Chapter 10: The Temple Beneath the Sky
1129 Words
The dream wasn’t hers.
She woke with the taste of stone and stars in her mouth; breath caught between terror and awe. She didn’t remember the dream, only the feeling: Go north. Follow the hollow wind.
By morning, Clara couldn’t ignore it. Not the hum in her chest, not the way Ailuros—Bean—kept circling the courtyard and then darting toward the edge of the sanctuary’s boundaries, tail flicking with insistence.
Even Aelius seemed to know something had shifted.
“You’ve heard it,” he said, eyes fixed on the horizon. “Haven’t you?”
Clara hesitated. “Is it calling to you too?”
“No.” He turned to her, gaze unreadable. “But I know what it is.”
He didn’t stop her. Didn’t try to protect her with vague warnings or half-truths.
Instead, he walked with her.
The path turned wild as they moved beyond the sanctuary’s wards. Grass grew in soft green curls, trees with violet-tipped leaves rustled with whispers in a language Clara didn’t know. The realm felt both ancient and aware.
After hours of climbing and crossing narrow ledges carved into pale cliffs, they reached it.
The temple.
It was not grand—not like the shrines to the gods Clara had seen scattered across the realm. This place was older. Quieter. Carved directly into the mountain, the entrance was flanked by two broken statues: a winged figure lost to time and a woman with a raised hand, her face erased by centuries.
Clara froze.
She didn’t know how she recognized it, but she did.
“This is about me,” she whispered.
Aelius nodded once. “It was built when the first gods fell to silence. Before the realms split. Before time was made neat and ordered.”
Inside, the temple opened into a circular chamber. Runes crawled across the stone in glowing ink, not written but grown into the walls like vines of language. The air buzzed with memory, and Clara’s breath caught as a soft light flared from the center pedestal.
The pedestal held a small, crystalline orb. Not a weapon. Not a book.
A memory.
As she stepped forward, the orb brightened. Her fingers brushed its surface—
—and the vision took her.
A woman stood in the storm.
Not Clara, but somehow still her. She stood beside a being of wind and stars—Aelius, though younger, more distant. Together, they faced a sundering sky as gods turned on gods.
The woman raised her hand, and light spilled from her veins.
She was mortal. And she died.
Clara stumbled back, heart racing.
“She died,” she said aloud.
Aelius stood beside her, grim. “Yes. She chose to become the vessel that would seal the rift between gods. She was... the first.”
“The first what?”
“The first to bind with a god. To love one. To change everything.”
Clara turned to him, throat tight. “That’s the prophecy?”
“One of them. Most of the gods deny it ever happened.”
“But she’s me. Isn’t she?”
He didn’t answer.
“You knew this,” she said, voice sharper now. “And you didn’t tell me.”
“I suspected,” he said quietly. “But this—this confirms it.”
Her knees gave out, and she sat on the cold stone. “So I’m not just some lost mortal. I’m meant to do something again. Something that got me killed.”
“You’re not her,” Aelius said. “You are your own.”
“But I’m tied to her.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “As I am.”
She looked at him. “Were you… in love with her?”
Silence stretched between them.
“I don’t know if what I felt then was love,” he said at last. “But what I feel now… is more.”
That broke something open in her—but it was quickly swallowed by fear.
“I’m not a god,” she said. “And now Thalor has seen me. Others will come. And I don’t even know how to use what’s inside me.”
He crouched before her, taking her hands. “Then we start. We train. You’re not a god, Clara—but you are not nothing.”
They stayed in the temple that night. The stars were visible through a crumbling skylight, and the air thrummed softly like a heartbeat.
The next morning, they began.
Training was humbling.
Clara could feel the power inside her—a bright, hot thread that curled around her spine—but summoning it was like grasping fire with bare hands. It burned when she forced it. Slipped away when she tried to control it.
Aelius was patient, but unrelenting.
He taught her to listen to the wind, not command it. To merge with the realm’s rhythm rather than stand against it. To draw on emotion—but not be ruled by it.
Still, she stumbled. Often.
“I’m not a weapon,” she snapped one afternoon after the fourth failed attempt at channeling energy into her palms. “I’m a marketing analyst who can barely keep a houseplant alive.”
“And yet here you are,” Aelius said calmly. “Alive. Chosen. Still fighting.”
“I didn’t ask to be chosen.”
“No one ever does,” he echoed Thalor’s words—though with far more warmth.
She sighed, sagging into the grass. “What if I can’t do it? What if I’m just… not enough?”
Aelius crouched beside her, brushing wind-wild strands of hair from her face. “You’re not a god. You have limits. But that doesn’t make you less. It makes you stronger.”
“How?”
“Because you still choose to rise. Despite fear. Despite pain. Gods are eternal—but you try, Clara. You burn bright because your time matters.”
Her throat tightened. “I don’t want to die like she did.”
His hand tightened around hers. “Then we’ll change the ending.”
She looked at him, searching his face. “You’d fight the other gods for me?”
“I already am.”
A silence settled between them—not cold, but full. Shared.
Then Bean appeared, mewling softly and curling in Clara’s lap.
“Even she believes in you,” Aelius said with a small smile.
Clara stroked the cat’s silver fur. “I’ll try again tomorrow.”
“That’s all I ask.”
And as the sun set over the temple’s broken spire, Clara felt it—her power still wild, still uncertain. But awake. Hers.
And it was only just beginning.
- Writer
