way, tracing delicate streams down the rough wooden columns and transforming the dirt path to the back well into a treacherous, muddy mire.

I walked, my worn leather boots sinking deep into the mud. The cold mist caressed my cheeks, yet it offered no balm to the smoldering fever that had burned within my chest since last night.

I stood by the well, scooping a dipper of ice-cold water and splashing it directly onto my face. The sudden chill made me shiver, my breath catching in a faint white mist that plumed into the silent air. I pressed my wet palms against my temples, telling myself with desperate resolve: it was just a dream. Yes, merely a terrible hallucination brought on by the frigid air of the Seventh Temple of Velmaer on the five hundred-and-first blood-moon. There couldn’t be a voice echoing from my ribs. There couldn’t be a second breath, deeper, more resonant, trembling beneath my own and whispering pleas that shook my very soul.

Don’t cast me aside.

The phrase clung to my mind like moss to ancient stone.

"Yvera," her voice was deep and slow, carrying the weight of one who had witnessed too much death and oblivion on this plateau. "Did you tend the lamps at the Seventh Temple last night?"

"Yes. As always," I replied, trying to keep my voice from trembling.

She said nothing immediately. Her gaze drifted from my face, down to my chest, then lingered on my hair—where the jade comb was carefully pinned. I felt as though she could see straight through the white ceremonial robes, past the fabric to the constellation of veins quivering beneath my skin, to the two heartbeats thrumming out of sync within a single ribcage.

"Your complexion is poor today," she said, using the familiar, stern yet protective address of ‘child’ that I had known since infancy. "You will rest today. Another mist priestess will tend the lamps."

I lifted my head, surprised. Tending the lamps at the Seventh Temple had been my fixed duty for the past three months. This sudden replacement stirred a vague unease within me. "Grand Mistress, I can still—"

"You will rest today," she repeated, her voice brooking no argument. "Another mist priestess will tend the lamps. Remain in your chambers and find stillness."

With that, she turned and walked away, her grey robes sweeping past the stone dais, leaving me standing there with a growing dread. Was she realizing something? Or was she trying to hide me?

My dread was soon answered, but in a far worse way.

A bronze bell from the temple gates suddenly clanged, sharp and insistent. This alarm bell was only ever rung when wild beasts or natural disaster threatened Velmaer village. From the winding path leading up to the temple, a young mist priestess sprinted into the courtyard, her breath ragged, her boots caked with mud. She collapsed onto the stone steps, facing Grand Mistress Esh Vorrim.

"Grand Mistress! The cult… the Cleansing Hand has arrived!"

The words fell like a thousand-pound stone upon my chest. The Cleansing Hand. Caedmar Ostral’s purification cult. The hunters of vessels bearing fragments of the Ancestor Gods’ souls. Those who believed the Ancestor Gods’ very existence was a stain to be purged with blood and fire through their sacred Cleansing ritual.

"Where are they?" Esh Vorrim asked, her voice terrifyingly calm, but I saw her hand tighten around her rough wooden staff.

"They’ve reached the outskirts of the village at the foot of the mountain," the girl gasped. "They bring many people… and First Master Caedmar Ostral is with them."

The air around us seemed to freeze. And then, in the damp morning air, cutting through the patter of rain and the whistle of wind through the mountain passes, another sound echoed from afar. The cult’s horses, approaching. It was a brutal, insistent, steady, and cold rhythm of iron hooves striking the rough stone road. The thunder of their hooves carried an invisible pressure, reverberating through the Velmaer valley like a death knell. I could feel the ground beneath my feet tremble faintly with each beat of their relentless advance. They were drawing closer. They were bringing their cruel judgment to this mountaintop.

Soren stood beside me, her face utterly drained of color. She gripped my hand, her fingers now icy cold. "Sister Yvera… what are they doing here? Our village… we don’t harbor any vessels…"

I couldn’t answer her.

A sudden, searing pain erupted from the birthmark on my left flank, more potent and violent than ever before. It wasn’t merely physical agony; it felt like a torrent of ice-cold water rushing straight into my heart, forcing it to beat faster, harder. But the voice—the spectral voice from last night—remained silent. The one sleeping deep within my ribs seemed to have plunged further into shadow, attempting to conceal its existence from the approaching hunters.

I stood rooted to the muddy temple courtyard, the cult’s hooves still drumming a relentless rhythm in my mind. I told myself it was a dream. I told myself I was just an ordinary mist priestess, with no connection to the lost Seventh Ancestor God. I told myself the Cleansing Hand would merely inspect and depart, and my life would return to normal.

I told myself it was a dream — but my mother’s comb had grown hot in my hand last night.

