Chapter 35

Their group encountered more Domain-born monsters before the terrain finally broke open, the Unmoored making quick, brutal work of their opponents.

It was unsettling to watch, not because of the violence, but because of the ease with which the Unmoored acted. This was no ragged crew; these were veterans, practiced and efficient. Ronark crushed through warped constructs with practiced efficiency; Sura dismantled threats before they fully resolved into danger; Irix erased things that barely left an afterimage; and Tallow flowed from form to form without hesitation, a living weapon-monster amalgamation unburdened by doubt.

Their Sigils were finished products, perfect extensions of their Domains, which became a clear reminder to Pyre how important it was for him to reach the point where he triggered his Domain Trial.

If it can give me this kind of control and power, it will be worth it, he thought as they continued on, the darkness in the Outskirts pressing close, lantern-light swallowing only a small portion of it at a time.

Pyre expected more of the same when they climbed a slanted ridge of fractured stone, jagged crystal biting at boots. Instead, the world fell away.

Beyond the rise stretched into an endless expanse of broken rock and gray crystalline stone, the surface fractured into overlapping plates and jagged growths that caught the lantern-light and scattered it into dull, lifeless reflections. The land looked blasted, mined, forgotten, flayed down to something old and brittle, extending outward until it simply dissolved into the void.

“And so we’ve reached the Forlorn Plains,” the Shepherd announced as he briefly leaned his weight on his crook. “It won’t be long before we reach Veylan. Remember the Gray Souls I told you about? You’re likely to meet them sooner rather than later, and not as you’d expect. Be ready for anything.”

“They won’t rush toward us out of the dark?” Balefor asked as he stood there confident as ever, gaze touching the horizon.

The Shepherd shook his head. “No, they aren’t like the Domain-monsters. The best advice I can give you is to keep your eyes on the ground itself. Your Sigils should remain summoned, and if they come, handle them. We will not get separated here, but if we somehow do, do not answer cries for help. They will try. And they will be convincing, but there is no helping the Gray Souls. Remember that. There’s nothing we are able to do. They failed Shriving; they are doomed for eternity.” He turned with a grunt. “Let’s begin.”

Doomed for eternity, Pyre thought as the group moved down the slope and into the Forlorn Plains.

As before, Pyre caught sight of distant lights, lanterns or flares from other factions, which dotted the horizon. They appeared impossibly far away and uncomfortably close at the same time, the distance refusing to settle.

Massive chunks of a fallen realm littered the landscape—mountainous slabs of architecture and landmass half-sunk into the gray crystalline expanse, tilted at unnatural angles like wrecked ships frozen mid-sink.

They passed the remains of a shattered tower embedded sideways into the plains, its windows fused shut with crystal growth. Another fragment looked like the spine of a city street, cobblestones warped and stretched and vertical, buildings folded inward as if crushed by an invisible hand.

“We’re heading toward a gate that Veylan found, right?” Pyre asked Sura as they walked, the woman not far from him, one hand in her vest pocket.

“Yes,” she said, her sharp eyes never leaving the ground.

“How many gates are there?”

“Not as many as we’d like,” she replied. “But all factions have ways of discovering them. Ours just so happens to be Veylan.”

“How so?” Balefor asked, glancing toward Marrowsven as she moved ahead of them, her eyes darting across on the ground.

“Veylan was a navigator in his realm,” Sura explained. “He’s very good at these things, but we always have backups.” She nodded toward the Shepherd and the charts he carried. “In an endless expanse, where does one start? That is always a problem with venturing past the Outskirts and into the unknown.”

Pyre understood this all too well. He remembered surviving in the forests beyond Farreach, how it felt like they were eons away from civilization, the fear and the strange comfort in knowing something like this, that the real distance between you and safe haven was willpower.

“Navigating will become worse once we reach the Deep Nether,” Sura said. “It is glorious to see, regardless. There are enormous landmasses that can be explored and countless treasures scattered across a near-infinite void. When the realms fall, it’s like comets coming down all around you. We will need to tether together because it has a way of distorting placement.”

“You call that glorious?” Pyre asked.

Sura laughed. “I suppose you could say there’s a macabre beauty to it, yes. The tragedy doesn’t erase that. You might even see the rush of souls if you’re lucky, all of them pulled toward Shriving, moving together like a flock of birds. The awe doesn’t last. It never does. The fighting comes soon after, and that’s where our time there becomes increasingly difficult as we avoid the most heated battles and we search for resources.”

“We’re not there to fight,” Balefor said.

“Absolutely not,” Sura told him. “And not because your Sigil isn’t solid; the fights that play out between factions are brutal and can go on for some time. We let them fight while we plunder.”

“Resource pirates,” he said.

The ground shifted before she could further elaborate.

Something burst up through the crystalline surface and wrapped itself around Ronark’s leg. The dwarf reacted instantly, squeezing his bellows and blasting the thing backward in a concussive surge of Anima.

The Forlorn Plains came alive around them.

The crystal fractured and opened, torsos and arms tearing free as Gray Souls emerged from within the ground itself. They were incomplete—half-formed bodies fused with the terrain, faces stretched thin and hollow, mouths opening far too wide as they reached.

“Gray Souls!” the Shepherd shouted as he knocked one away with his crook.

Marrowsven moved first, flowing around one of them, dropping onto a single hand, and pivoting as she drove her bone Sigil into what remained of its face. It collapsed back into the crystal with a sound like wet stone grinding.

