Chapter 2 The Vein Gate

The forge still burned long after dawn.

Flames licked the walls of Elder Nyros’s sanctum, their light crawling across sigil-carved stone. Seren sat cross-legged on the floor, her palms outstretched toward the basin of molten gold. The air shimmered with heat and the low thrum of something ancient alive.

Nyros paced behind her, tapping a staff capped with dragonbone against the ground in slow rhythm.

“Again,” he said. “Align your breath to the pulse beneath the city. You’re fighting it.”

“I’m trying,” she hissed through clenched teeth. Sweat slicked her skin, her heartbeat too fast, too loud. Every inhale drew the air thinner, hotter. The glow under her collarbone pulsed erratically, searing her from the inside out.

“Trying is noise,” Nyros said. “Listening is discipline. The veins of the world do not answer chaos.”

Seren’s hands trembled. The molten surface rippled, a faint pattern forming then breaking. She exhaled sharply and slumped back against the floor, panting.

“This is impossible.”

“Of course it is,” Nyros said dryly. “Anything worth the soul always is.”

She glared up at him. “You could at least tell me what I’m doing wrong before I melt from the inside out.”

He crouched beside her, face lit by the forge’s glow. “Your fire is reacting to fear. Not the fear of death the fear of power. You have built your life on controlling what you can, but cultivation is surrender. The Vein Gate opens only to those who accept what they are.”

Seren looked away. “And what am I?”

“Forge-born,” he murmured. “Child of the Solar Wyrm. Your flame is not borrowed. It is inherited.”

The words should have meant nothing. Instead, they made her chest ache. She thought of Rowan his motionless body, his hand always cold when she visited the hospital. Her power had awakened the night he fell silent. Maybe they were still connected somehow. Maybe his heart still beat because hers did.

She clenched her fists. “Then teach me to control it. If this fire can save him, I don’t care what it costs.”

Nyros studied her a long moment, then nodded. “Very well. But remember what you forge cannot be unmade.”

Hours blurred. Days, maybe.

Time lost meaning in the sanctum’s heat.

Nyros taught her to feel the world’s heartbeat to reach through the city’s foundations, where ley currents pulsed beneath steel and stone. He said every cultivator carried seven Vein Gates: soul-forged centers that connected flesh, spirit, and world.

The first was the Heart Gate. The hardest to open, because it required honesty.

She knelt before the forge, eyes closed, pulse steadying. She could feel the veins now a low, endless hum beneath the city, a tide of molten rhythm. Her mind reached, brushed against it and something brushed back.

A whisper.

A memory that wasn’t hers.

She stood beneath a crimson sky. Fire roared around her, endless, devouring. A vast shadow moved through it a dragon with eyes like suns and scales of molten glass. Its voice vibrated inside her chest.

You are what remains of me.

Seren gasped and opened her eyes. The forge erupted in gold light, swirling upward like a storm. She raised her hands instinctively, and the fire bent around her palms obedient, alive.

Nyros’s staff struck the floor once. “Good. The Gate opens.”

She barely heard him. The light around her flared brighter, carving sigils into the air. It felt like her bones were being rewritten, her blood singing in a tongue older than thought. The mark on her collarbone pulsed, splitting into thin, glowing veins that ran up her throat.

Then it stopped.

The flames died down to a soft, steady glow.

Seren collapsed forward, catching herself on trembling arms. Her breath came shallow, but she was smiling despite herself. For the first time in years, she felt alive.

Nyros nodded approvingly. “Your first Gate is open. The Veins will answer you now. But your power will draw attention you are not ready for.”

“From who?”

“Those who forged the first seals,” he said. “And those who would break them.”

As if summoned by the words, a faint vibration rippled through the stone floor. The candles flickered out. Seren straightened. “What was that?”

Nyros turned toward the door, frowning. “Visitors.”

A loud crash split the silence. The outer door exploded inward, sending dust and smoke into the hall. Seren shielded her eyes as shapes emerged from the haze three figures in ember-marked armor, each carrying a sigil-blade that hissed with contained fire.

At their head stood a man with silver hair tied back, eyes like fractured obsidian. His expression was calm, almost detached.

“Step away from her,” Nyros warned, raising his staff.

The man’s voice was low, controlled. “Elder Nyros. You were told the Covenant forbids teaching Vein Cultivation.”

“I no longer heed your masters, Kaien Vale,” Nyros replied.

Seren’s pulse spiked. Kaien Vale. The name felt familiar whispered in her mother’s journal, marked beside old sketches of runes and broken oaths.

Kaien met Seren’s gaze briefly. His expression didn’t change, but something flickered in his eyes recognition, or maybe hesitation. “You shouldn’t be here, girl. They’ll come for you themselves if I don’t.”

Seren stepped forward despite the fear curling in her gut. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

He sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

Before she could move, he lifted his sword. The air cracked. A wave of heat slammed into her chest, hurling her backward into the forge. She hit the ground hard, pain flaring through her ribs. The fire around the basin surged wildly in response, spiraling up the walls.

Nyros struck his staff against the floor, summoning a barrier of molten sigils that shimmered between them. “Leave now, Kaien. You have no power here.”

Kaien didn’t attack again. He lowered his sword, watching the flames writhe. “You think you can train her before they find her? You’re sentencing her to worse than death.”

Nyros’s face hardened. “Better forged by fire than devoured by ash.”

Kaien’s jaw tightened. He gave Seren one last look a silent apology, maybe then turned and walked out, his soldiers following.

The door slammed shut behind them.

For a long time, neither spoke. Only the forge crackled, spitting sparks into the air.

Seren rose slowly. “Who was that?”

Nyros exhaled, weary. “A man bound by mistake and magic. Once a guardian of the old order. Now a weapon for the Covenant.”

“He knew my name.”

“He knows many names,” Nyros said. “But his curse binds him. He cannot act of his own will.”

Seren frowned. “Then why didn’t he kill us?”

Nyros met her eyes. “Because something in him remembered mercy. And that will make him dangerous to them, and to you.”

That night, Seren couldn’t sleep.

She sat near the forge, tracing the faintly glowing veins on her arms. They pulsed like quiet music, answering her thoughts. When she focused, tiny embers danced from her fingertips, swirling into small golden shapes sparks that flickered into the outline of her brother’s face.

She smiled sadly. “I’m coming for you, Rowan.”

The embers faded.

Outside, rain whispered against the stone roof. The scent of smoke still clung to the air.

From the shadows beyond the wards, Kaien Vale watched through the rain, his rune-branded arm glowing faintly. The brand pulsed where her fire had touched it earlier still burning, still defying the curse that bound him.

He whispered into the darkness,

“She doesn’t know what she’s become.”

And somewhere deep below Aurevia, the Ember Covenant stirred. The Heartforge had awakened and the world began to burn again.