[The Twining] 15. The Mural (Patreon)

Hey guys, you might recall that The Twining is just a working title. Two others I was brainstorming are "Severed Divinity" and "Remnants of Ascension". This is an example of a cover with one of the potential titles.

Please let me know what you think about the title ideas / feel free to suggest title ideas.

Without further ado... chapter 15.

Heat burned in Isen’s throat. The crackle of an inferno surrounded him, but instead of firelight, all he saw was impenetrable black. He turned, seeking Ros, who should be right beside him. All he grasped was arid air.

Had he been… transported somewhere?

He took a deep breath and closed his useless eyes. He tried to cycle, but no ambient energy answered his call. There was only the loud crackling and the scent of something he couldn’t place. It wasn’t smoke.

His lungs protested the intense heat, but nothing had attacked him. He didn’t sense any monsters.

He didn’t think this was a trap. The call of opportunity had been real. But if not a trap, what was this, a trial? Some kind of test?

Or maybe it’s something else I don’t understand. He thought of the sanctum. It had seemed mysterious at a glance—and in all fairness, its origins were genuinely mysterious—but it was a fairly straightforward place. It had a bathroom, a bedroom, and lots of books.

The place he found himself in was lightless and eerie, but maybe there was something obvious he was missing.

He took a step forward, his bare foot feeling out the smooth stone floor. He proceeded while giving himself over to the sixth sense, trusting the inexplicable urgings in his gut to move a certain way.

His foot slid into an obstruction. He raised it up, feeling what was evidently a wall with his sole. He extended his hand, searching for something that might be there…

He felt it. Something different, a divot, then a bulge in the surface.

He couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be. He’d lived in the darkness for a year, but he’d still been able to see using the ambient energy. There hadn’t been a need to refine his sense of touch.

Don’t fixate on what you can’t do, he thought. Focus on what you know.

The sixth sense had brought him to this part of the chamber for a reason. Maybe there was a mechanism here that would reveal an exit.

As he palmed the cool stone, he wondered what Ros was doing and where the beast was. Wouldn’t it be funny if they were both tiptoeing silently in this strange room, ignorant of the location of the other?

Impossible, Isen thought. If Ros were really here, he should be able to sense Isen through the blood bond they’d forged before entering. Since Ros hadn’t found him, that meant he was truly alone.

The thought sent a chill down his spine.

Isen may have led the way to the temple, but reaching it was at least a tier beyond his capabilities. Moreover, the massive stairs leading to the archway suggested that this place was intended for large core consolidation monsters like Ros or humans who could clear person-sized gaps with casual steps.

Isen paused. If this place was made for someone like Ros… perhaps what he lacked was an appropriate vantage point. Isen had never climbed in pure darkness, but he had gotten somewhat used to moving in the dark. As a hollow ring stage cultivator, he trusted his body to take him where he needed to go.

Steadying his mind, Isen grasped at one of the irregular divots and pulled himself up. He slid his feet into cracks and folds while grasping for new handholds. He made faster progress than he expected—the wall was sloped, easing his journey.

He grabbed onto a circular ornament the size of his head, the first obvious protrusion. It wouldn’t be the last. More ornamentation, including crenellated borders on the stone, covered everything. What was he climbing?

The sixth sense subtly guided him over the rock until, after a few minutes, he stopped. The sound of crackling fire was now a roar. Isen tried speaking and could barely hear himself. The rock, which had always been cool, held traces of warmth.

Finally, he reached an end to the sculpted wall. His fingers found a flat slab of stone—a floor?—and he scrambled up. The air billowed in ribbons of searing heat. Holding out his hands to the sides, he felt sloped walls. No obvious dangers. Forward. Swallowing, he walked until he couldn’t—his fingers quested and found open air. Two large openings in the stone, each an almond shape.

Isen already had suspicions regarding the nature of the supposed wall he’d scaled. These openings only confirmed his theory. Are these… eyes?

Suddenly, a deep tone resounded, originating from a space below the eyes. It severed the sound, the heat, and the plying wind like a sword through paper. It resonated in Isen’s body, rattling his jaw and chest. He clutched at his ears and staggered.

But in the wake of the tone was something new. Ambient energy. Useless eyes closed, Isen breathed in deeply and cycled, welcoming the power. The energy was a massive wave washing over him, and he could only collect a fraction.

