Chapter 52

It was as though the Deep Nether had paused. Pyre knew that was impossible. Factions were assembling for war. Fractured remnants of former realms drifted nearby, thick with secrets and prowling beasts. And yet, in that moment, it felt still as three Unclaimed stood against three winged soldiers of the Heavenly Host, the light of impending collapse swelling around them, and no one kneeling.

Windscar’s smile faded, and Urosh finally looked up, something passing across his face.

“You always did talk too much,” Windscar told Pyre softly. His wings snapped outward.

Josephine stepped forward, her own Sigil forming into a long, curved spear of pale light threaded with gold. “Soul execution it is,” she said.

“So it appears,” Windscar told her as he summoned his Sigil, the crescent blade settling into his grip, light gathering along its curve.

Pyre lunged toward him before he could say any more, the impact of their two weapons jarring, creating a flash of fire.

Balefor charged Urosh, who had no choice but to meet him. Their clash sent a shock through the stone beneath their feet and trails of lightning into the air.

Pyre only caught a glimpse as he pivoted, but it appeared that Urosh’s hammer was still translucent—he hadn’t gone through his Domain Trial.

As Pyre tried for Windscar again, Marrowsven ducked under Josephine’s first spear thrust, twisting sideways as her weapon carved a glowing trench in the rock.

Windscar pressed Pyre hard. “You burn brighter,” he observed almost conversationally as their weapons locked again as he pushed back. “But it will do you no good out here. It’s funny, you know. Your Defiance. You could have—”

Pyre shoved him. Their weapons clashed again, Pyre’s mind racing, trying to remember Windscar’s Domain.

What was it?

“You could have walked out of here, but you didn’t.” Windscar laughed as he struck Pyre’s blade so hard that it flung him backward. Pyre hit the ground; Windscar was next to him in a matter of seconds, swinging his crescent blade repeatedly as Pyre tried to get his bearings. “All you had to do was kneel. And now, the only hope you have is an eternity in the Hollow.”

Dominion! Pyre thought, finally remembering Windscar’s Domain as he spun toward his opponent, flames trailing off his blade. His Domain is Dominion!

Windscar’s wing clipped Pyre’s shoulder and knocked him off balance.

The next strike came low, Pyre barely deflecting it.

The world grew brighter, the imminent collapse building, Anima currents starting to form in the air around them, whipping cloaks and hair, making every strike feel heavier.

“We need to hurry!” Josephine called over to Windscar.

“This won’t take much longer,” he told her, malice in his eyes as he moved on Pyre again.

How? Pyre thought as he once again met Windscar. How do I use his Dominion against him?

Not far away, Marrowsven leapt, planted a foot against Josephine’s spear shaft, and flipped over it. Her blade slashed toward the woman’s exposed flank, only to be blown off her feet by a surge of magic released from the woman’s spear.

Near them, Urosh and Balefor continued their fight. Urosh’s strikes seemed increasingly sporadic as lightning fizzled off from his hammer.

Pyre blocked another of Windscar’s attacks, still at a loss for how to use Dominion against him.

Now’s not the time, he concluded as he worked to land a hit, this time trying to ignite Windscar’s new wings.

Windscar slid back several paces, wings flaring to steady himself, boots carving twin furrows through the stone. His crescent blade hummed brighter, its light sharpening into something almost painful to look at.

Even so, Pyre did not give him room to breathe.

He pressed in hard, broken sword arcing in tight, brutal lines rather than the measured strikes he had tried earlier. Flame bled from the fractures in his Sigil, licking along Windscar’s guard, snapping toward feathers and cloth. The heat was no longer controlled; it surged in pulses that matched his heartbeat.

In front of them, metal rang against metal as Balefor met Urosh head-on. The lion-man roared with every swing, greataxe cleaving arcs through the Deep Nether’s thinning shadows. Urosh’s hammer crashed back in reply, each impact sending dull shockwaves through the ground.

There were a series of flashes as Josephine’s Sigil carved lines of pale light through the air. Marrowsven bent and contorted beneath them, claws flashing, bone blade snapping forward in precise, economical thrusts, their duel quiet compared to the others.

Windscar came at Pyre again. His crescent blade sang as it cut downward, and Pyre barely managed to meet it. The impact jarred his entire body. The force traveled from his wrists to his elbows, up through his shoulders, and into his spine.

It hurt.

Not a surface sting. Not a bruise.

It hurt deep in his bones as Windscar twisted the blade mid-clash and released a pulse of Anima through the contact point.

