Ashes of the Forgotten Pact – Part 2

The Hall of Records stood half-buried in the cliffs east of Thalamar’s Reach, a place long removed from the path of pilgrims and faith. It loomed like a tomb carved into stone, its arches carved with forgotten prayers now worn smooth by time and wind. Ivy crawled across the facade in thick tendrils, strangling statues of saints whose faces had cracked and faded into grotesque masks. The great iron doors groaned on rusted hinges as Aric pushed them open, the sound echoing like a dirge through the cavernous dark.

Inside, the air was thick with dust and parchment decay, an ancient musk of long-dead scribes and forgotten secrets. Shadows hung heavy between the shelves, coiled like sleeping things in corners the lantern light couldn’t reach. The flickering torch Raelyn held revealed stone corridors draped in tattered red banners of the Cleansing Flame, each one marked with the golden firebrand that now felt more like a warning than a symbol of hope.

Raelyn’s boots scuffed softly against the cracked marble. “It’s colder than it should be,” she whispered. Her breath curled in the air, visible despite the hearthlight that flickered faintly deeper within.

Aric didn’t respond. His eyes scanned every shadow, every alcove, every shelf of brittle scrolls that might have hidden something alive—or worse, something awake. The silence was wrong here. Not just empty, but expectant.

Down a narrow corridor they found the inner chamber—once a sanctum for high scribes, now just a circle of firelight and fear. The hearth still burned low, fed by a single thick candle of eternal wax, casting its orange glow across dust-covered tomes and a dozen shattered seals laid out like a broken halo.

Seated at the heart of it all, like a sentinel buried in paper and ink, was Brenn.

He looked like a creature of the archives—his long grey beard unkempt, fingers stained black with old ink, and his robes so threadbare they might have been older than Aric himself. But it was his eyes that struck deepest. They were pale and sharp as broken glass, the kind of eyes that had seen truths so deep they no longer blinked at horrors.

“So it begins again,” Brenn rasped without looking up. “I warned them it would. They laughed. Or they lied. Either way, they’re all dead now.”

Aric stepped into the firelight, his armor dull with dust from the ruins. “You were the last left here. I need answers.”

Brenn looked up slowly. “I knew you’d come. Just not whether it would be as savior or executioner.”

Raelyn kept close behind, her grip on her staff tight. “Archivist Brenn. We’ve come from the ruins at Saint Aurellian. The Spiral has returned. And so has Verin.”

Brenn blinked once, long and slow. “So the blood remembers. Even when the Church does not.”

Aric stepped forward. “Verin said the Spiral is tied to a pact—a sealed blood oath between our families. I found my grandfather’s name burned into the altar. Varyon Althis. You told me he died forgotten.”

“He did,” Brenn murmured, rising with deliberate slowness. “But not before helping forge a lie so vast it became the Church’s truth.”

He moved to the back wall, where a hidden mechanism in the stone clicked beneath his hand. A shelf slid aside, revealing a compartment bound in silver sigils of warding. From within, Brenn pulled a thin, black-bound tome with a cover that looked like it had once been skin. The runes etched on it shimmered faintly in both light and shadow, fighting one another for dominance.

Raelyn recoiled. “That’s abyssal flesh. It should’ve been burned.”

“This book,” Brenn said softly, “has survived three inquisitions, two purges, and one attempted assassination. Because it holds the one thing neither the Church nor the Circle could afford to destroy: the terms of the Pact.”

He opened it. The pages whispered like silk soaked in blood. The scent that escaped was iron, old and bitter.

Aric read the first line aloud, his voice grave. “By binding of fire and abyss, we seal the Spiral’s mouth. Through our heirs, let it sleep. Through blood, let it be still.”

“A pact forged in desperation,” Brenn said, turning another page with reverent caution. “Your grandfather—Varyon Althis—was one of the Church’s greatest tacticians. And Verin’s ancestor, Serra Nivane, was a Circle-born shadowmancer who defected to stop the Spiral’s rise. Together, they saw what neither side wanted to admit—that Airthal, the Consuming Spiral, was beyond any doctrine. So they bled for it. Sacrificed the sanctity of both bloodlines to chain the thing beneath the old cathedral.”

Raelyn’s face had gone pale. “But if their lines were meant to keep it bound…”

Brenn nodded solemnly. “Then the moment your bloodlines severed their bond, the pact began to fray.”

Aric felt the weight settle over him like cold stone. “When Verin left the Order, I turned my back on him.”

Brenn looked up, eyes sharp. “You didn’t just lose a brother. You broke the last living tether.”

Before they could speak again, the chamber shook—faintly, but undeniably. Dust drifted down from the ceiling in thin curls. Somewhere above them, the stones groaned.

And then the door burst open.

A knight staggered in, his armor scratched and dripping with blood. He bore the red flame crest—but his face was pale, terror-struck.

“Hollowmere,” he gasped, “they’ve taken Hollowmere—cultists—Circle remnants—they’re drawing the Spiral in the village square—people are being bled to trace the sigils—”

He collapsed, eyes wide in death before he hit the floor.

Raelyn knelt beside him, hand to his chest, but the heart was still.

Aric’s jaw clenched. “Hollowmere is sacred land. If they complete the Spiral there, it could tear the earth open.”

“And awaken what sleeps beneath it,” Brenn added darkly. “There’s no time.”

“I need a squad and fast horses,” Aric said. “And you’re coming with us.”

Brenn didn’t argue. He slipped the abyssal tome into a warded satchel and grabbed a half-burned rosary of flame and shadow beads.

Raelyn glanced sideways at Aric as they moved toward the exit. “You still trust Verin?”

“I trust what we were,” Aric said. “But if he’s the key to resealing the pact… I’ll find him. Or end him.”

Outside, night had fallen hard over the cliffs. A cold wind howled across the ridge as thunder rolled low across the horizon—not from the sky, but from beneath the earth.

The Spiral was stirring.

And Hollowmere was about to bleed.

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All Parts of the Series

Ashes of the Forgotten Pact Part 1

Ashes of the Forgotten Pact Part 2

Ashes of the Forgotten Pact Part 3

Ashes of the Forgotten Pact Part 4

Ashes of the Forgotten Pact Part 5