The First Revelation

The air inside the Silent Weavers' sanctuary held a stillness unlike anything Seraphina, Kaelen, or even Lyra had encountered in the churning anatomy of Aethelgard. It wasn't the dead quiet of a void-blossom, nor the tense hush before a surge; it was a dense, listening silence, layered with something akin to grief. Soft, phosphorescent fungi pulsed rhythmically on the woven walls of sinew and chitin, casting a pale, unblinking light.

The Weaver Leader, cloaked and masked, stepped forward from the shadowed group lining the perimeter of the central chamber. Their voice, though muted by fabric, carried a resonant bass that vibrated in Kaelen's bones. "You seek understanding. Knowledge we have guarded, for it is a heavy burden."

A biological projection shimmered into existence in the center of the chamber, blooming like a grotesque, inverted flower from the floor. It wasn't pure light like Ossus mana-projections, but something more organic, made of coalescing motes of bioluminescent dust and faintly vibrating tendrils. It showed a representation of Aethelgard, a complex, interwoven structure of bone and tissue, riddled now with sickly grey areas and shimmering voids.

"Your city speaks of Mana-Veins," the Leader’s voice echoed, the projection shifting to highlight the network of shimmering blue lines threaded through the god-form. "They are currents of essence, yes. The lifeblood. Or, what was once lifeblood."

The projection pulsed, and another layer overlaid the first. This one depicted jagged black fissures spreading like rot, radiating outwards from unseen points. Seraphina felt a cold dread coil in her gut. They looked like the Void-Blossoms, but… different. More fundamental.

"And your Void-Blossoms," the Leader continued, their tone devoid of judgment, merely stating a fact that felt like a physical blow. "They are not intrusions. Not voids entering from without."

Kaelen shifted, his hand going instinctively to the bone shard he kept tucked in his belt. "Not... intrusions? But they consume everything. Bone, tissue, mana..."

The projection pulsed again, zooming in on a section riddled with black fissures. Then, with a sickening clarity, it showed the fissure not as something *there*, but as something *missing*. A jagged cavity, a tear where the essence *should* be.

"They are localized absences," the Leader explained. "Holes. Wounds in the form. Where essence has been *removed*."

Lyra inhaled sharply beside Seraphina. Seraphina felt her own breath catch. *Removed?* It contradicted everything they were taught in Ossus. Mana-Surges were overflow, chaotic *presence*. Void-Blossoms were... nullification. Erasure. But *removal* implied an act. A deliberate severance.

The projection deepened its focus, highlighting areas of dense, calcified tissue surrounding some of the black voids. Kaelen felt a faint resonance in his hands, a ghostly echo of pain radiating from the projected bone. He’d always thought the calcification was a natural part of the god’s aging, a slow hardening.

"The form attempts to contain these absences," the Leader said. "It hardens, seals off the bleeding points of essence. The calcified bone, the dense tissue... it is scar tissue."

Kaelen’s mind reeled. Scar tissue. He’d spent his life trying to soothe and strengthen the god's bone, believing it was simply weary. Now, the thought that he’d been singing into *scars*, trying to mend injuries so profound they ripped holes in reality, was nauseating. His voice was rough when he spoke. "Scar tissue? From... what?"

"From the wounds," the Leader stated plainly. The projection shifted, the black fissures radiating back to a central point, hidden deep within the projected form. A place the maps of Atheria didn't show, but the artifact had hinted at. The god’s 'heart.'

"The Void-Blossoms are the outward manifestation," the Leader's voice lowered slightly, losing none of its power. "The rot you see on the surface... it is the inevitable consequence of something vital being torn away from the core."

Seraphina stared at the projection, the neat lines of doctrine she had built her life on crumbling like dry dust. Void-Blossoms weren't a natural phenomenon of decay, or a disease entering the god from the outside. They were the physical manifestation of a grievous injury. A wound.

Lyra’s eyes, visible just above her mask, were wide with a chilling understanding. She looked not surprised, but deeply, profoundly grim.

Kaelen stumbled back a step, bumping lightly against Seraphina. "Torn away? What was torn away?" His voice was barely a whisper. The hope that had driven him, the desperate belief that he might find a dormant heart to awaken, felt like a child's fantasy in the face of this cold, biological truth. The Void-Blossoms weren't a problem to be solved; they were a symptom of a death wound.