Late afternoon on Velmaer’s peak always brought a dull, grey light, as if the sun had abandoned warming this land of black stone centuries ago. Up here, the morning mist still lingered in thick white ribbons, clinging to the ancient stone pillars of the Mist Priestess Hall before sinking down to shroud the wide courtyard below the Seventh Temple. I sat silently in my small room on the second floor, feeling the damp chill seep from the stone walls that never truly dried. My fingers traced the teeth of the jade comb resting on the wooden table — my mother’s only keepsake, a relic that, with every touch, stirred invisible ripples of anxiety within me.

Today, the comb was icy cold.

I placed my hand over my ribs, where the second heartbeat, meant to thrum a slow counterpoint beneath my own, was now utterly silent. Since last night, after I had fiercely rejected his presence, the parasitic soul had retreated deep into the depths of my veins. He sulked, choosing to isolate me in this terrifying stillness. At twenty-four, I was accustomed to sharing my body with a ghost, but his temporary disappearance brought no relief, only an overwhelming emptiness and unease.

Suddenly, from the steep, rocky path leading up to the Seventh Temple, a heavy chain of sounds ripped through the twilight’s stillness.

The insistent clatter of iron hooves on rough-hewn stone heralded the arrival of the procession from the valley below. The cult’s horses descended upon the temple — seven powerful black steeds, manes bristling, their breath pluming in white clouds in the frigid air. I rushed to the rotting wooden window, prying open a small crack to peer down into the courtyard below. The biting cold mist struck my face, carrying the scent of damp earth and distant road dust.

From the thick, swirling mist before the main gates of the Mist Priestess Sanctuary, figures slowly materialized. Riders on horseback, cloaked in the long, flowing white-grey robes of the Cleansing Hand sect. Yet, this white offered no sense of sanctity or purification; instead, it was pallid and cruel, like the bleached bones abandoned in a desolate desert. Their wide robes swept over the horses’ flanks, fluttering in the mountain wind, creating a grim spectacle, like a funeral procession advancing upon our sacred grounds. Their arrival brought an invisible pressure that silenced even the distant birdsong.

The leader of the procession reined his horse directly before the stone steps of the main hall. He remained mounted for a moment, his gaze sweeping over the ancient architecture of the Seventh Temple of Velmaer with a chilling scrutiny. As he dismounted, I immediately noticed the object he clutched in his right hand.

The black seal-staff.

It was a staff about a meter and a half long, crafted from dense black wood, sunk deep beneath the cold lakebed. Its surface was smooth and polished, yet it reflected not a single flicker of light from the oil lamps scattered across the courtyard. Along its shaft, deep carvings were clearly visible on the side facing my window. They were the names of the seven departed Ancestor Gods of Iethan, written in an ancient script that coiled like crawling snakes. The seal-staff’s presence radiated a heavy, oppressive spiritual energy, making my skin prickle with a freezing sensation, as if thousands of tiny needles were piercing me. This was the Cleansing Hand’s brutal weapon of purification, the instrument that had claimed the lives of countless vessels throughout the centuries.

The seal-staff struck the rough stone floor with a sharp crack, echoing across the silent courtyard.

From the shadows within the sanctuary, a slender figure slowly emerged. Grand Mistress Esh Vorrim appeared in the familiar, jet-black ceremonial robes of the Mist Priestess Sanctuary, her hem sweeping lightly over the mist-dampened stone. She seemed small and solitary before the burly men of the Cleansing Hand, yet her steps retained the proud dignity of one who had dedicated her life to tending temples without gods.

The two sides stood facing each other in the temple courtyard, where the morning mist still clung to the dark stone steps and ancient altars. The air was so taut it felt as though a single sharp breath could ignite a massacre.

First Master Caedmar Ostral slightly raised the seal-staff, his grey eyes unblinking as he stared directly at the Grand Mistress. His voice, deep yet imbued with religious authority, broke the suffocating silence:

"Grand Mistress. We have arrived."

It was no ordinary greeting, but a cruel declaration from a hunter who had found his prey. He stood on our sacred ground, arrogant in the supreme mission of purification his sect had bestowed upon itself.

Grand Mistress Esh Vorrim remained still, her hands clasped and hidden within the folds of her wide robes. Her face betrayed no emotion, the deep wrinkles on her brow as placid as if carved from Velmaer mountain stone. She replied in a cold, distant voice:

"I know. Grant me one night to consider."

An ominous silence again enveloped the courtyard for several drawn-out seconds. I could see the disciples behind Caedmar shift subtly, their hands unconsciously resting on sword hilts or the exorcism tools at their belts. They awaited a command, a nod to storm and search this ancient temple.

