Chapter 46

Pyre thought he was falling.

The sensation was absolute—weight tearing at him, the world screaming past, his stomach lurching as if he’d been dropped into nothing. For a heartbeat, his mind reached for the only framework it had.

Am I Shriving again somehow? Impossible.

But then he started to piece together what was actually happening, like the fact he wasn’t plunging downward, he was rising—wrenched upward through the Deep Nether as arcs of blinding light tore through the darkness, explosions blooming and collapsing in violent pulses.

The sound was immense, a deep, grinding lurch that seemed to shake reality itself.

Pyre’s Sigil snapped into existence in his hand.

Flame flared around him, forming a wavering halo around him. The heat grounded him just enough to keep panic from tearing him apart. He moved instinctively, arms and legs pushing through the air as though it were thick water, every motion resisted, delayed, distorted.

“Pyre, Marrow!” Balefor shouted.

The sound came from nowhere and everywhere at once.

Pyre twisted, fighting debris and tumbling stone, the fragments streaking past him. He caught a glimpse of Balefor’s massive form spinning end over end and forced himself toward him, burning strength with every movement.

He reached Balefor, and the lion-man thrust a hand out. Pyre took it. “Where are we?” he asked, breathless. “What happened—”

“Never mind that. Marrow!” Balefor bellowed. “She’s still out there. Marrow!”

“Marrow!” Pyre shouted with him.

Light detonated again.

It was unbearable this time—pure, annihilating brilliance. Pyre turned instinctively, burying his face in his arm as heat and pressure washed over him. Something slammed into him hard enough to rattle his bones. He twisted violently, yanking his sword up—

Balefor’s grip tightened. “It’s Marrow! Put your sword down, man!”

Pyre’s Sigil vanished at once, flame collapsing inward. The light lingered, searing through his closed eyes before dimming enough for shapes to return.

“The realm is coming down,” Marrow said hurriedly, her voice faint, strained as they continued to rise higher. “We’ve been blown past it.”

Pyre looked around again, trying to orient himself to figure out if they were flying, falling, or floating. “Is that what this is? The realm collapse?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

He looked down to see that Marrowsven had latched Balefor’s boot, her clawed hand locked around the thick leather. Her arm hung at a wrong angle, clearly dislocated, yet there was no panic in her expression, only focus. She turned her head, staring into the storm of light behind them. “There!”

Pyre glanced toward it, the light too bright for him to make sense of. “You can see something?”

“I can!”

“Then find something solid for us!” Balefor shouted.

“I see the crest of something,” Marrowsven said. “I’m tilting you. Just hang on.”

The shift was violent.

Pyre felt his orientation tear sideways as Marrowsven adjusted their trajectory, the Deep Nether responding like a hostile sea. Debris hammered into them—jagged stone, shards of something metallic, objects he couldn’t identify.

He squeezed his eyes shut and let go of fear, trusting her completely.

“We’re getting closer,” Marrowsven called. “Prepare for landing!”

“How?” Balefor demanded.

“Just trust me! Straighten your legs, Pyre. We’re doing this together.”

They surged forward.

Marrowsven twisted beneath them, feet angling upward as she took the brunt of the momentum, her body absorbing and redirecting the force. Pyre felt a sudden, rolling resistance beneath his heels, solid ground catching them at last.

He released Balefor’s hand and stumbled forward, boots skidding, where he dropped to one knee, then forced himself upright immediately.

The light was behind them now, the world resolved into shadowed silhouettes.

Pyre spotted Balefor a few feet back, bent forward with his hands on his knees. Beside him, Marrowsven was already standing as she popped her own shoulder back into its socket.

Balefor shook out his mane as Pyre approached and flashed him a grin. “Not a bad landing, and for once, I’m glad we don’t need to eat here.” He patted his hand on his stomach. “Nope. I think I’m good. I shouldn’t be, but I am. Pyre?”

“I’d be better if I didn’t get this feeling we were stranded in an unexplored region of the Deep Nether. But…” Pyre drew in a long breath as he took in the darkness around him. “I’m fine. Thank you, Marrow. Your eyes saved us.”

“Yes, a fascinating trait,” Balefor told her. “Can you see in the complete dark as well?”

“I can,” she said. “In the brightest light and the darkest dark. It makes it hard to sleep, which is the point.”

“And all of your people have this trait?” Balefor asked, rubbing the back of his head as his nostrils flared.

“My sect trains this way from childhood so we can be more lethal when we begin taking contracts.” She took a few steps away, claws flexing at her sides. “The realm collapse seems to be happening in that direction. But… I get this feeling this is just the start.”

Balefor lifted his head slightly. “The nose tells me what the eyes do not. Physicality is warped here in the Deep Nether. Visuality as well. Yet something is telling me that it’s in that direction.” He gestured behind them, into the darker expanse.

“Then what are we seeing?” Pyre asked, squinting toward the distant glow that still pulsed like the aftermath of an explosion.

“A reflection,” Balefor said. “Sura said something about the Deep Nether playing tricks on the mind. But don’t worry. I think I can find the others. It will be away from the light. Initially, at least.”

“This isn’t the Ledger Kin’s training facilities,” Marrowsven said. “You aren’t navigating toward the Font.”

“No, it isn’t. But it’s all the same.” Balefor looked at both of them. “Do you trust me?”

