Free Web NovelChapter 66 — The Rift Opens
Winter arrived gently across the Abyssal Empire.
Snow settled upon the peaks surrounding Drakhar, turning the dark volcanic mountains into crowns of white. Far below, the valleys remained green, warmed by volcanic springs that had nourished the land long before kingdoms learned to draw borders upon maps.
The empire had changed.
Not through conquest.
Through time.
The bridge over the Ashen River had become so ordinary that merchants no longer admired it. They simply crossed it while arguing over prices, laughing with old rivals, or complaining about the weather. Children raced across its stone arches, unaware that only months earlier their parents had believed such a bridge between races was impossible.
That, Vespera realized, was the greatest compliment a ruler could receive.
When people stopped noticing peace...
It had become part of everyday life.
She leaned against the balcony overlooking Drakhar as the first rays of sunlight touched the city.
Smoke rose from hundreds of chimneys.
Blacksmiths opened their forges.
Bakers carried fresh loaves onto wooden shelves.
Dragonkin hatchlings chased Human children through narrow streets while exhausted parents from both races shouted exactly the same words.
"Don't run!"
None of the children listened.
Vespera smiled.
"They're becoming difficult."
Lirael joined her, wrapping a woolen cloak around her shoulders.
"They're becoming children." freewёbnoνel.com
"I suppose there's a difference."
"There is."
For several moments neither woman spoke.
Silence no longer felt awkward between them.
It had become the silence of people who trusted each other's company.
Finally, Lirael asked,
"Do you miss your old world?"
The question caught Vespera off guard.
She didn't answer immediately.
Instead she watched an elderly Dragonkin helping a Human merchant repair a broken cartwheel.
Months ago they might have fought.
Today they argued over which hammer worked better.
"...Sometimes."
Lirael waited.
"I miss little things."
"What little things?"
"The smell of rain on hot roads."
"The sound my mother made while cooking."
"The way my father pretended he wasn't worried whenever I came home late."
She laughed quietly.
"I don't even remember what we argued about."
The memories no longer stabbed her heart.
They lingered like distant music.
Beautiful.
Fading.
Real.
Lirael rested her elbows upon the stone railing.
"I used to think grief disappeared."
"And now?"
"I think we simply learn to carry it."
Vespera looked at her friend.
"When did you become wise?"
"When you became Empress."
They laughed together.
Below them, life continued.
A messenger hurried toward the Hall of Embers.
A group of traveling musicians entered the eastern gate.
Farmers unloaded wagons filled with winter vegetables.
Nothing seemed unusual.
Yet Vespera couldn't shake a strange feeling.
It wasn't fear.
Nor danger.
It felt...
As though the world itself had paused to take a breath.
Inside the Hall of Embers, the morning council proceeded with unusual efficiency.
Captain Rowan reported that patrols along the northern passes had encountered no raiders for nearly six weeks.
Trade with neighboring settlements had increased beyond expectations.
The new irrigation canals designed by Dragonkin engineers and Sylvana's druids had nearly doubled the autumn harvest.
Kragga looked almost disappointed.
"So..."
"No battles?"
Rowan shook his head.
"No battles."
"No monsters?"
"No monsters."
"No bandits?"
"They surrendered."
Kragga groaned dramatically.
"I'm beginning to miss punching people."
Nyxara raised an eyebrow.
"You could always spar with Captain Rowan."
Rowan immediately looked elsewhere.
"I suddenly remembered several reports that require my attention."
Laughter echoed through the chamber.
Even Elyra allowed herself a rare smile.
For the first time since Vespera's arrival in this world...
The council had nothing urgent to solve.
It should have been comforting.
Instead...
It made Dorun uneasy.
The elderly scholar remained strangely quiet throughout the meeting.
His fingers tapped absent-mindedly against the table.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Lyessa noticed.
"So did I."
Dorun looked up.
"You feel it too?"
The room became silent.
Vespera leaned forward.
"Feel what?"
Dorun hesitated.
"I don't know."
He sounded frustrated with himself.
"My mind tells me everything is well."
"But..."
"My instincts keep remembering something they shouldn't."
Lyessa slowly nodded.
"The Keepers used to say history has seasons."
Everyone turned toward her.
"There are ages when kingdoms flourish."
"Ages when kingdoms fall."
"And..."
She stopped speaking.
"And what?"
Vespera asked.
Lyessa's normally calm expression tightened.
"There is one season we prayed would never return."
"The Season of Awakening."
No one spoke.
The words themselves seemed older than the language used to pronounce them.
Captain Rowan frowned.
"I've never heard that expression."
"You weren't supposed to."
Lyessa answered quietly.
"It disappeared from recorded history over a thousand years ago."
The room fell still.
Vespera felt something cold settle in her chest.
Not because of what Lyessa had said.
Because of what she hadn't.
Before anyone could ask another question...