Caedmar Ostral stared intently at the Grand Mistress, as if weighing whether this delay concealed any plot of resistance. Finally, he gave a slight nod, the seal-staff striking the stone again with a dry thud:

"One night."

With that, he turned and gestured for his disciples to lead their horses towards the guest quarters beside the temple. The Grand Mistress also turned, slowly retreating back into the deep shadows of the sanctuary, leaving the desolate courtyard to the ever-thickening mist.

I stood by the window, my hands gripping the damp, rotting wooden sill until my nails ached. My chest heaved, gasping with profound fear at the First Master’s arrival and that terrifying seal-staff. But just then, as if sensing eyes watching him from above, Caedmar Ostral suddenly paused in the middle of the courtyard.

He looked up — and I felt the two hearts within my chest wrench apart.

The sounds of the afternoon market in the small village nestled in the Velmaer valley were always boisterous, thick, and somewhat crude. It was a stark contrast to the cold, almost solitary stillness of the Seventh Temple of Velmaer on the mountaintop — where I had spent most of my twenty-four years in prayers that went unanswered. Down here, the valley air was damp and heavy with the scent of mortal life: the smell of wet feathers from bamboo cages holding flapping chickens and ducks, the black mud clinging to piles of winter roots on torn tarps, and the incessant haggling of buyers and sellers, echoing off the village’s ancient grey stone walls before fading into the thick mist beginning to roll down from the peaks.

Today was the second day of the five hundred and second blood-moon cycle. I was at the market alone because Soren had to stay at the temple to help Grand Mistress Esh Vorrim prepare for the upcoming lamp oil purification ritual. I pulled the hood of my coarse white ceremonial robe lower, trying to conceal the face and hair of a second-tier mist priestess, silently weaving through the chaotic crowd. My hands clutched the strap of a bamboo basket containing a few bundles of dried herbs I had just traded from a hunter at the southern forest’s edge. The valley’s chill seeped through my thin fabric, yet my chest felt strangely warm.

Since that fateful night seventeen years ago in the Velmaer Mist Chasm, when I plummeted into the abyss and was saved by an unseen hand, my chest has never truly known peace. But these past few days, his silence has unsettled me more than even the darkest whispers. After our bitter arguments, that presence had retreated into a state of frigid denial, like an eternal block of ice lying dormant beneath my ribs, without a sound, without a single responsive beat. The hateful, sulking silence of a being that had lived five hundred years in shadow. I told myself I should be glad he was quiet, that I could return to being a normal human, with only one soul and one singular heartbeat. Yet, the cold void in my chest only made me more restless as I walked amidst the clamor of the afternoon market.

Suddenly, the market’s clamor died.

It wasn’t the natural quiet of a day winding down, but an abrupt, fearful hush, as if an invisible hand had just choked the vocal cords of the entire crowd. Laughter, haggling, even the frantic flapping of poultry wings were instantly extinguished by a heavy, cold pressure that settled over the space. People began to part, pressing to the sides of the road, bowing their heads, their eyes darting furtively towards the village’s main entrance.

I quickly retreated, pressing myself against a local weaver’s stall of coarse fabric, trying to shrink my presence behind thick rolls of grey wool.

From the top of the slope leading into the market, figures in long, white-grey robes appeared. This was the attire of the Cleansing Hand cult—those who, in the name of cosmic purity, hunted and annihilated any lingering vestiges of the dead Elder Gods. Leading the group was First Master Caedmar Ostral. In his sixties, he possessed a tall, gaunt frame, moving with a deliberate grace that nonetheless radiated a suffocating authority. His face was smooth, his cold grey eyes unblinking as they swept over the trembling, bowed crowd. In Caedmar’s hand was a solid black wooden seal-staff. Along its length, ancient characters carved with the names of the seven dead Elder Gods seemed to absorb the weak twilight, emitting a dim, murky glow. Each time the staff’s head tapped the ancient stone road, a dry, hollow thud echoed, reverberating through my eardrums like a warning from the dead.

The Cleansing Hand passed the fabric stall where I stood. They were close enough that I could smell the pure, yet chilling, incense emanating from the folds of their ceremonial robes—the scent of cleansing rituals that never tolerated any parasitic life. I immediately bowed my head, fixing my gaze on the dirty, muddy ground beneath my feet, my hands clenching the straps of my bamboo basket until my knuckles turned white.

Caedmar suddenly paused, right before the coarse fabric stall. The head of the black staff tapped sharply against the stone. The sound made my heart leap in terror.

