Chapter 34

Following the Shepherd, the group pushed out of Aevum and into the Outskirts.

The ground beneath their feet sloped downward, the polished stone of the city giving way to fractured paths and uneven seams. Pyre stayed toward the back with Balefor, Marrowsven, and Sura, four Anima-powered lanterns drifting around them in a loose constellation.

Each lantern glowed with a soft, contained light, not bright enough to banish the dark, but enough to create a moving bubble of safety around the group. As they descended the hill, Pyre became acutely aware of other lights in the distance. Lanterns for other factions, he thought, watching as they moved across the Outskirts in slow, deliberate patterns.

They looked close, but at the same time, they felt incredibly far away.

Or perhaps the opposite. Pyre couldn’t tell anymore. His sense of distance slipped the longer he watched them bob along, the shapes of other groups seeming to advance and recede without ever doing either.

“You have likely noticed by now how distance seems odd once you are outside Aevum,” Sura said, clearly interpreting the way both Pyre and Balefor kept glancing outward and squinting while Marrowsven remained focused on the path ahead. “The spacing unsettles most new arrivals.”

“I was wondering about that,” Balefor said. “Glad to know it’s normal.”

Sura continued. “Once you survived the initial stage of Shriving, you experienced something similar on the roads leading to Aevum. I remember it feeling like it would take days to reach the city, while also feeling less than an hour away. Time and distance distort here, especially as we move into the Deep Nether.”

The four lanterns around them fanned outward as they continued on, their glow expanding like a warning perimeter.

Pyre stiffened as movement rippled at the edge of the light.

Ink-black shapes scattered away from them, low to the ground, skittering and folding in on themselves as if poured rather than born. The effect reminded him of rats fleeing a flooded cellar, bodies colliding in panic as they fled the lantern’s reach.

His hand twitched toward his Sigil.

“Those would be some of the lesser monsters of the Outskirts,” Sura said calmly, the woman watching Pyre as he quickly pulled his hand away. “The Anima given off by the lanterns repels them. The larger ones, as we reach the Forlorn Plains, can prove troublesome. Domain-born monsters, as they’re known.”

“But they won’t give us trouble,” Ronark called back from ahead.

Perched on the dwarf’s shoulder, Tallow turned to watch the three Unclaimed with unblinking interest, the shifter still in his cat form. He adjusted his paws and leaned into the dwarf’s neck, steadying himself as the group moved.

“Likely not,” Sura said. “But we always move with caution through here, no matter our numbers.”

Pyre glanced again at the distant lanterns of other factions. They now appeared even farther away than before, their lights warped by the uneven terrain and the strange pressure in the air.

“How do we know where we’re going exactly?” he asked.

“The Shepherd knows,” Sura replied, gesturing ahead.

Pyre followed her motion. Their leader walked ten paces in front of them now, his big posture heavier somehow. He now held a shepherd’s crook in his hand, its curved head faintly glowing. Pyre recognized it instantly as a Sigil, summoned as naturally as breath.

“The Shepherd has been navigating the Outskirts and the Forlorn Plains longer than any of us,” Sura said, her eyes lingering on him a moment longer than necessary.

“Is that related to his Domain?” Pyre asked. “Or Domains, I should say. Guessing here.”

“Your guess would be correct,” she said. “But I do not know his Domains. I’ve only seen one of his Sigils.”

“But he knows yours, right?”

“He does, Pyre. He knows all of ours.”

“Seems a bit unbalanced,” Balefor said.

“You could always ask him.” Sura gestured ahead. “But generally, souls keep that kind of information private. It’s too easy to exploit.” She hesitated, then added, “The Shepherd of Fallen Souls does as well.”

Balefor slowed his steps, frowning. “Hold on now. That’s his full title?”

“It is.”

“That sounds like the title of a god if you ask me,” he mused.

“It does,” Sura agreed. “But I wouldn’t speculate. And it makes sense he knows our Domains. Even if he won’t admit it, he’s our leader.”

Pyre mulled Balefor’s suggestion over as they continued forward. Is that how the Shepherd knows Gaius? Was he one of the First and is now trying to stop the Hunger and the exploitation by the pantheons?

The thought lingered, heavy and unwelcome. Pyre pushed it aside and chose another line of questioning. “About the First Gods,” he said to Sura. “The Shepherd thinks I encountered one, Gaius, the Swordsman. Where are the others? Are they in charge of the Light and Dark Pantheons?”

“No,” Sura said. “You would think this was the case, but it is not. The First Gods are not at the helm of the pantheons. They are largely dead, imprisoned, or lost to time. Those at the top of the pantheons are Divine Beings, like Karastella. This is why it is so odd that you met Gaius. He hasn’t been seen in a long time, and there’s a good chance he may never be seen again.”

“Do we know how many of these gods may still exist?” Marrowsven asked.

It was the first time she had spoken all day. Her voice was low, measured, as if she had been holding it back deliberately.

“I don’t,” Sura told Marrowsven. “But someone might.” Her posture tightened as the terrain shifted beneath their feet. The ground ahead broke into jagged stone and half-fused earth.