The doors of the council chamber burst open.
A young courier stumbled inside, breathless.
"Your Majesty..."
He struggled to catch his breath.
"The northern watchtowers..."
Captain Rowan stood immediately.
"What happened?"
The courier looked genuinely frightened.
"They sent mirrors at sunrise."
"And?"
"They all reported the same thing."
"What?"
The young man swallowed hard.
"The mountains..."
"They're making sounds."
The room fell silent.
"The mountains don't make sounds."
Rowan said.
"I know."
The courier whispered.
"That's why everyone is afraid."
Vespera rose from her chair.
For the first time in months...
The peace she'd worked so hard to build felt fragile.
Not because an army stood at her borders.
But because the world itself had begun behaving in ways no one could explain.
Outside...
Far beyond the northern frontier...
Snow slid silently from the face of an ancient cliff.
Behind the avalanche...
Stone that had remained hidden for countless centuries was exposed to the morning light.
Across its surface stretched a single line.
Perfectly straight.
Perfectly black.
It was no crack in the mountain.
It was a wound.
And for the first time since before the oldest kingdoms were born...
It had begun to open.
The journey north began before the sun had climbed above the mountains.
Vespera refused the offer of an escort large enough to resemble an army.
"If the world is changing," she said as she fastened her traveling cloak, "I want to see it before frightened soldiers begin imagining monsters in every shadow."
Only six accompanied her.
Lirael.
Nyxara.
Elyra.
Kragga.
Dorun.
Lyessa.
Captain Rowan remained behind to govern Drakhar in her absence.
"If I'm wrong," Vespera told him, "you'll spend three peaceful days wondering why I worried."
"And if you're right?"
She looked toward the northern peaks.
"Then someone must remain here to protect everyone else."
The road climbed steadily through pine forests heavy with fresh snow.
Normally the mountains echoed with life.
The cry of hawks.
The chatter of monkeys that had adapted to the volcanic valleys.
The distant growl of mountain drakes.
Today...
Silence.
Not complete silence.
The kind of silence created when every living creature chooses not to make a sound.
Kragga frowned.
"I don't like this."
"You don't like quiet?"
Lirael teased.
"I don't trust quiet."
The Orc looked into the trees.
"Quiet means something is listening."
No one laughed.
Around midday they reached the first northern watchtower.
Its commander bowed hurriedly.
"You came quickly."
Vespera nodded.
"Show me."
The veteran captain led them to the highest platform.
"There."
At first...
Vespera saw nothing.
Only mountains stretching endlessly beneath a pale winter sky.
Then...
She heard it.
A low vibration.
So deep it was almost impossible to distinguish from the wind.
Except...
The wind changed.
The sound did not.
It came again.
Long.
Slow.
Ancient.
Like a giant taking a breath somewhere beneath the earth.
Even the stone beneath their feet trembled.
Only slightly.
But enough.
Dorun's face turned pale.
"No..."
Lyessa whispered.
"It cannot be..."
"What is it?"
Vespera asked.
Lyessa closed her eyes.
"When I was a child..."
"My grandmother told me that mountains are the bones of the world."
Kragga folded her arms.
"My grandmother said mountains were places goats tried to kill you."
"No."
Lyessa smiled sadly.
"The old stories were older than kingdoms."
"They believed the world itself was alive."
"And when it moved..."
Dorun finished the sentence.
"...civilizations disappeared."
Nyxara knelt beside the stone wall.
"There are fresh cracks."
Everyone gathered around.
Thin black lines had appeared in the ancient masonry.
Not from age.
Not from frost.
The stones looked...
Pulled apart.
As though something beneath them was slowly stretching.
Elyra touched one of the cracks.
The moment her fingers brushed the stone...
She gasped.
"What happened?"
Lirael caught her before she stumbled.
"I..."
Elyra struggled to steady her breathing.
"I heard voices."
"What did they say?"
She stared into the distance.
"I don't know."
"It wasn't our language."
"It wasn't any language."
"It felt..."
She searched for the words.
"...older than speech."
Vespera looked toward Lyessa.
The elderly Keeper had gone completely still.
Almost afraid to breathe.
Finally...
She spoke.
"The First Chronicle."
Everyone turned toward her.
"It speaks of this."
Dorun looked stunned.
"I thought the First Chronicle was lost."
"So did everyone."
Lyessa replied.
"But..."
She slowly reached into the satchel she always carried.
From within she removed a bundle wrapped in faded blue cloth.
She unfolded it with hands that trembled from equal parts age and reverence.
Inside rested a collection of loose parchment pages.
Not a complete book.
Fragments.
"I've carried these for thirty years."
"No one but the Keepers knew they existed."
Vespera stared at the brittle pages.
"You had them all this time?"
"No."
Lyessa answered.
"I had what remained."
She carefully opened the first fragment.