Light shone on his eyelids. His eyes snapped open and he peered through the two curved windows in awe. A powerful light shone from behind him inside the statue’s head, illuminating the full outer chamber. It was a palatial atrium fit for an emperor, six lofty stories connected by double staircases with an open view onto the center of the room, which was empty of any furniture or rugs. The other floors contained niceties like plush chairs, tables, and vases. He even noticed sets of armor flanking the stairways leading to the fourth floor and higher.

What caught his attention most were the paintings. They were numerous, but nearly all that he could see were indistinct, like a shadow was obscuring them from onlookers. All except for the mural that covered the wall directly across from him, in the gap between the sixth floor and the ceiling.

An androgynous figure portrayed in profile dominated the sparse scene, one finger slightly outstretched. It wore pure white robes with black detailing. The figure’s skin was a deep bronze, its eye pure black, and its white hair was short and slightly curled. The painting wasn’t detailed enough to suggest at the figure’s age, aside from that they weren’t a young child or obviously ravaged by time.

He reeled as the figure’s lone visible eye moved, looking his way. Heart leaping, he closed his eyes and dropped to the ground. An intense violet radiance spilled through his lids, reflected by the stone. Cupping his eyes, Isen rose, his offhand stretched above him, feeling for any dangers. He returned to his original viewpoint and shifted his fingers to form a makeshift blinder.

The mural had changed. Now the figure was facing forward, directly at him—or at least directly at the carved eyeholes. The painted face was imperious in the extreme, reminiscent of a powerful conqueror from a bygone era before the current age of kings.

As those eyes pierced into Isen’s, he saw words in his mind—not even words, but something more fundamental, as though the mural’s figure were impressing upon him the universal language of the world itself.

“You are a light in the darkness.”

Paired with the aloof figure’s demeanor, Isen felt chilled rather than uplifted. The words were lead upon his soul. He sensed sorrow, rage, and pitiless apathy, all at once.

He averted his eyes and the weight of the words faded. He looked again and they returned. It didn’t seem to be an active effect. The mural wasn’t speaking to him. The universal words were just… part of the painting.

It made Isen breathless. Who could make something like that? The moving picture was extraordinary, but words that seemed to speak straight into his being struck him as magic on a higher level.

A divine level.

Transfixed, he reached out for the painted figure. When his fingers reached the threshold of the statue’s eye, he flinched, the sixth sense screaming a warning. Hair-thin ribbons of shadow covered the sill like fingers dangling from a precipice, shifting position slightly, as though readjusting an uncomfortable grip.

Shuddering, he turned toward the back of the statue’s upper head. The source of light came from the curved walls, small openings that reflected and compounded the light, directing it into the two beams that left through the eyeholes and dispersed, evenly coating the room in dim illumination. Squinting into the glare, he walked to the end of the room, where he’d originally entered, and froze. Eerie, fimbrillate shadows shifted at the periphery where the glow disappeared.

He was trapped—at least if he trusted that escaping into the shadows was off the table. Given what the sixth sense was telling him, he didn’t want to risk it.

Knuckles white, he once more stood before the eyeholes, his demeanor guarded. The mural was the centerpiece of a beautiful six-story chamber. Its presence felt meaningful, deliberate. Aside from the pill concocting woman from the fateful day Isen fell into the Twinning, Ros was Isen’s primary window into the world of cultivation. And Ros… was fairly simple. Its path to greatness was through conflict.

Isen had never considered that some cultivators might develop skills and techniques unintended for combat. Certainly painting had never occurred to him. Isen had dreamed of wandering the world, experiencing its beauty and seeing all there was to see, but not to grow more powerful as a cultivator. More to spend the supposedly vast amount of time that cultivators lay claim to.

The miraculous mural was more than just an impressive divine working—it was a call to possibility. Isen considered his breakthrough to the second tier. He’d envisioned the tree of cultivation, with its countless leaves of opportunity. He’d thought of them as simply… experiences to be had. Mundane skills to master for pleasure.

But what if a cultivator could find divinity in everything they did, in every leaf on the tree? What if every painting spoke, what if every song breathed, what if even a simple woven basket could carry itself?

Isen figured that more normal cultivation techniques could accomplish those feats, perhaps even magery, but that wasn’t the point. He knew his imagination was limited by what he’d seen within the small, limited perimeter of Goldbounty and the rugged plains that surrounded it.

The exact nature of how the divine power of cultivation made itself manifest was irrelevant. But the idea of a future filled with countless amazing callings, limited only by his imagination, spoke to him in a way that Ros’s path of conflict never had.

Enlightened, he cycled.