The projection lingered on the black fissures, pulsing with that terrifying emptiness. The Leader's voice settled into the heavy silence. "The question is not *what* was torn away," they said, and the words landed like stones. "But *who*... or *what*... did the tearing."

The Leader paused, letting the implications of their last statement hang in the air, thick and suffocating as a Viscera miasma. The projected anatomy of Aethelgard shimmered before them, a silent testament to agony. Seraphina’s gaze was locked on the deepest point, the place where the black veins of absence converged. The 'heart'. The word felt wrong now. Not a source of life, but a focal point of devastation.

"The wounds are not natural," the Leader continued, their voice devoid of inflection, just grim fact. "They were inflicted."

Seraphina blinked. "Inflicted? You mean... a disease?" The idea was still anchored in her old understanding, the crumbling doctrines she'd grown up with. Decay was natural, if accelerated. Sickness was a perversion, but within the realm of understanding.

The Leader’s masked head tilted slightly. "Not a disease, Nullifier. Disease is a failing from within, or an invasion from without. This... this is an act."

The air in the sanctuary seemed to thin. Seraphina felt a prickle of dread climb her spine. An act? Against a god?

"An act of violation," the Leader clarified, and a terrible stillness settled over the room. "A deliberate tearing of fundamental essence."

Kaelen made a sound, a choked gasp that was more pain than air. His knuckles were white where he gripped the bone fragment he still clutched, the relic that had led them here, promising answers, promising hope. The Bone-Singer’s instinct in him recoiled from the thought of a structure, a *body*, suffering such violence. He’d felt the deep, weary ache of the god, but he’d always interpreted it as the exhaustion of ages. Not this. Never this.

"The core was not weakened by time," the Leader said, their voice echoing in the silence. "It was broken by force."

Lyra stood utterly still, her hands tucked into the wide sleeves of her tunic, her breathing shallow. Her eyes, still wide, reflected the pulsating projection. There was no shock in her gaze, only a terrible, familiar sorrow. This wasn't new information to her, Seraphina realized with a sickening jolt. Lyra had known. She had come here already burdened with this awful knowledge.

"You mean..." Seraphina started, her voice trembling, the word catching in her throat like jagged bone. "You mean... Aethelgard was... attacked?"

The Leader's head slowly turned to face them, even though their features were obscured. The silence stretched, heavy and absolute. Then, the single word that redefined their world, reshaping their quest, their understanding of reality, and their place within it.

"Murdered."

The word hung in the air like the acrid scent of burnt tissue. Murdered. Not sick. Not dying of old age. But killed. Deliberately.

Seraphina stumbled back again, her legs feeling suddenly weak. A murdered god? The very ground beneath their feet, the calcified bone and throbbing sinew they stood upon, was not merely decaying flesh, but the decaying corpse of a god. Her nullification ability, the curse that had ruined her life, felt less like a malfunction now, and more like a chillingly accurate echo of that ultimate absence, that cosmic void left behind.

Kaelen’s face was ashen, his eyes fixed on the projection. His hope, the core of his being that yearned to heal and mend the god’s form, had just been ripped out and shown to him as a grotesque absurdity. Heal what? A corpse? Sing to a body already silenced? The Bone-Singer’s connection to the living structure of Aethelgard was now a connection to death, to violation. He looked physically ill, as if the very thought poisoned him. "No," he whispered, a plea more than a denial. "It... it can't be."

The Leader offered no comfort, no reprieve from the brutal truth. "The state of Atheria is the consequence," they stated, their voice a flat register of grim reality. "The decay, the Mana-Surges, the Void-Blossoms... all are symptoms of a dying body, deliberately wounded at its core. Your quest was to find the heart to cure the god. There is no cure. There is only the wound."

Seraphina hugged herself, a sudden chill biting through the perpetual warmth of the god’s interior. The weight of the sky felt heavier, the groans of the structure around them less like weary sighs and more like a lingering death rattle. This wasn't a problem they could solve with magic or bone-singing or clever shaping. This was an end. And they were living inside a murder scene.

The air in the sanctuary, once merely tense, now felt thick with accusation. Not aimed *at* them, not directly, but *through* them, at the world they had come from. The Weaver Leader’s voice, devoid of the usual Viscera warmth or Ossus formality, cut through the stunned silence.

"You understand the Mana-Veins?" The Leader gestured towards a vibrant, pulsing biological weaving nearby, a miniature, glowing replica of the city's lifeblood. It throbbed with simulated energy. "Your scholars speak of them as conduits. Channels for divine power, flowing down from the slumbering god." A soft, mocking sound escaped the Leader, like dry leaves skittering across bone. "How quaint."

