The meeting was nearly at its end.
But as the council members began to rise, a woman's voice cut through the heavy silence—cold, resolute, and charged with a long-suppressed accusation. Her words shattered the stillness that had wrapped the grand chamber like a thick fog.
Lady Ravencia, the eldest advisor, sat upon a chair intricately inlaid with the sacred roots of the Eldra tree, its gnarled patterns glowing faintly in the dim light. She rose with a grace that belied her age; her silver hair caught the remnants of daylight like dew on spiderwebs, trembling gently with each measured movement. Though her demeanor was calm and composed, her eyes blazed with the sharp precision of a razor, patiently poised to strike when the moment demanded.
"Wait...
We have all spoken as if Serelith appeared of its own accord. But every ritual requires a gate, and every gate must have its guardian," she declared, her voice ringing clear and authoritative, commanding the full attention of the assembled nobles.
A ripple of unease passed through the chamber as several nobles exchanged furtive glances, the tension thickening the air. Hesper of Atlantis narrowed his eyes, his brow furrowed in concentration as he sought to unravel the hidden implications behind Lady Ravencia's poignant words.
"Are you suggesting that someone among us opened the path for the Black Womb?" Lord Veylen's voice trembled between anger and dread, confusion threading through his tone like a restless shadow.
Lady Ravencia's gaze fixed steadily on the empty chair at the far end of the round table—the vacant seat of Lord Kaeleros, the head of the Department of Dimensional Studies and a key architect in forging the fragile Gaia-Atlantis peace. His absence loomed like a dark stain, deepening the already suffocating tension that gripped the chamber.
"Kaeleros has been missing for six long weeks," she began, her voice steady but laced with underlying urgency. "Before his disappearance, he had personally spearheaded the investigation of the Gamma ruins buried beneath the Delphoria Monastery. That monastery—with its weathered stone walls, ancient spires curling against the twilight sky, and cryptic inscriptions etched in fading scripts—is the sole sanctuary preserving the sacred records of the Serelith's birth liturgy."
Her eyes narrowed, shadowed by the weight of her words. "He knew full well the peril of peeling back the world's womb layers. Yet, undeterred, he pressed forward—carrying the silent blessing of someone sitting here in this very room." Each syllable dropped like ice into the charged air, her chilling emphasis sending ripples through the assembly.
In that instant, the chamber's three protective glyphs—each glowing with a soft, pulsating light and braided into the ancient stone walls like veins of power—flickered and then sputtered out one by one. Darkness swallowed their eerie radiance, cloaking the room in a heavy, unnatural silence.
Lady Mergatha's voice fell to a solemn murmur, yet every word cut through the stillness with deliberate clarity: "Those protective glyphs are bound to our honesty..."
Silvarin of Atlantis rose with a majestic presence, his tall frame radiating a mysterious aura that seemed to command the very air around him. His sharp eyes locked onto the assembly, every inch of his posture demanding undivided attention.
"This is more than mere negligence," he declared, his voice blazing with fervent conviction. "It is a theological betrayal. Should any one of us have opened the way for Serelith, then this act is not only treason against Gaia... it is treason against Reality itself."
Lord Helgar, standing nearby, lowered his gaze and bowed his head in solemn silence. Closing his eyes, he appeared to seek refuge and strength deep within the shadowed confines of his own troubled mind.
"Kaeleros is not mad," Helgar continued quietly, his voice heavy with sorrow. "But he lost his child five years ago. In the depths of his anguish, one can almost hear voices whispering from beyond Logos... voices offering a cruel promise: a return to motherhood."
Tears traced silent paths down his cheeks, a visible testament to the grief that weighed on his heart. All eyes instinctively turned toward the empty chair, its vacant presence a haunting reminder. On the seat's worn cushion, a single drop of fresh blood glistened and slowly dried—a fragile, bleeding emblem of tragedy passed but not forgotten.
Far beyond the chamber, Delphoria Monastery clung to its precarious perch between two sheer cliffs, its ancient stone walls steeped in secrets. The monastery lay like a sacred womb abandoned by the gods—hidden in perpetual shadow, wrapped in a shroud of latent mystery and untold power.
Into this solemn sanctuary stepped Lady Ravencia, alone and unguarded. Clutching only her bloodwood staff, which glimmered faintly with a pulse of faint light amid the encroaching gloom, she carried with her a worn letter left by Kaeleros himself. The letter bore a desperate poem, its words heavy with longing and enigma:
"If you seek Serelith, seek the mother who never spoke, and the child who never died."
The sky above the monastery hung pale and sickly, its color like skin long soaked and swollen by water—a heavy shroud of grief pressing down without mercy. No birds dared to cross its expanse, and an oppressive silence swallowed the air whole. Even Ravencia's footsteps failed to echo as she crossed the threshold into the cavernous main hall, where shadows clung to the walls like lingering sorrow.