“Company,” Ronark said as he conjured a massive bellows, its metal frame unfolding with a groan as it anchored itself into the ground. To Pyre’s right, the air around Irix pulled taut, her presence sharpening as she drew a cracked tuning fork and pressed it into the center of her chest, where it locked into place with a resonant hum.

Tallow hopped down from Ronark’s shoulder and flowed into an androgynous human form, fire flickering along his shoulders like candleflame caught in a draft.

“Yes,” the Shepherd said, stepping aside and planting his crook firmly into the ground. “Handle them. Show the Unclaimed what you are capable of.”

The monsters came out of the dark at a dead sprint.

They resembled Devourers only in the broadest sense—towering, demonic shapes with too many joints and jagged symmetry. Their flesh was blackened and slick, stretched tight over warped frames that looked partially melted, partially grown. Veins of dull crimson were visible beneath their skin, not blood but something closer to raw Anima forced into a shape it couldn’t sustain.

The monsters burst through the perimeter of lantern-light, their bodies sizzling faintly where the glow touched them, smoke curling from their hides.

Ronark moved first.

He planted his feet and squeezed his bellows, the Sigil snapping shut with a thunderous clap. A compressed spear of Anima seared forward, ripping through the nearest creature’s chest. The monster screamed once, a sound like metal tearing under strain before its body collapsed inward and detonated into ash and fragments.

Tallow flung himself forward immediately after.

His limbs elongated mid-leap, arms and legs thickening, torso compacting into something dense and brutal. He struck the remains of the dying creature like a hurled boulder, pulverizing what little structure remained and skidding across the ground in a spray of blackened gore before reforming.

Another beast lunged, and Sura stepped into its path.

Her watch shield flared into existence over her arm, its circular face gleaming as the hands locked into place. The creature struck and failed. Its claws scraped across empty space as time around her stuttered, lurched, then surged.

“What kind of bloody Sigil is that?” Balefor asked, dumbfounded, as the monster failed again and again to land a hit.

“Sura’s? It’s crazy,” Pyre said.

“Try fighting against it,” Marrowsven added.

“I have,” Pyre told her.

“And do you know her Domain?” Balefor asked Pyre as the monster stumbled forward, its movements desynchronizing.

“Patience.”

“And the others?”

“No idea,” Pyre said.

The creature collapsed face-first into the ground as if shoved by an invisible hand. Sura stepped forward and brought the rim of her shield down hard against the back of its skull, the impact was precise, final.

The monster went still.

Behind them, one of the beasts simply exploded. Irix stepped out of the dispersing cloud of gore, her form briefly visible as the cracked tuning fork embedded in her chest flared. The sound it emitted wasn’t so much audible as felt, a pressure wave that seemed to shear reality apart.

Ronark turned and unleashed another blast from his bellows, this one sweeping sideways like a guillotine. Two four-legged creatures charging from the flank lost their heads in the same instant, their bodies collapsing into twitching heaps before dissolving.

Tallow moved on the attack again, his molten wax arms stretched impossibly wide. He hurled himself into a knot of smaller, multi-limbed creatures, forcing his way into open maws. A moment later, he burst free through other orifices, liquid, waxy fire pouring out behind him as the creatures collapsed inward, burning from the inside out.

One of the largest monsters lunged straight for the Shepherd.

The creature froze midair, suspended as if caught in an unseen grip. Sura approached it calmly, the way she had approached Pyre during training. She glanced at the Shepherd, something almost playful in her expression.

He tapped the tip of his crook against the monster’s head, and the creature launched backward, vanishing into the dark so fast Pyre never saw it land.

The final monster detonated in a wash of fractured sound as Irix stepped through it. She turned toward the three Unclaimed, who had since summoned their Sigils, weapons still humming with restrained power.

“We’re good now,” she said.

“It appears so,” Balefor told her, greataxe still gripped tightly.

“Were those Devourers?” Pyre asked as the Unmoored regrouped around the Shepherd.

“Not really,” the Shepherd said. “What we just fought were Domain-born monsters created when a soul fails a Domain Trial. They are not as easy as we made it look, mostly because they are the raw constructs of specific themes, making them much more powerful.”

“They didn’t look like souls at all,” Balefor told the Shepherd.

“That’s what being in the Outskirts can do. But I assure you, that’s exactly what they were.” He pointed his crook toward the distance. “Soon, we will encounter another entity in the Forlorn Plains. These are Gray Souls, the starving scavengers who weren’t able to pass the Shriving. You may remember these too from your own Shriving. They are different from the grays that appeared at the gate, whom you may recall were being recruited by factions.”

A vague image flashed through Pyre’s mind of hands reaching up at him in the dark on the road to Aevum. He remembered summoning his Sigil, forcing them back, which was followed by the surge of bodies at the gates of the city, the separation, and finally, being sorted by color.

“As it stands,” the Shepherd said once the lanterns drew closer again, tightening their formation, “we’re close to the Forlorn Plains. I suspect we will meet Veylan soon, and there could be more encounters along the way. Let us handle them. This is, after all, supposed to be a learning experience, an excursion, if you will. You’re in good enough hands.”

With that, he continued on.

The Unmoored followed, moving past the disintegrating remains of a fallen creature as Pyre, Balefor, and Marrowsven fell back into formation, the lantern-light carrying them deeper into the dark.