Radiant power surged into Pyre’s guard, rattling his teeth, forcing his knees to buckle as he tasted iron.

“You are not ready,” Windscar said calmly, pressing down. “You never were.”

Pyre bared his teeth and pushed back.

Flame flared hotter, brighter, wrapping Windscar’s blade in a sheath of orange and white. The radiant edge flickered, then steadied. Windscar’s wings beat once, lifting him slightly as he disengaged and struck from an angle Pyre could not fully track.

The next blow clipped Pyre’s shoulder, the shock exploding down his arm, causing his grip to nearly fail.

He couldn’t beat Windscar. Not head-on, not yet.

Windscar’s movements were simply more efficient, layered with something deeper than skill alone. Dominion radiated from him in subtle pressures, the space around him tightening as his strikes landed heavier than they should have.

But this didn’t stop Pyre.

Flames surged higher, spilling off his Sigil in ragged waves. The Deep Nether’s strange light caught in them, amplifying the blaze until he felt as if he stood inside a furnace of his own making. The heat clawed at his skin, his lungs burned with every breath, yet he kept fighting.

Windscar slashed, pivoted, and hammered down with a strike that forced Pyre to one knee. “You are barely even a member of the Unclaimed,” Windscar said, almost bored. “You have no place in this war.”

Pyre shoved upward with a roar, blade carving a diagonal line that scorched through Windscar’s lower wing, blackening his feathers. Windscar hissed and leapt back.

The two circled each other, Pyre’s flames now crawling up his arms, across his shoulders, bleeding into the air behind him. He could feel the edges of everything slipping, his vision tunneling, yet Pyre kept pushing, he kept swinging and swinging, anything to force Windscar back.

Somewhere behind him, Urosh stumbled.

The rhythm of hammer and axe faltered, and Balefor’s growl was cut short.

Windscar’s head snapped toward the sound at the same moment he batted Pyre away. “What are you doing?” He vaulted backward, landing beside Urosh in a sweep of white wings.

“My Sigil—” Urosh stammered, hammer wobbling in his grip, the glow within flickering, unstable.

Windscar grabbed him by the back of the neck and tried to shove him forward. “Get the fuck back in there!” When this didn’t work, he brought the crescent blade up and leveled it at Urosh’s chest. “I will shatter your Sigil myself!”

Balefor froze several paces away, greataxe lowered but ready. His eyes locked onto Windscar, something dark and primal rising in them. Marrowsven and Josephine did the same, both not certain of where this was going to go.

Pyre’s mind was elsewhere. Even as the flames grew hotter around him, he saw this tragic scene for what it truly was—an opening.

I need to do something.

Pyre ignored the heat, the warning ache in his veins, and the way the world continued to narrow as he stepped forward.

He met Balefor’s gaze and gave a single nod to say I’ll handle this.

Windscar pulled the crescent blade back and drove it at Urosh with both hands.

Urosh met it on instinct. Their Sigils struck with a cracking report, but the strike was layered. Anima from Windscar’s blade flared at the point of impact and erupted outward, radiant force tearing through the air in widening rings.

It sent Urosh flying backward, where he slammed against a rock several paces away, his hammer shattering in his hands.

Gray crept across Urosh’s skin instantly, devouring color, and his eyes went glassy as his Sigil disintegrated into nothing.

Windscar stepped over him and looked down. “You weren’t worthy of this faction anyway,” he said coldly as he spat onto Urosh’s corpse.

Pyre and Balefor charged at the same time, both intent on reaching Windscar and punishing him for his cruelty.

Pyre didn’t feel his feet leave the ground and didn’t remember deciding to leap. He only knew that the world tilted, that heat and rage and Anima poured through him in a torrent too large for his body to contain until the light changed.

The entire horizon warped as sound twisted, landmasses groaned, and the stone beneath Pyre’s feet fractured, impossible arcs of brilliance lancing through the sky as he was lifted by some unseen force, not by Windscar, nor by his own flame, but something vast, something deep and primordial.

Pyre landed, and the woods of Farreach pressed up from nothing, trees erupting from fractured ground, roots clawing through Netherstone. The sea beyond swelled into existence, waves crashing where there had been only void. Windscar vanished from his mind, Balefor and Marrowsven were gone—all of it dissolved in a wash of light and memory.

The smell of salt, of pine, of home. Pyre recognized it instantly. The furthest colony at the edge of his realm took shape all around him, buildings forming in a rush of impossible reconstruction, everything exactly where it should be.

Farreach.

Pyre was finally home.