Chapter 330: Chapter 329: Aurora’s History
Ahead, the light shifted. The air grew colder, sharp as iron. Shadows thickened, no longer the natural play of stone and flame but something deliberate, ancient.
The gates rose before Aurora—twin slabs of black stone carved with wounds that glowed faint red, like scars that never healed. They loomed higher than mountains, their edges rimmed with chains that rattled without wind.
The gates of a Demon King’s realm. The realm of the greatest mage of demon kind, One of her teachers, during her time before. So she knew, what was ahead. The test of chains.
She stopped. Her forehead tightened. Her hand steadied on her staff. She felt the weight of the air pressing into her chest, like the gates themselves judged her resolve.
Do I turn back now? The thought came unbidden. But it was drowned by another, fiercer one:
Loki waits.
Loki suffers.
Loki needs.
She lifted her hand and touched the gate. The stone was cold—colder than anything in Hell should have been. A shiver ran through her bones. Then the chains shifted, clattering like teeth, and the gates groaned apart.
What lay beyond was not a hall, not a throne, but a labyrinth.
The Labyrinth of Chains
Aurora stepped inside and the sound changed instantly. The roar of molten rivers vanished. Instead there was a silence thick enough to choke on, broken only by the endless rattle of chains.
They hung everywhere: from the ceiling, from unseen heights, crisscrossing the air like webs. Each chain was vast, thick as a tree trunk, glowing faintly with inner fire.
They moved on their own, swaying with invisible weight. Some were taut, others slack, but all hummed with a low vibration—a chorus of whispers. Words bled from them in a dozen voices, some pleading, some cursing, some crying like children.
Aurora’s gown shuddered as she stepped forward. Every link she passed vibrated harder, whispering louder.
"Failure."
"Betrayal."
"Alone."
Her grip tightened on the staff. Illusions, she told herself. Tests. Nothing more. But she felt the tremor in her hands. The labyrinth was not stone and iron—it was memory given form.
The First Chain...
She saw herself small, no taller than the bone towers of Hell’s beasts. Her horns were faint ridges, her wings stubs that twitched when she tried to leap. She remembered running barefoot across basalt fields, the stone cutting her skin but never slowing her.
And beyond her childish laughter came voices—low, guttural, reverent.
"Born of fire. Born of lineage that should not have survived."
The shadows of demons loomed, kneeling around her as though before an idol. She remembered the weight of their eyes—expectation, fear, devotion—long before she had understood words like destiny.
The chain whispered in the voice of her nursemaid demoness:
"You were not like the others, child. You were born silver, where others were born ash. You were born watching, where others were born devouring."
Aurora’s heart clenched. She pressed her palm to the chain, feeling the burn. "Yes," she whispered, "and it never felt like a gift. It felt like exile."
The chain rattled, then lifted, opening her path.
.
.
The Second Chain: Solitude
The labyrinth narrowed. Shadows pressed close, and another chain barred her way.
This time she saw a cavern—her cavern. A hollow where she had hidden from the others. A place where she traced spirals into the ash, where she whispered her questions to walls that never answered.
She remembered the loneliness of it, the silence of Hell so loud it swallowed her thoughts. No one came for her. No one sought her. Except....
.
.
The chain shifted. The silence broke.
She saw a girl, the same age she had been, standing at the cavern’s mouth. Human. Soft-skinned. Fragile. Her dress shimmered like a noble’s, a crownlet crooked in her silver hair.
Yellow eyes met hers—strangely, terribly familiar.
Aurora gasped. "No... that wasn’t real."
The chain pulsed, glowing brighter.
She remembered the first time she touched the girl’s hand—warm, impossibly warm against her clawed fingers. Remembered how the girl had smiled and said, "So you’re not as scary as they say."
And for the first time, Aurora had laughed.
The chain whispered with her younger voice:
"You needed her. And when she left, you learned to need no one...."
Aurora’s chest tightened. She wanted to deny it, but the ache of loss lingered, as raw now as then.
"I did need her," she said softly, pressing her forehead to the chain. "And that is why I learned to hide it."
The chain groaned, then slithered upward, releasing her way.
The Third Chain: The Mirror
Aurora walked deeper, her staff heavy in her grip. The third chain dropped before her, thick as a tower, molten light spilling from its cracks.
Within it, she saw the human girl again—but a bit older, a reflection. Silver hair. Yellow eyes. Nobility woven into her carriage.
The girl smiled, but it was not kindness this time. It was challenge.
"Do you even know who I am?" she asked. Her voice rang like bells and knives together.
Aurora trembled. "You were my friend. My first. My only. The first human I made a deal with "
The girl stepped closer in the vision, her presence bleeding out of the chain. "No. I am more than that. I am the piece of you... you abandoned. The one who could have been alive, if you had chosen it. The one who looked like hope...."
The words cut deeper than fire. Aurora felt her body lock, her wings trembling. She wanted to scream, to strike, to shatter the chain.
Instead she whispered: "... in that time, I was still naive, greedy, greedy to be loved like a human, cared like a human, Embraced like a human."
The girl’s smile faded, sadness slipping through. She reached out from the chain, her hand brushing Aurora’s cheek with impossible warmth. "you have it, you have it all, my human body, my silver hair, my yellow eyes...your wish was fulfilled, the deal was done, so why do you see me so.."
Aurora’s heart thundered. Her throat ached. She had no answer.
The chain split with a sound like bone breaking. The vision dissolved, leaving only the echo of yellow eyes and the lingering touch of a phantom hand.
---
The Center
Aurora stumbled forward. The chains converged around a single lock, massive and pulsing, alive with veins of red.
This time she did not hear soldiers or prophets. She heard a child’s laugh—the laugh she had once shared with that girl at the edge of Hell. The sound turned into weeping. Then silence.
Aurora clutched her staff, eyes burning. "I didn’t know you were ever so precious to me. I didn’t even know if I was capable of.... feelings.. But I will not let your memory bind me. I will carry it."
Her eyes flared, striking the lock with light. The lock cracked, chains falling like dead serpents.
Beyond it, the path opened—toward the realm of the Demon King.