Intricate carvings adorned the stone walls, depicting the births of ancient goddesses—majestic, yet haunted visions steeped in melancholy. But on the eastern side of the altar, one relief was disturbingly absent. Where a mother's serene face should have been, the stone was violently defaced, her abdomen gouged into a curling spiral, an emblem of a womb that refuses to end, spiraling endlessly into pain and mystery.
Guided by the soft, ethereal glow of her bloodwood staff, Ravencia made her way down into the monastery's shadowed basement. This long-forgotten vault, once the secret repository of the Sisters of Delphoria's clandestine knowledge, was thick with dust that drifted like the silent ashes of unborn souls—fragile remnants dissolving into the suffocating stillness.
At the furthest wall, nestled in a recess carved from stone, she uncovered the Inverted Liturgy.
Bound in cracked leather and written in an ancient tongue known only to the Gamma priests sworn to eternal secrecy, the book exuded a dark gravity. On its final page was imprinted a bloodstained handprint, small and delicate—too tiny for any adult human. Beneath this chilling mark was inscribed the haunting words:
"The womb was not made to birth life, but to birth the most painful truth."
Yet something far more terrifying chilled Ravencia to her very core. Concealed behind a curtain of blazing red cloth, she discovered a black mirror, ominous and unreadable—like a dark secret deliberately hidden from the world. The mirror's surface remained unnervingly still, reflecting nothing but shadow. Then, suddenly, a startling figure appeared: Kaeleros, standing silently behind her, though the chamber was empty and silent. The reflection's lips moved without sound, weaving forbidden incantations that flowed like a whispering midnight breeze:
"Serelith was not resurrected. She was only called home."
Dizzy and confused, Ravencia bowed her head in silent dread. Then, thick drops of blood began to ooze from the surface of the pitch-black mirror, falling onto her staff with a heavy, wet sound. The crimson liquid seemed to pulse and shimmer, transforming the ether's gentle glow into a dark, purple-black hue—a strange shade known only in the realm of fetal dreams. An unnatural presence stirred deep within her. Since her return from the Delphoria Monastery, Ravencia had felt ensnared in an unseen web of fate; now she heard a persistent knocking.
It was not the creak of her chamber's door, but a subtle, rhythmic tapping coming from inside her own body. A delicate cadence, as if tiny, ghostly fingers pressed softly beneath her ribs. At first, she dismissed it as lingering magical resonance, but night after night, the sound grew steadier, more insistent, as if something new—and alive—was awakening within her.
Like a heart that did not belong to her, it beat with an uncanny life of its own—steady, insistent, and utterly foreign.
Her body bore no pain, yet she sensed a profound expansion within her abdomen. It was more than mere physical swelling; it felt like a consciousness of space within space, as though her body had transformed into a vast cavern harboring something unrecognizable, something not hers.
Desperate to purge this intruder, she immersed herself in ritual purity, bathing three times daily in crystal-clear, flowing waters. Each sip of anti-witchcraft tea—brewed from bitter Zephyr roots and delicate Lamina leaves—was a plea to expel the alien presence.
Yet every morning, as she expelled the remnants of the herbal brew, her eyes caught sight of something troubling: tiny, pale fragments resembling cartilage, alien and out of place. They were not hers, nor the remnants of any meal—too fresh and precise to be explained away.
"I am not pregnant. I never can be again. I bound my womb with the Salinity Spell after the Septimos Tragedy."
"So why... do I feel as though I am carrying something within me?"
When sleep claimed her, vivid dreams swept her away to another realm—one where she was a mother to a silent girl.
The child never spoke a word but lingered beside a black mirror, her delicate fingers always pointing toward a fractured reflection of Ravencia. In that warped image, her womb swelled like an ink-dark bubble, pulsating with a mysterious anticipation, holding secrets yet unknown.
On the fifth day after her return, just as she was about to rise and address the Council, a powerful pulse surged through her core, threatening to bring her to her knees. The rhythm was not merely a sensation; it was a tempest raging within her, demanding acknowledgment—an urgent, unspoken memory clawing its way to the surface.
Her eyes drifted to the water resting on the table before her. Normally pristine and clear, the liquid now morphed into a dark, blood-red tide, undulating like waves in a midnight sea. It bore a haunting resemblance to the amniotic fluid from her dreams, thick and ominous, swirling with secrets yet to be revealed.
Lady Mergatha, her closest confidante and ally, bowed gracefully before pressing a gentle kiss to Ravencia's hand as the meeting drew to a close. Leaning close, her voice a cautious whisper, she warned, "You've come too close to Serelith… Be careful, Ravencia. He does not seek a womb. He only desires a passage—a woman deep enough to yield to him."