Kaelen flinched, his hand instinctively going to his Bone-Singer's pendant, a small, polished knucklebone. He’d studied the flow of mana through calcified structures his entire life. It was the fundamental principle of his craft, the very air he breathed.

"They are conduits," Kaelen said, his voice tight, pushing back against the sudden, unsettling doubt. "They carry Aethelgard's essence. We sing to the bones, guide the flow... it's how we keep the city stable."

The Leader’s obscured head tilted. “Stable? You sing to a structure designed to *bleed*. You guide the flow of essence from a gaping wound. Your Mana-Veins are not channels. They are *arteries*, torn open, draining the last vestiges of Aethelgard’s life force into your city. Every magnificent structure built upon his flesh, every glowing spire, every fortified wall in Ossus, every pulsing light in Viscera – they are not built *on* him. They are built *into* him. They are parasites, drawing sustenance from his dying body. And your magic? Your ‘divine power’? It is the lifeblood of a murdered god, siphoned and perverted.”

Seraphina’s stomach twisted. She thought of the shimmering structures of Ossus, the places of worship, the vast cathedrals where they prayed to Aethelgard, the dormant deity who blessed them with existence. All of it... built on a crime scene? Her faith, the bedrock of her identity, felt like sand crumbling in her grasp. Was the Church's doctrine a lie? Were their prayers offered on a corpse? The mere idea was blasphemy, yet the raw, visceral truth of the Weavers’ words, the horrifying consistency between their explanation and the decay they’d witnessed, was impossible to ignore. It felt… horribly right.

“The Void-Blossoms,” the Leader continued, their voice gaining a low, simmering intensity, “are not a disease. They are the points of rupture. Places where the essence, weakened and corrupted by the wound, ceases to flow entirely. A pocket of nothingness where there should be life. A growing absence, mimicking the void left behind at the core.”

Kaelen staggered slightly, clutching the wall for support. His Bone-Singing wasn’t healing; it was… prolonging the agony? Drawing from a dying source? All the bone structures he’d stabilized, all the minor fractures he’d mended… was he merely a leech, clinging to a corpse? The thought was physically nauseating. He’d felt that strange, painful resonance in the bone back in Ossus, dismissed it as something unknown. Now he knew. He had been singing into dying tissue, forcing it to hold shape while it was being drained dry. His gift, his purpose, suddenly felt like a cruel, twisted joke.

“And you,” the Leader said, turning towards Seraphina, their voice dropping to a low, critical hum. “You, who disrupt the flow. You are not broken. You are reacting. Your nullification is not an error. It is a sympathetic vibration with the wound, a small, localized echo of the ultimate absence. While your city’s mages gorge themselves on the dying god’s essence, you, by your very nature, reject the stolen feast. Perhaps the most faithful among you is the one your society cast out.”

Seraphina’s breath hitched. Cast out. For being broken. For being a failure. And all this time... she was echoing the god's own state? Rejecting the corrupted lifeblood? The weight of her disgrace shifted, twisting into something else – a bitter vindication, a horrifying connection. It didn't feel like power. It felt like a terrible, agonizing mirror held up to the world's hidden wound.

Lyra stood silent beside them, her gaze steady on the Weaver Leader. This was the truth she had hinted at, the knowledge she had guarded. It explained the Weavers' secrecy, their isolation. They lived in the heart of the dying god, listening to its final gasps, while the city above pretended it was merely asleep.

The Leader’s voice hardened. “Your structures, your magic, your very way of life on the surface… it is all a consequence of the murder. And the city, in its ignorance or its denial, actively participates in the ongoing decay. Every mana-tap you open, every bone structure you reinforce with the stolen Song… you hasten the end.”

The silence that followed wasn't empty. It was filled with the low, constant thrum of Aethelgard's dying body, a sound they had become accustomed to but now heard with new, horrifying clarity. It was a groan. A long, drawn-out sound of agony. They lived, not in a city built on a dormant god, but in a city built on a dying scream. Kaelen looked at his hands, the hands that had sung to bone. Seraphina felt the familiar, unsettling hum of her nullification, now a constant, internal reminder of the wound. The truth, a story value they had sought, felt less like a revelation and more like a crushing weight. There was no victory in this knowledge, only complicity and grim finality.