SWNOVELXO Chapter 25: Chapter 25 – Let Memory Bleed
It began at dusk.
The golden hour dipped low over Virelles.
Shadows lengthened like whispers trying to become screams.
At the edge of the city-where ruins of the Old Circle Temple met scorched fields-the wind stilled.
The air thickened.
And Elara stepped into the arena of fate.
Kaelith had begged her not to go alone.
But this wasn't his fight.
Not yet.
She needed to see the girl.
To face what the gods had forged in her absence.
To decide once and for all whether this enemy could be unmade… or had to be destroyed.
The Vessel was already waiting.
Barefoot.
Unblinking.
Wrapped in fire and silence.
Around her, the ruins smoked softly, though no fire touched them.
She stared at Elara like a prophet studies an eclipse-something once sacred that must now be consumed.
"You remember everything," the girl said.
"And still you're weak."
Elara didn't blink.
"No. I remember enough."
"You should have vanished. You should have let the gods have your spine. Instead, you burned your name into time."
She took a step forward. The grass around her hissed and blackened.
"Now I'm here to erase it."
Elara raised a hand.
No fire.
No glamour.
Just light-memory spun into magic, shimmering with fragments of past lives.
The Vessel flinched.
Because it wasn't an attack.
It was a mirror.
And in it, the girl saw something she had never been shown-
A glimpse of who she could have been.
A child laughing in sun.
A girl reading by moonlight.
A name being whispered softly by someone who loved her.
The fire around her sputtered.
"Stop that," she hissed. "That isn't real."
Elara's voice was gentle, but firm.
"It was taken from you. But it was real. And it still could be.*"
The Vessel screamed.
And the earth cracked.
Pillars of white-hot flame erupted from the ruins, coiling like dragons. Magic surged, divine and wild.
Elara stepped back, forming a dome of memory-light to shield herself.
But this wasn't about winning.
It was about reaching.
"The gods made you their answer to my freedom," Elara shouted over the fire.
"But freedom isn't a sin. And you were never meant to be their cage."
The girl raised her hand-
Fireblade forming from air-
And lunged.
The two forces collided.
Memory and flame.
One fluid, sorrowful, shaped by emotion.
The other savage, rigid, driven by blind command.
They circled each other through ruined stone, spell after spell cracking reality like glass.
Kaelith watched from a distance now-unable to interfere, but eyes blazing with worry.
And in the final clash-
Their palms touched.
Not fists.
Not swords.
Palms.
A pulse rang out, not loud but deep, like a heartbeat breaking through eternity.
And in that moment-
The Vessel saw herself in Elara's eyes.
Not as a tool.
Not as vengeance.
But as a girl.
Just a girl.
She collapsed to her knees.
Shaking.
Silent.
The fire snuffed itself out.
"What… am I?" she whispered.
Elara knelt beside her.
"You are what comes after gods stop speaking."
But far above…
In the highest layer of the divine realm…
The one who had forged the Vessel-the Forgotten God-opened his eyes.
"She hesitated," he said.
"We must now send something worse."
And in the void behind him…
Something began to breathe.