Caedmar’s voice rose. It was a low, quiet tone, yet somehow it carried farther and clearer than all other sounds in the market, as if borne by the very invisible spiritual energy swirling around him.

"Something within her does not beat in sync with us."

Each word fell into the silent space, cold and sharp as ice drops trickling down my neck. My entire body froze, my breath caught in my throat. I knew he wasn’t looking directly at me, but the keen spiritual awareness from his seal-staff was sweeping through the space, searching for a discord, an abnormality in the rhythm of life around him.

His companion, a loyal subordinate in grey robes, bowed his head slightly in question: "Are you certain, Master?"

Caedmar gently twisted the head of the black wooden staff, a faint, knowing smile flickering across his haggard, sharp face. "I have waited for this for a long time."

They continued their march, the dry thud, thud of the staff fading into the distance, then vanishing around the bend that led to the mountain path. But those words still hung in the air, sharp and cruel, searing into my mind like a predetermined death sentence.

I couldn’t think anymore. The entire world around me blurred into distorted, grey patches of panic. I turned, quickened my pace, then began to run.

I fled the market, leaving behind the murmurs of the villagers that were just beginning to rekindle. My feet stumbled over the rough cobblestones on the steep path leading up Mist Priestess Road. My chest tightened, burning as if hot coals had been poured into my lungs. My breath came in ragged, gasping, broken gasps in the increasingly thin and cold air of the Velmaer plateau.

The higher I climbed, the more fiercely the evening mist swirled, opaque grey tendrils coiling up from the Velmaer Mist Chasm below the Seventh Temple of Velmaer, wrapping around my ankles like invisible chains trying to drag me down into the dark abyss. My hands trembled violently, the bamboo herb basket repeatedly knocking against my hip, but I dared not let go, dared not stop for even a second.

But the most terrifying thing wasn’t the steep rock slope, nor the cold evening mist seeping through my skin.

It was my chest.

Just below my collarbone, my heartbeat was a frantic chaos. It was no longer the steady, solitary beat of a normal human. It had completely lost control. It split into two distinct rhythms. One fast, urgent, panicked beat, my own; and one deeper, slower but powerful beat, out of sync, clashing and roaring like an ancient entity awakened by extreme fear. This discord made the blood in my veins flow chaotically in two intertwining streams of hot and cold, making my head spin, each step feeling as though my body would split in two. The constellation birthmark beneath my ribs throbbed with a piercing ache, as if black veins were trying to surface through my skin.

I burst into my small room in the Seventh Temple of Velmaer, slammed the heavy wooden door shut, and bolted it tight. I leaned against the door, my breath puffing out in white clouds in the cold, unheated room. My entire body trembled uncontrollably, my hands clutching my chest as if to force the two heartbeats into one, to hide the presence of the parasitic entity within me before the Cleansing Hand found my door.

"No. It’s not," I whispered into the room’s oppressive silence, my voice a fragile tremor clinging to the last threads of hope. "He wasn’t talking about me… it wasn’t me…"

I lied to myself, but the violently discordant beat thrumming beneath my palm cruelly denied it. The emerald jade comb nestled in my hair—my mother’s sole relic—suddenly radiated an unnatural warmth, as if to remind me of the fated connection forged seventeen years ago.

The chilling silence that had held me captive for days was abruptly, violently torn.

From the depths of my chest, a low, resonant vibration began to spread, laced with a subtle irony and the ancient, heightened vigilance of a primordial god. My long-held, suffocating solitude evaporated, replaced by a warm, living soul-energy coursing through my constellation veins. His emergence depth was increasing, its invisible, octopus-like tendrils latching onto my consciousness, shattering the punitive quiet that had reigned before.

“You will see.”

The voice was no longer a distant phantom in my mind. It was vibrant, echoing through every fiber of my flesh, every nerve, carrying the alarming tremor of an entity that knew its end was near if discovered.

Deep within my ribs, the voice whispered a second time: "He has come to kill me. Which means to kill you."

I shoved open the rough oak door to my private room in the Mist Priestess’s Quarters, then immediately slammed it shut, bolting it with the rusty iron latch. The dry clang of metal against metal echoed in the hushed space, a stark punctuation mark to the chaos outside. I leaned my back against the thick wood, chest heaving, shoulders trembling beneath the coarse fabric of my white ceremonial robe.

Velmaer Market today had been a hive of poisonous whispers. The grey-white cloaked figures of the Cleansing Hand sect had appeared at the edge of the plateau, their iron staffs carved with the names of forgotten gods, their eyes unblinking as they scoured every shadowed corner. They were searching for something. A vessel. Soren’s warning still buzzed in my ears, sharp and haunting beneath the biting, cold mist. They would not stop until they found it. And when they did, the cleansing ritual would tear apart the vessel’s soul to annihilate the parasitic god-fragment within. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to push back the chill of the night mist seeping through the door crack, but fear had already rooted itself deep within my cells.

