The Pale Thorn Pact - Part 3

The mountains opened like a wound.

At the edge of the Spires, where the peaks met the sky and the wind whispered in languages long dead, a chasm tore the earth. Wide, sheer, and unnaturally clean, as though split by something ancient and precise. The locals called it The Severance—a place cursed by time-magic during the Shattering Wars, now avoided even by crows.

Vaelin and Elira stood at its edge. Below, the fog coiled thick and white, veiling the abyss like breath over a blade.

Elira crouched to study the etchings carved into the frozen rock—thorned spirals wrapping around a crescent blade. "Same symbol from the mirror."

Vaelin didn’t respond. His eyes had fixed on the dark beyond. Not fear—recognition.

“They trained here,” he muttered. “Long before the purge. I thought this place was lost.”

She looked up at him, voice quiet. “You’ve been here before.”

“Once. I was brought here as a recruit, blindfolded. One week. No light. No names. Just a whisper at my ear telling me that time was a river, and the blade could bend its current.”

His hand gripped the hilt of his weapon. She could see it in his eyes—the tension, the memories clawing at the edge of thought. And something else. Shame.

They descended the path carved into the cliffside, ropes still fixed from recent use. Someone had returned. The air grew colder, unnaturally still.

At the bottom of the Severance, the stone opened into a temple hewn into the mountain itself. It didn’t belong to the Nightblade Circle, not originally. The walls were curved and smooth, the doors of white granite laced with veins of black crystal that shimmered like oil.

And they pulsed.

Each step they took echoed, but not from their feet alone. The sound repeated, delayed by half a breath—like footsteps mirrored a second out of sync. Elira slowed, senses prickling.

"Something's wrong here," she whispered.

The chamber opened into a circular hall. Pillars of frost-lined obsidian held up a domed ceiling carved with celestial spirals. At the center: a basin of still water, surrounded by thorns made of silvered bone.

Vaelin approached, drawn.

“It’s a Memory Well,” he murmured. “We trained with them. Old magic. You place your blade in the water, and it shows you... what you’ve hidden from yourself.”

“Or what someone wants you to see,” Elira added.

Vaelin turned to her. “You don’t have to come further.”

“You know better,” she said.

He drew his blade.

The moment it touched the surface, everything changed.

The room blurred—shadows lengthened, the floor rippled like liquid glass. And then, suddenly, Vaelin was alone.

Not in the temple.

In a memory.

He stood in the ruins of a town—burned buildings, blood in the streets. Bodies of rebel soldiers strewn across the stones. A younger version of himself knelt beside a dying man, whispering final rites in the Circle’s tongue. His hands were covered in blood. He looked calm.

Detached.

A voice behind him—his own voice—spoke from the darkness.

“You were efficient. Precise. Cold.”

Vaelin turned.

The masked Pale Thorn stood at the edge of the memory, arms crossed.

“You trained us to kill without hesitation. Without questions. So why do you now flinch when you draw your blade?”

“This memory isn’t real,” Vaelin said. “This isn’t what happened.”

The Thorn tilted his head. “Isn’t it? Or is this the part you buried, like a coward?”

The memory shifted—now the scene of a child hiding beneath a burning cart. Vaelin remembered it now. He’d told himself she ran away. He hadn’t looked. He hadn’t wanted to know.

“You killed the child when you set fire to the munitions store. You told yourself the ends justified it. And now you grieve, but only because someone else forced you to look.”

Vaelin gritted his teeth. “What do you want?”

The Thorn stepped closer, eyes glowing behind the mask. “I want you to understand. You created us. Your teachings are the bones of our order. We don’t run from the dark. We embrace it.”

Back in the temple, Elira saw Vaelin begin to convulse, eyes glazed, blood trickling from his nose.

“No,” she growled, sprinting to the basin. “Not like this.”

She dropped to her knees, cut her palm with a blade, and smeared the blood across her bracer’s runes. Words of breaking filled her mouth—ancient, guttural, forbidden. She placed her hand against Vaelin’s temple and pushed.

She fell into the memory.

The world around her twisted. She saw him—frozen in that memory, back to her, staring at the burning town.

She stepped through fire and ash and stood beside him.

“Vaelin,” she said, gently. “This isn’t where you live anymore.”

He didn’t turn. “I let it happen.”

“I know. But you didn’t stay there. You chose to be better. To walk away from it. And that choice matters more than the shadow that came before.”

His hands trembled.

“Why are you here?” he asked, voice cracking.

“Because I love the man you’ve become. Not the legend. Not the myth. You.”

He turned, finally, and the spell began to break.

The temple cracked. Shadows fled.

They came back to themselves together, gasping. Elira caught him before he fell. His hand gripped her shoulder with surprising strength.

“I saw everything,” he whispered. “All of it.”

“You’re still here.”

He looked at her—truly looked—and some silent chain around his heart gave a groan, maybe not yet broken, but strained. “You didn’t run.”

“I never will.”

Outside the temple, the wind howled louder. From the edges of the chasm, a figure watched—one of the Pale Thorns, cloaked in ice and shadow.

And in his hand, he held the sigil-marked contract with the Baroness’s name.

The game had only just begun.

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All Parts of the Series

The Pale Thorn Pact Part 1

The Pale Thorn Pact Part 2

The Pale Thorn Pact Part 3

The Pale Thorn Pact Part 4

The Pale Thorn Pact Part 5