Chapter 196: 197

Arvin pov

The forest hushes in a way that doesn’t comfort but cautions, and it’s the kind of quiet that belongs to places older than memory, where even the birds don’t sing, where the roots don’t twist in play, but hold their breath in case something stirs beneath them.

I don’t ask the trees to part, they do it for me anyway. And that’s how I know I’m not lost, I’m being led by something that doesn’t speak aloud but still feels louder than thought, deeper than bone.

I don’t know how long I’ve been walking, time here is softer, looser, a thread tugged loose from the edge of sanity. My legs burn, my throat is raw and there is blood on my knuckles that I don’t remember earning.

Still, I walk because the feeling is back - that pull in my gut like a hook without a chain, a whisper not in my ears but in the marrow of my ribs. It wants me to find something, or be something. And either way, I’m already too far gone to stop.

When I reach it, it looks like nothing, just another hill with too much moss, too many roots, too much silence pooled in the dips of its stones. But I know, the same way you know when a dream isn’t just a dream and when someone is watching you from behind the veil of sleep or feel something pulling you toward the edge before you’ve even stepped close enough to see the drop.

This isn’t a hill, it’s a doorway - a wound that never healed.

So, I dig, not carefully or logically, but like a beast, like something under my skin is more certain than I am. My fingernails split, the skin on my hands tears and the soil tastes like iron and rot and inevitability.

And then it exhales, not the wind but the ruin I’ve been looking for without knowing it.

The entrance is narrow, jagged, a mouth that was never meant to open again. I go in sideways, ribs scraping, head ducked low, stone biting into my back like punishment or welcome, I can’t tell which.

Then, I fall, not far, but enough for pain to shoot up my thigh when I land. The air here is colder, older, but at least it doesn’t smell like death.

There are murals etched into the walls, so old they’ve grown roots between the cracks, but clear enough to feel intentional. Each line was carved with purpose, like whoever made them wanted to ensure they were felt more than seen.

And gods, I feel them. The first shows a child wrapped in red thread, arms limp, eyes hollow, no mouth.

The second shows a mirror, and the figure reflected inside it is not the same one standing in front of it.

The third is a heart, jagged open, leaking not blood but black fire, and behind it, hands reaching to catch what spills, or perhaps to push it in.

I stare too long, and the mirror, my mirror, starts to shimmer. It shows me, not how I am now or how I was, but how I was meant to be.

And I hate it because for once, I’m not seen as a symbol or a body or a mistake - I’m seen as the truth underneath all that, and I don’t have the language to handle it.

I move without deciding to, my hand rises and my fingertips brush the stone. It responds as my nail snags a sharp ridge and blood wells and falls, spatters against the carving. And the ruin wakes.

The tremor is subtle, not enough to shake the walls, just enough to make the air feel like it’s vibrating against my teeth. I taste ash and I hear something.

No words at least not at first, until I do.

“You weren’t born.” The voice doesn’t come from behind me, it comes from inside. “You were made.”

My knees buckle, but I don’t collapse here, something inside me forces me to submit to the force.

Somewhere, deep down in the place that never trusted a single comfort I was given, I know this is not new, I have always known.

The voice bleeds into thought, into image and sensation so ancient it doesn’t need language:

A cradle, rocked not by hands but by whispers too synchronized to be human. A ritual, and I am its product. The sound of salt thrown on fire. A woman weeping into a pool, but when I try to see her face, the water freezes over.

I want to scream but my mouth is dry.

And the ruin speaks again: “You carry the breaking. You carry the end.”

“I carry nothing,” I rasp, but the lie doesn’t hold the power I wish it would because I’ve already heard it too many times that I carry everything, far more than I should.

My fingers dig into the stone until they bruise. I can’t breathe, not because the air is thin but because there’s too much of it, too much of me, too much of whatever was trapped down here that’s no longer trapped.

“Please,” I whisper but the ruin says nothing.

The mirror shifts again. And I see myself, not as I am, but as something clawed from the spine of prophecy, shaped not in flesh but in intention. A weapon that doesn’t know it’s a weapon. A god who never asked to be more than human.

The voice returns with more power, so loud that I fear it echoes against the walls that hold me hostage. “You were not named, you were assigned.” It says and I swear I see the beast that once followed me around Lester’s caste, the one that hid in the shadows. It’s gone as fast as it appeared, but the voice keeps talking, mocking me. “You are close now.”

“Close to what?” I ask but there is no answer, just the hum of the walls and the echo of the voice inside my head along with the certainty that something has changed.

Now I know, for a fact, that something in me is no longer dormant.

When I try to leave, I can’t find the way back. The passage is gone, the door swallowed and the air feels different. I don’t know how I know this, but I do - the shadows surrounding me are hungrier now, desperate and reaching for the meal they haven’t earned in hundreds of years.

I’m alone here, but not unaccompanied.

The voice is still with me, still speaking in ways I can no longer ignore. You were not born. You were made. You were not born. You were made. You were not born. You were made.

It keeps repeating the words and I’m so lost that I don’t even know who I’m crying for anymore. Not Lester, not Riven and not even myself.

Maybe the boy I could’ve been, but I never could become because I killed him. Or maybe the world did.

When I finally claw my way out, my hands torn, shirt shredded, eyes dry and throat hoarse, the sun has shifted. The trees no longer part for me, but they don’t stop me either.