The healer was no ordinary figure. She did not reside in Gaia or Atlantis but inhabited a realm that danced on the edges of reality itself—nested between shattered towers lost to time and soul-swamps unmarked on any map, where time itself seemed to pause and darkness clung like a shroud.
Her name was Ethellien, once hailed as the mother of all mothers in ancient times—a revered figure who had sworn never to bear life again. Through a profound act of magical manipulation, she had burned her womb with an essential, irreversible spell, sealing the end of her ability to create life. Yet, even as her body was severed from that primal cycle, the power to perceive the "womb of the soul" remained aflame within her. She called this power Womblight—a strange, consuming light that did not shine outward but instead obliterated any light that dared approach.
Lady Ravencia sought Ethellien after the seventh night of the blood dream, a dark veil of uncertainty clouding her soul and hope barely flickering within her heart. In the quiet, dimly lit cottage where Ethellien dwelled, a sacred hush wrapped around them like woven silk. There were only two seats arranged by the hearth: one for the living and one for the unborn, silent witnesses to the mysteries that would unfold.
Ethellien's body had not aged; it remained timeless and unchanged, yet her mind was adrift, transformed. A yearning voice—a deep accent foreign to her own—stirred her as she reached out to touch her belly. The gesture was not born of pain but beckoned by a vague, urgent presence, a silent summons felt deep within.
She fixed her gaze on Ravencia with eyes as milky white as a boundless sky—void of irises and pupils—yet within that vast emptiness flickered echoes of shadowed, troubled days. Ravencia felt utterly exposed, laid bare as if by an undeniable, raw truth. Invited to sit, she reached hesitantly into a bowl brimming with thick, obsidian water. The surface swallowed the light, reflecting twisted, haunting shadows that seemed to pulse with slow, ominous life.
"The womb is not confined to the body, Ravencia."
"It can grow within trauma, resentment, or love buried too deeply."
The water stirred gently, rippling with a rhythm that felt both ancient and otherworldly, as if moved by an unseen melody carried from another realm. From its depths, the dark liquid began to shape into three distinct figures:
A child, faceless and blank, curled tightly in a fetal position as if suspended in time, silently waiting for the moment to be birthed into a world rife with chaos and uncertainty.
Queen Iris—standing naked yet unashamed, her skin glowing softly like moonlight against the dark abyss. She embodied a delicate balance of courage and vulnerability, her presence both haunting and luminous, as if a beacon in the night's deepest shadows.
Ravencia herself stood shrouded in mystery, her eyes veiled by a delicate white cloth, as if preparing to bring forth new life from the depths of shadowed uncertainty. She awaited an unforeseen miracle to emerge from the hidden corners of her soul, a silent promise whispered in darkness.
"You are not alone in carrying him… You are only one of two doors."
Queen Iris awoke in the stillness of night, her spirit stirred by a wave of helplessness that swallowed the surrounding shadows. Though her abdomen bore no pain, her heart pulsed with an unfamiliar rhythm—two distinct beats intertwined, one her own, the other foreign, clashing like distant thunder within her chest.
She called softly to her servants, her voice hoarse with longing, but no answer came. Each door stood firmly shut, hammered shut by a biting wind that whispered from an unknown dimension, cold and relentless.
Before a grand mirror, Iris faced her reflection, which seemed to ripple and shift, conjuring the illusion of a double presence. For a fleeting moment, she perceived Lady Ravencia standing silently behind her. Both women were bare, exposed in their vulnerability, their gazes fixed intently on their bellies—silent vessels of secret burdens and unspoken emotions.
"What… are we carrying?" Iris breathed, her voice a fragile murmur filled with fragile hope—not addressed to herself, but directed toward the distant Ravencia, whose shadow flickered faintly within the dim glass.
From the deep, rhythmic throbbing within her womb, a voice unlike any other resonated—timeless and boundless, as if piercing through the very fabric of space and time:
"I am a child born not of love... but from the union of two wills too strong for this world to bear."
Ravencia's tears fell silently, not born of fear but of an overwhelming, profound love—a love that seeped into every fiber of her being, emanating from a nameless force beyond the realm she had always known. It was as if some unseen presence wrapped her in a tender embrace, whispering secrets from beyond the veil of reality.
Ethellien, her weathered hands marked by the passage of countless years and the wisdom they bore, gently rested her palm on Ravencia's bowed head. The soft warmth of her touch was a shield of solace and protection amidst the uncertainty that hung heavy like a shroud. In a voice both gentle and resolute, she whispered:
"If you continue to love him, Serelith will choose you. And if he chooses you... then the Queen will stand against you."
"For no two wombs may live within one kingdom."