Chapter 13: The Veins of EmotionOpening Line
Some lies are told with words. The cruelest are whispered by the heart.
The Weight of Stillness
After the fall of the Godscript, silence lingered.
Not the silence of peace — but of something holding its breath.
Zeraphin had retreated to the outer realms, haunted by the ease with which he'd nearly submitted.
Elenai stood watch over the shifting Library, her mind questioning everything she'd ever felt — were they hers, or planted?
And Aethros… wandered.
He passed through timelines, starfields, and memory echoes, but they all felt numb.
Until he reached a cliff of glowing aurora — not of light, but of emotion.
It shimmered, danced, cried, laughed — all at once.
And in the center stood a figure.
She didn't speak.
She felt.
Her presence wrapped around him like warmth and winter combined.
Aethros whispered, "You're the Fourth…"
She smiled — not with her mouth, but with her soul.
"I am Velissara — the Author of Emotion.
First heartbreak. Final rage. Forgotten joy. I do not lie… I only remind you what you've buried."
The Realm of the Heart
With no warning, Aethros fell.
Not physically — emotionally.
He was pulled into his own forgotten heart, where the stars bled feelings, and time pulsed like a heartbeat.
Velissara walked beside him, barefoot on clouds of regret.
"You've fought Time, Memory, Belief… but you've ignored your own pain."
"I moved past it," Aethros insisted.
She shook her head.
"No. You locked it. Let me show you what you've hidden."
She reached out — and suddenly…
The Archive of Suppressed Emotion
His father's voice, yelling that he was too strange to be loved.
His mother's tears, whispered behind doors when she thought he was asleep.
A friend's betrayal, long ago, which Aethros had rewritten as a misunderstanding just to survive.
"You told yourself you were chosen by the Throne," Velissara said.
"But in truth… you were running from these."
Each emotion struck like thunder.
Love lost.
Anger never expressed.
Shame he'd never admitted.
Aethros fell to his knees, his breath ragged.
Elenai appeared beside him — her own aura flickering.
"She's doing the same to me," she whispered.
"Showing me how I clung to destiny… because I feared freedom."
The Temptation of Feeling Nothing
Velissara sat before them, a motherly presence now.
"You don't have to hurt," she said softly.
"Let me take it all. The guilt. The shame. The fear. I can make you… feel nothing."
And for a moment, it was tempting.
So tempting.
But then…
Aethros heard a child's laugh — his own, in a memory — chasing a light through a meadow of stars.
Not a painful moment.
Just pure, wild joy.
"If you take my pain," he said, rising,
"you take my capacity to love with it."
Velissara's smile faltered.
"Why would you choose suffering?"
"Because it's real," Aethros said. "Because it proves I felt something that mattered."
The Emotion Storm
Angered — or perhaps heartbroken — Velissara wept.
And the universe cried with her.
The realm cracked.
A storm of pure emotion surged through the cosmos — sorrow like oceans, rage like firestorms, joy like lightning.
Zeraphin returned mid-storm, wings blazing.
He cried out, "We don't fight her with logic! We embrace what we feel!"
One by one, they faced their rawest emotions:
Elenai, admitting her fear of being meaningless without fate.
Zeraphin, forgiving himself for every moment he hesitated to choose sides.
Aethros, opening his arms and saying:
"I am not empty. I am not numb. I am the sum of everything I've ever felt — and I will not surrender that to silence."
Velissara trembled.
"Then… you remember me?"
"I do," Aethros whispered. "You were my first ache… and my first comfort. I honor you. But I will no longer let you define me."
Velissara's Transformation
She did not vanish like the others.
Instead… she knelt.
The storm faded.
Velissara placed a single glowing tear into Aethros' hand.
"This is yours," she said. "All that you've endured — wrapped in one final feeling: peace."
Then she dissolved into starlight — not defeated.
Released.
A Moment of True Stillness
For the first time since the journey began, Aethros didn't feel like a vessel, a target, or a warrior.
He felt like himself.
Whole.
Loved.
Wounded, yes.
But free.
And from that stillness, a whisper emerged.
Not from an Author.
Not from an enemy.
But from the Throne itself.
"One more remains… the Fifth. The Final. The Beginning."
And suddenly, the stars bent.
Time froze.
A portal opened — made of truth, lies, and everything in between.
End of Chapter 13
Velissara has departed. Emotion is no longer a prison.
Only one Author of Untruth remains.
She is not time, not space, not belief, not memory, not feeling.
She is the Original Lie.
And she has been waiting for Aethros since the moment he was born.
Shall I continue with Chapter 14, where Aethros confronts the Final Author of Untruth, the one who shaped even the throne itself?