There were no windows in this place. No cracks for wind to pass through, no sound of rain, no echo of life… nothing. Only stone, silence, and the pulsing void that wrapped around Haxar like a coffin built for the damned.
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Rouma lay still not by choice. The seals etched into the floor of his cell glowed faintly, pulsing in rhythm with his breath. With each inhale, the magic tightened. With each exhale, it wrapped itself around him anew. There was no escape. Not from the cell. Not from the silence. Not from himself.
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His chamber was lined with runes carved into the walls not designed to kill, but to torture. Not held by chains, but bound by layers of spells, rituals, and energies capable of twisting and suppressing the very fabric of Xhu. Haxar was the most dangerous prison in the realm, divided into eight sectors: the Ravaged Beasts, the Cursed, the Sealed, the Most Wanted, the Sinners, the Arse, the Glasyans, and the Seers. Among them, Rouma was one of the most feared.
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He could not move.
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But his mind… it still wandered. And what it saw there, in the silence of this stone tomb, was more agonizing than any torture Marcho had devised.
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Marcho.
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Even the name was a wound that never closed. The Head Warden of Haxar. Cold, merciless, calculated. Rouma’s only sound now was the echo of Marcho’s boots slow, deliberate, pacing the halls like death itself. Every visit was a ritual. Every word, a blade.
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“You’re still breathing,” Marcho had sneered on his last visit, his voice dry like ash. “Pity. I had hoped your cursed soul would rot before your body.”
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Every act of torment inflicted upon Rouma seemed to bring him pleasure.
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Rouma hadn’t replied. He no longer spoke. Not to anyone. Not anymore.
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But that didn’t mean there was nothing left inside him.
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Beneath the layers of suppression, beyond the scars and silence, Rouma waited. The Xhu within him had not died it had only been forced inward, curled up like a serpent conserving its venom. Patient. Coiled. Watching.
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They believed this was punishment. But this… this was preparation.
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And then… he felt it.
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Not as sound. Not as tremor. No.
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It came as a change in the very essence of the air. Something from beyond. Beyond the stone. Beyond the guards, the runes, and the seals.
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A presence.A will.A hunger.A demon.
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He couldn’t even remember the last time he had felt it.
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Pegwalsge.
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Even here in this hollow hell built to bury monsters and murderers Rouma could feel him. A wave from the deep of Xhu. A call. A recognition older than language.
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His lips, dry and cracked, parted for the first time in years.
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“…Brother?”
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The moment Pegwalsge’s Xhu touched his soul, time shifted. Silence was no longer just silence it carried an echo.
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A memory.A scene sealed in blood, born from ashes…
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They had stood on a mountainside. The cold sky had draped itself over them like a gray shroud. No birds sang. No wind dared stir. Time itself had felt frozen.
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That day, Pegwalsge had told him that death was not an end.
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“Sometimes,” he had said, his hands soaked in blood, “A being dies while still alive. The heart keeps beating, but the soul… it begins to rot. And then, one no longer lives only forgets and regrets.”
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Rouma had stayed silent. He had been young then. His blade had just tasted its first blood. But in Pegwalsge’s eyes, there had been something…
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A fire.A light.A fate approaching step by step inevitable and irreversible.
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“Men seek gods, and gods hide in silence,” Pegwalsge had said. “But what if silence calls you back? What if the void itself calls your name reminds you of who you are, and what your fate demands? That is when true destiny begins. What makes one human begins not when they remember… but when they don't fear to forget.”
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And then he had looked at Rouma.
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That gaze had branded the moment into his soul, as if nailed into time itself.
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There was no destruction in it. Only inevitability.
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“You and I,” Pegwalsge had said, “Are not alike. You will be the one who flees your fate. I am the one who calls it forth.”
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Now, centuries later, those words still echoed in Rouma’s mind. Even beyond the tomb-like walls of Haxar, that voice was just as clear. Just as absolute.
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As Pegwalsge’s Xhu touched him once more, Rouma closed his eyes. A single drop slid down his cheek not a tear. It was the trace of a memory time itself had refused to forgive.
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“If you’ve returned,” Rouma whispered within, “Then I have nowhere left to run.”
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When Pegwalsge’s Xhu seeped through the stone walls like a ripple, the seals trembled for the briefest moment.
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As if the order of the cosmos itself was being reminded of a truth it tried to forget.
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Rouma did not open his eyes. He didn’t need to.He no longer saw beyond the walls he felt.
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And now, something long buried within him began to stir.
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Bond.
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He and Pegwalsge were not merely bound by pain.They were of the same blood.Born of the same fate.Two brothers. Two beings.
Shaped on separate paths but forged from the same source.
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Their Xhus, shaped across different roads, still knew each other.And now, that touch was awakening the sealed within.
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The seals began to ache.The ancient runes blurred for a moment.As if even ancient magic had lost its way in the face of this forgotten call.
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A tremor began to rise within Rouma.Deep beneathwhere a dark, immovable mass had slumbered for centuries it shifted.
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He still appeared chained from the outside. His body did not move.
But inside… the Xhu was no longer asleep.
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It twisted and stirred, sensing the gaps between the seals,slinking into the tiniest fractures of suppression.
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Pegwalsge’s echo drew closer with every breath.
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A voice rose within Rouma not his own.
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An echo.Cold as Pegwalsge’s breath. Heavy as his silence.
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Rouma’s fingers trembled.It was unseen but the universe felt it.
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Beyond the dungeon walls, Marcho’s eyes darkened but he could not explain why.
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For Rouma still appeared to be lying still.
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But within…
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something was trying to awaken.
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That thing studied the seals, memorizing their weave marking their weaknesses, one by one and waited.Patiently. For the right moment.
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