Chapter Seventeen: The Pale Invasion
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The sky split like parchment.
Above the world, far past clouds and storms, a crack formed across the heavens. A rent in reality. Out of it poured the Pale Legion—soldiers of forgotten design, born of dust and silence, with armor that pulsed like memory.
Lyra stood at the prow of the Void Ark, eyes narrowed at the distant horizon. She could feel the pressure in the air—the same pressure that once preceded the Abyssal Tide. But this was worse. This wasn't a tide. This was an erasure.
Behind her, Kael and Silas stood in grim silence.
"Do you feel it?" she asked without turning.
Kael answered. "They're not alive. Not dead either. They're fragments. Echoes of worlds the Ash Crown already consumed. Memories turned into weapons."
Silas crossed his arms. "Great. So now we're fighting ghosts of civilizations that don't exist anymore. And here I thought today might be normal."
Nihrex appeared beside them, cloak wrapped tight around his frame. "They're scouts. Heralds. They come first to weaken belief. When the invasion begins proper, the world will forget it ever stood."
The ship jolted.
Far below, the ground had begun to ripple. Forests aged and crumbled into white dust. Cities twisted into spirals of glass and bone. Time itself bent, causing birds to fly backward and shadows to crawl away from light.
The Pale Legion had arrived.
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In the ruins of Eastreach, a final bastion city, the defenders watched in mute horror as the first wave emerged from the cracked sky.
Ten thousand Pale Knights descended like falling stars.
They moved without words, without war cries. Their weapons sang a single frequency—cold, high-pitched, and maddening.
Lyra raised her hand. "Deploy the godspeakers!"
Across the Ark's deck, divine monks began to chant. Words older than creation rippled outward, forming shields of light that repelled the approaching invaders.
Kael turned to Silas. "We need to get to the spire. If they corrupt the Source Tower, the leyline collapses."
Silas didn't argue.
With a blink, the two disappeared from the Ark, appearing atop the crumbling Spire of Wyrmglass. Below them, chaos.
Pale Knights swarmed the streets. Civilians aged into dust. Buildings folded in on themselves like collapsing lungs.
Kael raised his hand. Shadow surged upward, forming tendrils that tore into the enemy. But for every knight that fell, two more took its place.
Silas moved like light itself. His blade—a ripple of energy—cut swaths through their lines. Yet the Pale Legion didn't slow. They didn't fear. They didn't feel.
"They're not here to fight," Kael realized. "They're here to anchor the Crown."
Silas's eyes glowed. "Then we cut the anchor."
He reached into the fabric of space, pulling free a crystal of raw law—a god-fragment—and slammed it into the base of the tower.
The world convulsed.
A ripple burst outward, turning hundreds of Pale soldiers into dust.
But the sky answered back.
---
A new figure descended.
Tall. Dressed in bone robes. Face hidden behind a mask carved from forgotten language.
Kael froze.
"That's a Crown Herald."
Silas frowned. "He looks friendly."
The Herald raised its hand. Time stopped.
Birds froze mid-air. Flames paused mid-burn. Kael and Silas could move only because they were no longer bound fully to this plane.
"I will offer no warning," the Herald said. Its voice echoed in every language ever spoken. "You cling to the shape of things. But the world no longer wishes to be shaped."
Kael stepped forward. "We don't care what the world wants. We're not letting it forget itself."
The Herald tilted its head. "Then you will die as echoes."
With a wave, the Herald summoned a blade of shifting time. It swung, and Kael barely dodged—his cheek slicing open despite the dodge, as if the blade cut through decisions themselves.
Silas charged. Their blades clashed—not with sound, but with memory. Each strike summoned a different era—ruins, kings, joy, fire.
Lyra arrived in a burst of golden light, wings of faith extending from her back. She landed beside Kael, raising her starlight blade.
"You're bleeding," she said.
"It's fashionable," Kael coughed.
"Shut up and fight."
They charged the Herald together.
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The battle at the Spire turned the tide—for now.
The Herald, wounded and surprised by Lyra's divine strike, retreated into the sky.
The Pale Legion, without its anchor, began to falter.
But Kael knew.
This was the beginning.
The Crown had shown its teeth.
And it would not retreat again.
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Far away, in the chambers of the Ash Crown, the Herald knelt.
"My Lord. They resist."
From the darkness, a voice responded.
"Let them."
A throne shifted.
"Let them remember what it costs to defy nothingness."
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To be continued...