Pyre cut another away, flames searing through gray flesh, and turned just in time to see two of them latch onto Balefor’s legs and shoulders. He moved to help, and the ground shifted directly in front of him, causing him to stumble.

The crystal split open beneath him. Pyre dropped to his knees as two torsos erupted upward, their arms locking around his chest and legs before he could stand again. Their mouths opened, and they shrieked for him to help them.

Pyre tried to fight them off, but it soon became impossible as hands dragged him downward, the ground softening into something that behaved like quicksand, except it was alive. Bodies pressed in around him, half-formed limbs wrapping tighter, pulling at his arms, his shoulders, his throat.

Pyre tried to summon his Sigil, but nothing happened—no heat in his palm nor roar of fire.

Pressure built everywhere at once, his armor scraping against crystal. His ribs felt like they were being pried apart as more hands tore at him. Something tugged at his legs while something else pulled at his neck, and for a terrifying moment Pyre felt himself stretching, as if his body were about to come apart along invisible seams.

He screamed and forced Anima into his hand.

Flames erupted. Tthe cloud of fire burst outward from his Sigil, burning gray flesh to ash and forcing several of the bodies pulling him into the ground to recoil. He did it again, dragging his broken blade as close to his body as he could, heat scorching his skin as much as theirs.

Defiance broke loose within, ugly and raw. If these things were going to take him, they would have to finish the job. He pushed off their bodies, planting his boots against shoulders and skulls, climbing over them blindly toward what he hoped was the surface.

Yet they kept piling on, drawing him down, Pyre never able to find purchase, to pull himself to safety.

A sound broke through.

Every Gray Soul cried at once as the resonance washed over them, their forms shuddering and loosening.

Pyre pushed upward and burst free of the crystal, collapsing onto solid ground just as Balefor grabbed him by the arm and hauled him to his feet. Ronark and Tallow moved in immediately, forming a barrier as they ushered Pyre toward one of the Anima lanterns.

“Stay here,” the Shepherd said, standing just beside the lantern, his bulk blotting out the light as it fell over Pyre. “Recover for a few minutes. We will protect you, but then we’ll have to move.”

Pyre lay there, shaking, lungs burning, the echo of grasping hands still crawling across his skin as the lantern’s light pulsed overhead.

He felt ashamed to have been captured by the Gray Souls, embarrassed, but no one around him seemed to see it that way. They did exactly as the Shepherd told them, protecting Pyre while he was able to quickly restore his power, the light of this particular lamp dimming by the time he stood.

“I’m ready,” he said, head down, expecting their leader to chastise him.

“Good,” the Shepherd said. “Then we continue.”

The Unmoored pressed deeper into the Forlorn Plains. They moved in a loose formation now, lanterns drifting farther apart as the terrain widened.

This time, Pyre did exactly as he’d been told.

His attention never left the ground, on subtle distortions in the crystal, hairline fractures that pulsed faintly, patches where the surface looked too smooth, too intentional. The lesson had been burned into him, literally and otherwise. He kept his Sigil close, summoned and dismissed in short intervals as his Anima stabilized, Pyre never letting himself drift into complacency.

He did not think about what would have happened if he hadn’t pulled himself free, if Irix’s sound hadn’t staggered the Gray Souls, if he’d been alone.

After a single shudder, he forced the thoughts aside.

Better to be aware, he told himself. Not afraid, but aware, Pyre certain that it was something Old Danar of the Farreach militia had once told him.

They began to encounter signs of recent conflict.

Spent Anima scorched the ground in places, shallow depressions burned into the crystal in wide arcs and broken rings. The marks repeated themselves, overlapping in strange symmetry, like they had been methodically clearing the area rather than reacting to it.

“Did someone reach the gate before us?” Marrowsven asked, slowing her pace.

“No, no,” Ronark said, crouching to inspect one of the markings. “Nothing like that. This looks like Veylan’s doing.”

The patterns widened into full circles the farther they went, concentric rings etched into the plains, some shallow, others carved deep enough to split the crystal along their edges. They reminded Pyre of the ritual sites back in his realm, the places set aside after harvest where marks were burned into the ground to bind seasons and offerings together. These carried the same sense of purpose but stripped of warmth and scaled toward something far older.

Then he heard it.

“Please, sirs, help me!”

The voice was thin and young, close.

Pyre did not look up. He fixed his gaze on the crystal at his feet, jaw tight, heartbeat quickening despite himself. The voice followed them, growing louder, more frantic, breaking into sobs and pleas that twisted in his chest.

He summoned his Sigil once, dismissed it, and moved on.

He kept walking, and the cries eventually faded, dissolving into the low hum of the Plains and the soft drift of lantern light.

They climbed toward a raised plateau where the crystal thinned and the ground leveled out. The air grew thinner as they climbed, the faint hum beneath the crystal resolving into something almost like tension. Nothing moved ahead of them, as though the plateau had been waiting.

At the top, silhouetted against the dim horizon, sat a lone figure with his legs dangling over the edge as he looked down at them with a pair of milk-glass eyes.

Veylan lifted a hand in their direction and waved. “I was wondering when you’d arrive,” the frail, bearded man said. “There’s a path around the side that leads up here. Perfect place to spend the night.” His strange eyes drifted across them, unfocused yet unsettlingly aware. “The gate hasn’t opened yet. But it will, and we will be safe here.” He gestured vaguely at the surrounding expanse. “For now.”

“And then?” Balefor asked.

“And then,” the Shepherd said, releasing a haggard breath. “And then it begins.”