The ink had faded.
Yet the writing remained legible.
"It isn't a Chronicle."
She explained.
"It's a copy."
"The original was hidden elsewhere."
"Every Keeper carried fragments from another Chronicle."
"So even if one Keeper died..."
"The truth would survive."
Vespera looked at the delicate handwriting.
"So..."
"What are the Twelve Chronicles?"
Lyessa smiled faintly.
"The question every emperor asked."
"And none received the correct answer."
She looked at each of them before continuing.
"The Twelve Chronicles are not twelve books."
"They are twelve testimonies."
"Witness accounts."
"Written by twelve civilizations."
Kragga frowned.
"Twelve civilizations saw the same thing?"
"Yes."
"The same day."
"The same event."
"From different parts of the world."
Lirael's eyes widened.
"So none of them contains the whole truth."
"Exactly."
"Only together..."
"...do they reveal what really happened."
Dorun gently accepted one of the pages.
"I've studied history for sixty years."
"My teachers said these were myth."
Lyessa shook her head.
"No."
"The myth..."
"...was convincing everyone they never existed."
Vespera asked the question that had haunted her since Caelus' journal.
"Why?"
"Why would anyone erase them?"
Lyessa answered without hesitation.
"Because history gives people power."
She pointed toward the mountains.
"If two kingdoms fight over a border..."
"The one that controls history decides who was there first."
"If rulers control the past..."
"They control the future."
Silence followed.
The answer felt painfully simple.
And therefore...
Believable.
Nyxara looked toward the parchment.
"So the Holy Empire hunted them..."
"...not because they were magical."
"But because they were dangerous."
"They threatened a lie."
Lyessa nodded.
"For over eight hundred years..."
"The official history has been incomplete."
"Not entirely false."
"Just..."
"Missing the parts someone wanted forgotten."
Vespera remembered the torn page from Caelus' journal.
"The missing page..."
"It wasn't removed to hide a treasure."
Lyessa slowly shook her head.
"No."
"It was removed..."
"So no one would know what lies beneath these mountains."
She carefully unfolded another fragment.
Unlike the others...
Its ink appeared darker.
Almost untouched by time.
Dorun stared.
"I've never seen that script."
"You haven't."
Lyessa replied.
"It predates every modern kingdom."
She began reading aloud.
'The prison was never built to keep the Abyss out.'
Everyone listened.
Her voice became quieter.
'It was built to keep something inside.'
The mountain groaned again.
This time...
Much louder.
Snow cascaded from distant cliffs.
Birds burst from forests all at once.
The ground beneath the watchtower shifted.
Not violently.
But unmistakably.
Vespera felt it through her boots.
The earth...
Had moved.
For a single terrifying moment...
Every instinct in her body screamed.
Not to fight.
Not to run.
To listen.
Because beneath the rumbling stone...
Something else echoed upward.
A heartbeat.
Slow.
Impossible.
Alive.
No one spoke.
The heartbeat came again.
Slow.
Steady.
Deep enough that it seemed to rise through the mountain itself rather than through the air.
Boom...
A pause.
Boom...
The rhythm was impossibly ancient.
Not the heartbeat of flesh.
The heartbeat of something that had waited longer than history.
Kragga instinctively rested a hand upon the haft of her axe.
"I don't like this."
For once...
No one teased her.
Vespera closed her eyes.
Instead of resisting the strange sensation...
She listened.
Ever since awakening in this world, the System had been a constant presence.
Sometimes distant.
Sometimes overwhelming.
Now...
For the first time...
It felt uncertain.
A faint flicker passed across her vision.
SYSTEM NOTICE
Scanning...
Scanning...
Historical archive mismatch detected.
The message disappeared before anyone else could notice.
Vespera frowned.
Historical archive?
What did that even mean?
Dorun suddenly dropped the parchment.
His breathing became uneven.
"It wasn't a prison..."
He whispered.
"We've misunderstood everything."
Lyessa helped him to his feet.
"What did you remember?"
"The old translation..."
Dorun said, his voice shaking.
"We translated one word incorrectly."
"What word?"
"The ancient word 'Ka'resh.'"
Lirael searched her memory.
"I've never heard it."
"You shouldn't have."
Dorun replied.
"The language died before the First Kingdom."
"We translated it as..."
"'Prison.'"
He looked toward the mountains.
"It doesn't mean prison."
Silence.
"What does it mean?"
Vespera asked.
Dorun swallowed.
"It means..."
"'Containment.'"
The difference was subtle.
Yet terrifying.
A prison existed to keep prisoners inside.
Containment existed because whatever lay within...
Could never be allowed to escape.
Lyessa unfolded the final surviving fragment she possessed.
"I never wanted to read this aloud."
Her voice carried genuine sorrow.
"Because every Keeper believed that if these words became necessary..."
"...then we had already failed."
