The world reeled.
The Guardian Spirit's body writhed in the dying embers of Raen's final strike, a grotesque silhouette unraveling into ash and echoes. Lyra slumped beside him, blood crusting her lips, her spell-drained fingers twitching as if still binding phantom chains.
But Raen didn't move.
Not for a long ti.
He stood still, blade lowered, eyes unfocused as if staring past the world itself. Not at the crumbled temple. Not at the corpse of a god-bound spirit. But into sothing deeper—sothing beneath reality.
The voices were louder now.
Not screams. Not whispers.
Nas.
All the nas he had taken. All the souls he had devoured. All the truths that once belonged to gods now begging to be rembered.
"Raen?" Lyra's voice ca gently, as though afraid she might shatter him with sound. "Are you—?"
"I'm fine." His voice was hoarse. But it wasn't a lie.
Because in the stillness after the battle, a new understanding had begun to crystallize—faint but solid. Every na he devoured wasn't just power. It was identity. History. Laws written into the fabric of creation.
And now, they were his to rewrite.
---
They camped in the ruins that night, under a moon that bled silver tears onto the ancient stones. Lyra, despite her wounds, studied the stolen to with feverish intensity. The blood-chains had evolved, reacting to her will faster than before, pulsing with what she suspected was not just magic, but intent—sentience.
Raen watched her from across the fire, silent.
"You're thinking too much," she said without looking up.
"I have to," he replied. "Sothing's changing."
"You're not losing yourself?"
Raen shook his head. "I'm rembering them. The gods I've taken. Their mories. Their regrets. Their mistakes. And I think..." He paused, staring into the fire. "I think I finally understand what this power is."
She closed the to and looked up. "Tell ."
---
The Power System – Naethryn: The Law of Nas
In the world of Artherion, power is not drawn from the physical, the elental, or the arcane—it is drawn from Nas.
A Na is not simply a word. It is a Truth. A fundantal law that defines existence.
Every living being, every god, every blade of grass, every concept—has a True Na buried within the folds of the world's mory.
To wield true power is to know a Na.
To speak it is to bind it.
To devour it is to own it.
Those who hunt and steal Nas are called Thronedead—souls who have forsaken their mortal truth to ascend the ladder of divinity, one stolen identity at a ti.
Each Na grants not only knowledge or magic, but lawful dominion—the right to impose that truth upon the world.
Raen was not just killing gods.
He was rewriting reality.
---
"The Guardian," Raen muttered aloud. "It wasn't guarding knowledge. It was knowledge. A mory fragnt of the last god who tried to unwrite the Throne."
Lyra nodded. "And the monolith?"
"A cipher. A container for forbidden Nas. I think it's older than the gods themselves."
He stood, his shadow stretching across the cracked stones like a blade.
"There are more like it," he said. "More pieces of the world that rember what the gods buried. And I'm going to find them."
She stood too. "Even if it kills you?"
He smiled—but there was no joy in it.
"If I die before I break the Throne, then every life I stole ant nothing."
---
They left the ruins at dawn.
The world beyond was cold and wild—forests steeped in mist, rivers flowing with lightless water, skyless stretches of land where stars flickered beneath your feet instead of above.
This was the Sundered Vale, a realm between worlds—where reality thinned, and the Laws of Nas grew unstable.
Here, Raen would be hunted not just by beasts or gods, but by the Naless—souls who had lost all identity in their hunger for power. Remnants of failed Thronedead, their bodies warped by half-devoured truths.
Lyra spotted the first one near a weeping tree—a humanoid figure made of broken mirrors, its face a shifting mosaic of other people's mories.
It didn't speak.
It just scread.
---
The fight was quick but harrowing.
Every ti Raen struck, the Naless mimicked his form, his technique—even his voice.
He had to unmake it, piece by piece, striking not with his blade, but with Nas.
The Na of Fire.
The Na of Silence.
The Na of rcy.
Each ti he spoke a word he had claid, the Naless crumbled further—unable to contain a truth it did not own.
Finally, with the whisper of a Na no mortal should have ever known—Velroth, He Who Was Forgotten—Raen silenced the creature forever.
---
They rested by a stream of glass-like water. Lyra looked shaken.
"Raen," she said quietly, "how long until you forget who you were? Until the Nas take everything?"
He didn't answer right away.
Instead, he pulled sothing from his satchel. A scrap of parchnt. A torn page from a children's storybook. It was the only thing he had kept from his old life—before the pact, before the killing, before the power.
A na was written on it.
Raen Valor.
He handed it to her.
"If I ever forget," he said, "read this to ."
Lyra clutched it tight. "You won't forget."
But her voice trembled.
Because they both knew.
Every Na had a cost.
And so nas were heavier than others.
---
To Be Continued...
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