I walked slowly towards the small, rough pine dressing table, where the wooden chest holding my mother’s few mementos lay. My hand trembled slightly as I touched the chest lid, then my fingers found it—the emerald jade comb my mother had placed in my hair before that fateful night seventeen years ago in the Velmaer Mist Chasm.

The emerald jade comb in my hand radiated a persistent warmth, a warmth that felt as if it had just been pressed against living skin, not a cold block of jade that had lain in a chest through countless snowy seasons. This warmth was not the searing heat of fire, but a gentle, smoldering vitality that flowed through my palm, seeping into every fiber of my flesh. I tightened my fingers around the comb’s body, seeking some solace from my mother’s relic, but the warmth only intensified, a warm current running up my wrist, carrying a vague yet vivid rhythm. It pulsed continuously, unwavering even as the cold wind outside the window howled.

I placed the comb on the rough tabletop. In the room’s weak light, the oil lamp on the pine table flickered, casting long, trembling shadows onto the cold, grey stone walls. The struggling yellow flame seemed to wrestle with the thick darkness pouring in from the window; each time it swayed, the shadows in the room seemed to contract and expand, creating grotesque, dancing shapes on the ceiling. I glanced into the darkness behind me through the dusty bronze mirror, feeling as if someone stood there, invisible yet undeniably present.

I sank onto the wooden chair, hugging my knees, trying to listen to the sounds within my own body. I clutched my shoulders, searching for any sign of the deep, husky voice that had echoed in my mind earlier, but only a heavy silence reigned deep within my ribs, like an empty yet menacing void. This silence was not ordinary stillness, but a compression of the air, an invisible presence holding its breath, lurking beneath layers of flesh and bone, observing me with terrifying patience. The one deep inside me had chosen silence after sowing chaos in my head at the market. What was he hiding from? Or was he wary of the approaching purifiers? This silence pressed heavily on my chest, making every breath a struggle.

I closed my eyes, forcing myself to calm down, but the beat in my chest wouldn’t allow me to deceive myself. I pressed my palm to my chest, realizing the two-beat breath was clearer than ever beneath the white ceremonial robe, and I slowly began to count each discordant pulse, each strange inhale and exhale that now accompanied my life. There was the shallow, hurried breath of a frightened mortal girl—that was me. But right beneath it, deeper and slower, was a low, steady breath like an echo from an endless abyss. It did not belong to me, yet it was borrowing my chest to exist. Two heartbeats, two life forces, intertwined to form a monstrous yet perfectly harmonious rhythm, reminding me that I was no longer alone in my own body.

I could not bear this ambiguity any longer. His silence was like a noose tightening around my throat. I took a deep breath, focusing all my will on the dark void within my ribs, where the parasitic creature was hiding. I asked, not with mortal lips, but with the voice from the depths of my soul.

"Who are you?"

No answer. Only the Velmaer wind howled through the crack in the stone window, carrying the biting cold of the plateau. The silence in my ribs remained heavy, utterly undisturbed. The hidden one had no intention of responding to my questioning.

I bit my lip, my patience fraying under the weight of extreme fear. I spoke again, this time with a surge of anger and authority in my thoughts.

"Answer me."

Still, absolute silence. The entity seemed to have vanished entirely, sinking into the endless dark, leaving me alone to face the encroaching shadows. His indifference made me feel like a madwoman, speaking only to my own reflection. Yet, the second heartbeat beneath my ribs pulsed steadily, refuting my denial. He was there, so close, yet as distant as dead stars.

I clenched my fist, my heart brimming with suspicion and bitterness.

“I don’t trust you.”

My words dissolved into the cold emptiness of the chamber, receiving no reply from the hidden entity. As I bowed my head, my gaze fixed on the ancient carvings etched into the jade comb’s teeth, the oil lamp on the small table refracted through the jade, creating faint, magical blue tendrils of light that crawled along my fingers like luminous threads. These beams, reflected from the hazy jade, were like a wordless language, whispering of an ancient pact I had yet to comprehend. The blue light flickered, waxing and waning with the lamp’s unsteady sway, transforming my mother’s comb into a living thing, breathing in the palm of my hand.

The sensation of violation, of sharing my body with an unnamed, parasitic evil god, made me tremble. Yet, the warm current emanating from the jade comb never lessened, a strange, inexplicable protection. I spoke into the silence, and silence offered no reply—but my mother’s comb grew hot, right then, in my hand.