The sanctuary was dying.
Cracks spiderwebbed through the ley-heart at its center, golden veins flickering like candlelight caught in a storm. The chamber groaned as if the stone itself mourned a deep, resonant wail that rippled through the roots above.
Kaelen spat blood onto the floor and forced himself upright. His blade was cracked. His ribs screamed. But his ember-bright eyes were locked on the Vesperborn.
Sareth.
He no longer said the name. Saying it gave it power.
Across the chamber, Auren stood in the ley-heart's glow, arms outstretched, binding glyphs spiraling around him as he chanted in a tongue older than breath. His skin shimmered with golden sweat. Every word he spoke was an anchor but the ley was slipping.
"I can't hold it!" Auren shouted.
"Then don't!" Kaelen roared. "We run!"
The Vesperborn stepped forward.
One step. That was all.
The ground ruptured beneath him not with fire, but with memory. Whispers filled the air.
She screamed. They burned. You left me.
Kaelen charged.
His blade met the Vesperborn's shard in a flash of golden light. Not smoke this time. Not illusion. Force. The collision shattered stone, sent glyphs spiraling. Kaelen ducked a vertical slice and countered with a shoulder check, slamming into the Vesperborn's chest.
The mask tilted just slightly and Kaelen saw it:
A scar. Human.
Then the Vesperborn exhaled.
Kaelen flew backward, dragged across the floor, blood smearing behind him. The crystal blade didn't follow it simply turned, pointed toward Auren.
"He always believed," the Vesperborn murmured. "Even when he shouldn't."
The ley-heart gave a final, wrenching groan.
Then
It shattered.
Not with a scream but a sigh. As if giving up.
Light exploded upward—not like fire, but like stars dying in reverse. A howl tore through the chamber as the floor buckled and tore open a spiral vortex of raw Wyrd, pulling at everything: stone, breath, memory, fate.
Kaelen felt the pull before he could move.
He lifted from the floor.
He screamed Auren's name.
Auren ran.
The vortex stretched between them like a mouth opening wider and wider.
Kaelen's fingers brushed Auren's.
Auren caught him.
"I've got you," he gritted. "I've got you!"
The Vesperborn raised his blade.
And drove it into Auren's back.
Kaelen screamed.
Auren's eyes widened not in fear, but in acceptance. His mouth opened, but no sound came.
Blood, gold and red, poured down his side.
He let go.
Kaelen fell.
Through silence. Through screaming memory. Through shadows that wore his face.
Above
Auren collapsed, the crystal blade buried deep.
The Vesperborn knelt beside him.
"You never knew, did you?" he whispered. "What you were protecting. What you were chosen for."
Auren's fingers twitched.
The light flickered.
Then went still.
Silence.
Then breath.
Kaelen's. Shallow. Shaking. Alone.
He awoke on a surface of smooth, obsidian black. No walls. No sky. No air. Symbols floated in the darkness some glowing, some still forming. When he moved, they bent away from him like startled birds.
He tried to scream.
The sound vanished before leaving his throat.
Something watched him.
A figure emerged not walking, but appearing. Robes of shifting color. Face shadowed. Barefoot. Calm.
"You are broken," the man said. His voice was rust over silk.
Kaelen dropped to his knees.
"Auren," he choked. "He- he-"
The man did not answer.
Kaelen slammed his fists into the nothingness beneath him. "He's dead. He died because of me. I wasn't enough. I never-"
"Your flame isn't broken," the man said. "It's untamed."
Kaelen looked up. Rage and grief flooded his chest.
"Who are you?"
The figure tilted his head. "I was once the thing you are becoming. And I failed."
The runes pulsed.
He extended a hand.
"So tell me, Kaelen. Will you burn out… or become something the gods themselves remember?"
Kaelen's fingers curled.
Something in him broke.
And something else began to wake.