“I do,” Pyre said without hesitation.

“Same. Lead the way, Balefor,” Marrowsven said, gesturing into the darker path. “And let us not forget the types of things that lurk in the dark of the Deep Nether.”

They began their trek, Balefor at the front, Pyre and Marrow both about to summon their Sigils when Balefor stopped them.

“Not now,” he said. “We may have to conserve our Anima for much longer than we’d like. Plus, your fire could attract attention.”

“I didn’t think about that,” Pyre said as he scanned the darkness.

He could make out only the vaguest outlines—rises and drops in the terrain, shapes that might have been ruined structures or might have been something far worse. Distance refused to behave properly here, swallowing scale and depth alike.

Balefor stumbled over something unseen, boots scraping stone. Marrowsven was at his side instantly.

“Better idea,” she told him. “You focus on whatever your senses are telling you, and I’ll be your eyes.”

“That would help,” Balefor said. “I can see fairly well in the dark, but not far distances, and if possible, I’d rather focus entirely on my other senses.” He offered his hand to Marrowsven. “Just don’t let me fall.”

Pyre remained a few paces behind them, instinctively guarding their rear.

For a long stretch, it felt as though they were walking away from everything that mattered—away from the impending battle, the Unmoored’s gate. The darkness thickened, pressing close, and the air grew colder in a way that had nothing to do with temperature.

This can’t be the right way, Pyre thought.

Yet he swallowed the urge to speak. Balefor had not hesitated once.

They reached a ridgeline, and Balefor abruptly shifted direction. At the same moment, the sky ignited.

Streaks of distant light—comet-bright, violent, brief—tore across the Deep Nether, illuminating the land below. The light lasted only seconds, but it was enough.

Pyre’s stomach dropped.

Below, filling the basin and winding through the valleys, were shadowyrm dens. The creatures coiled and uncoiled in slow, obscene motion, hundreds of them, their massive bodies layered atop one another like something dredged from the deepest ocean trenches. Their forms twisted together in slick, serpentine knots, bristled hides rubbing and sliding, mouths opening and closing in silent, hungry rhythms.

They looked less like individual beasts and more like a single organism spread across the land.

Pyre’s heart slammed hard enough that he was certain they would hear it.

Balefor stopped. “Calm,” he whispered to Pyre, ears twitching.

“We’re surrounded,” Marrowsven added. “But they haven’t sensed us yet. Do not summon your Sigil.”

Pyre nodded. His palm burned where his Sigil wanted to manifest, heat crawling under his skin like an itch he couldn’t scratch. He forced the sensation down, breath by measured breath.

Focus.

Another flare lit the sky.

This time, the view was worse.

The shadowyrms writhed, bodies folding over one another in slow, nauseating waves. Pyre thought of exposed intestines boiled and turned endlessly by unseen hands, writhing, slick and glistening in the half-light.

He kept walking, timing his breathing to Balefor’s pace, listening only to the sound of stone under boots and claws.

They reached the end of the ridge and descended into a basin just as the sky flashed again.

The land changed.

Broken streets emerged from the darkness. Collapsed walls. Rows of buildings reduced to hollow shells. Statues stood in eerie ranks, carved from pale beige marble, their craftsmanship refined and elegant despite missing limbs and weathered faces. Time had gnawed at them but not erased them.

Pyre stopped. “Is this something from the First Realm?” he asked.

Balefor kept his head down. “I’ve locked onto something. I’ll keep my focus and my eyes shut here. You and Marrowsven should briefly look around.”

“Good idea.” Marrowsven moved first, silent and fluid, guiding Pyre through what had once been a storehouse. Shelves lay splintered, crates collapsed inward. Weapons littered the floor—spears, blades, shields—old, well-made, but unmistakably mundane. No gears. No humming mechanisms. No impossible alloys.

They checked the remaining structures, careful not to disturb anything more than necessary, and finally returned to Balefor.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Yet another realm, but not the First,” Marrowsven said.

“We keep going then.” Balefor pushed onward after locking hands with Marrowsven, and Pyre once again fell behind them.

He never let his guard down.

The ruins faded behind them, replaced by open stone and jagged rises. The beauty here was undeniable in a bleak, funereal way—architecture shaped by hands long turned to dust, framed by the endless void.

“Ahead,” Marrowsven said suddenly.

“That’s not what I’m sensing,” Balefor replied. “But it is curious…”

Pyre stepped around them—and froze.

A banner rose from the stone, anchored into the ground as though it had always been there. He recognized it instantly.

“The Named Mothers,” he said.

An eye of Anima formed above the banner, luminous and unblinking. Pyre recognized that as well, dread curling in his gut. “That’s the faction Saejin joined.”

“And he appears to be with them,” Marrowsven said.

“Saejin and the Named Mothers? What are they doing out all the way here?” Balefor asked. “Do we engage?”

The floating eye above the banner brightened. A pupil formed within it, and a narrow beam of light swept across them, holding them fast.

“Looks like we don’t have a choice,” Pyre said.

“Sigils drawn?” Balefor asked.

“Hard to read,” Marrowsven replied. “Pyre?”

He studied the light a moment longer, one hand raised to shield Saejin’s glow. “Not yet. If Saejin meant to engage us, he would have already done so.”