Ancestry of Secrets

The Ashirai's loyalty was a blade with two edges. They revered Ethan as a reforged Duskheir, yet their whispers trailed him like smoke—heretic, usurper, judgment. The raven's golden gaze weighed his every step, its silence more damning than any accusation.

When the first Ashirai warrior vanished, Ethan assumed the void had taken them. When the second disappeared, he found their body in the desert, throat slit with a blade of stardust.

"Traitor," the surviving Ashirai hissed, their tattoos glowing like brands. "The void wears our skin now."

Ethan knelt beside the dead, his cloak absorbing the residual starlight from their wounds.

"This wasn't the void. This was us."

The killer struck again that night. A young Ashirai initiate, her storm-gray robes drenched in void-black blood, stood over the third victim—Elder Kael, Nari's successor.

"He doubted you," she said, her voice hollow. "Doubt is a crack. The void… it whispered."

Ethan disarmed her with a thought, his will pinning her to the wall.

"Why?"

Her eyes flooded with green-black light.

"Because you hesitate. Because you are weak."

The void's presence erupted from her, dissolving her flesh into ash. Ethan shielded the others, but the damage was done. The Ashirai turned on one another, paranoia a poison thicker than the void.

The raven led him to the rift where the Keeper lingered. She awaited him in a cathedral of dead gods, her new form a grotesque fusion of Ashirai and Veyra—Nari's face stitched to Cedric's sneer, her voice a harmony of the void's hunger.

"You should have killed them all when you had the chance," she taunted. "Mercy is a luxury the unworthy cannot afford."

Ethan's cloak billowed, absorbing the ambient starlight of the carcass-gods.

"You're not the Keeper. You're just another mask."

"And you're not a Duskheir," she spat. "You're a child playing with embers."

They clashed, her void-tendrils against his willforged blades. The battle raged across the cathedral, toppling pillars of bone and igniting pools of godblood. The raven circled above, its caws sharp as verdicts.

Ethan faltered when he recognized Nari's eyes in the Keeper's face. She seized the opening, driving a shard of dead godbone into his side.

"You cannot kill me without killing her," the Keeper hissed. "And you don't have the stomach for it."

Blood dripped from Ethan's lips.

"You're right."

He grabbed her wrist, flooding her with raw, unchained light—not to destroy, but to remember.

The Keeper screamed as Nari's memories resurfaced.

The Ashirai's first meeting with the original Duskheir, a wanderer with no name.

The vow etched in starlight:

"We will remember you when the world forgets."

Nari's grief as the Veyra line rose, twisting the title into a shackle.

"You… you betrayed us too," the Keeper gasped, Nari's voice breaking through.

"No," Ethan said. "You did."

He severed the void's tether. The Keeper's form collapsed into ash, leaving only Nari's ghost, translucent and trembling.

The Ashirai found them in the desert, Ethan cradling Nari's fading spirit. She touched his cheek, her fingers cold.

"The raven… let it judge me."

The bird descended, its gaze piercing. Nari's ghost dissolved into motes of light, absorbed into the raven's feathers.

"Guilty," the Ashirai murmured.

"No," Ethan said. "Free."

He returned to the Ashirai's city, their survivors silent. The rift to the dead gods' realm sealed behind him, but the raven's golden eyes now held a storm.

"What now, Duskheir?" a warrior asked, his tone edged with defiance.

Ethan looked to the horizon, where new rifts bloomed like wounds.

"Now, we hunt."