She began reading.
'To those who inherit this world...
Know that we were not the first civilization.
Everyone stood motionless.
Nor shall you be the last.
We built kingdoms.
We crossed oceans.
We touched the stars.
Elyra's eyes widened.
"Touched..."
"The stars?"
Lyessa continued.
Our pride exceeded our wisdom.
We believed the Abyss to be a source of endless power.
We were wrong.
The wind howled across the mountain.
Almost as though the world itself remembered those words.
Nyxara quietly asked,
"So the Abyss..."
"It wasn't created by monsters."
Lyessa slowly shook her head.
"No."
"The monsters came later."
"The Abyss..."
She looked toward the black line stretching across the mountain.
"...was discovered."
Vespera felt the pieces beginning to connect.
The Twelve Chronicles.
The Keepers.
The Holy Empire.
The missing page.
None of them had been separate mysteries.
They were fragments of one story.
A story deliberately broken apart.
"But why erase it?"
Lirael asked.
"If everyone knew the truth..."
"Wouldn't they avoid repeating it?"
Dorun answered. freeweɓnovēl.coɱ
"They should."
His tired eyes reflected generations of regret.
"But history teaches us something cruel."
"People do not fear forgotten disasters."
"They repeat them."
A cold wind swept across the ridge.
Snow lifted from the ground without anyone touching it.
Not blown.
Drawn.
Toward the black line.
Every loose flake drifted in the same direction.
As if gravity itself had changed.
Elyra stepped back.
"The mountain is breathing."
She was right.
The black line expanded.
Not quickly.
Not violently.
Patiently.
Stone groaned.
Ice shattered.
A sound echoed from somewhere impossibly deep.
Not a roar.
Not a scream.
A whisper.
No one understood the language.
Yet every one of them felt its meaning.
Awake.
The ground lurched.
This time violently enough to throw everyone off balance.
Cracks spread across the frozen earth.
The watchtower bells began ringing by themselves.
Far below...
Entire flocks of birds abandoned the forests.
Wolves ran across open snowfields without hunting.
Mountain drakes took flight.
Predators.
Prey.
Everything fled in the same direction.
Away from the mountain.
Vespera's vision blurred.
The System appeared again.
This time...
Not as a calm window.
As though it were struggling to function.
SYSTEM ALERT
Ancient Containment Integrity Compromised
Primary Seal Status: 99.98%
Historical Record Synchronization Failed
Consulting Administrator...
...
...
Administrator Not Found
For one terrible second...
Every line of text vanished.
The System had never disappeared before.
Not once since her reincarnation.
Darkness filled her vision.
Then...
New words appeared.
Words unlike anything she had ever seen.
EMERGENCY PROTOCOL INITIATED
THE FIRST RIFT HAS OPENED
WARNING
THE AGE OF CONTAINMENT IS ENDING
The messages faded.
Leaving only silence.
No one else had seen them.
Vespera knew that instinctively.
The others were staring toward the mountain.
Toward the wound in reality.
The black line was no longer merely a crack.
It had become...
Depth.
Not darkness.
Distance.
Like looking into a night sky where no stars had ever existed.
Then...
A single hand emerged.
Grey.
Ancient.
Far too large to belong to any human.
Its fingers gripped the edge of the opening.
Not forcing it wider.
Testing it.
As though confirming that the seal had weakened.
Nothing else followed.
The hand slowly withdrew.
The Rift closed by the width of a single finger.
The heartbeat ceased.
The mountain fell silent once more.
But everyone knew.
Silence no longer meant safety.
It meant waiting.
Lyessa closed her eyes.
For the first time since Vespera had met her...
The old Keeper wept.
"We were too late."
"No," Vespera answered, never taking her eyes off the mountain.
"Not too late."
She tightened her grip on the hilt at her side.
"But we no longer have the luxury of ignorance."
Far beyond the northern peaks...
Across forests...
Across kingdoms...
Across deserts...
Other mountains began to tremble.
The first Rift had opened.
It would not be the last.
End of Chapter 66
Author's Note
Welcome to Arc 4.
If Arc 3 was about building a kingdom, then Arc 4 is about discovering the truth behind the world itself.
Many of the mysteries introduced earlier will finally begin to connect, while new questions will take the story in a much larger direction. Some answers may not be what they first appear to be, so keep an eye on the small details—sometimes the biggest clues are hidden in the quietest moments.
Thank you to everyone who has been reading, commenting, favoriting, and sharing your theories. Every chapter I write is improved by your feedback, and seeing readers discuss the story motivates me to keep pushing it further.
If you've been enjoying Monstrous Allure: Reborn as the Abyss Empress, please consider leaving a Favorite, Rating, or Review. It helps the story reach more readers and supports me more than you might realize.
I hope you'll enjoy this new arc as much as I've enjoyed writing it.
The journey is only beginning.
