Chapter 53

For a brief moment, Pyre relaxed, and his Sigil vanished, flames trickling away into nothing.

He stood near one of Karastella’s churches in Farreach, the Heavenly Host banners stirring in a mild coastal wind. Salt hung in the air, sharp and familiar. The bell tower above the chapel stood uncracked, its bronze surface catching clean afternoon light.

“I’m back,” he said, already turning toward the militia yard and the narrow quarters he had once called home. The magister’s office was right where it should be at the far end of the square, its stone facade unscarred, its windows reflecting clean afternoon light as salt wind drifted in from the harbor, sharp and familiar.

As he took his first step, a new realization came to Pyre.

Where is everyone?

He scanned toward the central market, which had once bustled day and night with vendors, sailors, and shouting children. Not a single soul stood among the stalls. The carts were arranged neatly, fruit rested in baskets, fish drying from hooks, and the doors of nearby shops stood open.

A dark feeling came over him. Am I dreaming?

He took another step, and a swell of seagulls passed overhead.

They made no sound.

As he shifted back to observe them, Pyre noticed they weren’t white and gray but a translucent opal color, their forms refracting light in strange, prismatic flashes. Their wings moved, yet the air did not stir.

“What is this?”

More of the seagulls gathered, circling above an empty bell tower. They swept toward the sea in a single, fluid motion, and for a moment, Pyre turned in that direction, wondering if they were leading him somewhere.

I’m dreaming. I was fighting Windscar, and now—

His eyes widened. “No,” he said. “It can’t be.”

Is this my Domain Trial?

He looked around again. Everything was where it should have been. The bell tower. The steps of the magister’s office. The church. The half-finished statue dedicated to the adventurers who founded Farreach.

Every stone was correct, and yet something was off.

Pyre summoned his Sigil. Orange flame crawled up from his palm and formed the broken black blade in his grip. He glanced down at the weapon and noticed immediately that something had changed. The fire did not burn steadily. It shifted between a fully fledged blaze and a whisper-thin flicker.

The heat pulsed irregularly, alive but uncertain.

More seagulls gathered.

Pyre lifted his head and saw them converging above the church’s steeple. They spiraled tighter and tighter until they formed a spherical mass in the sky, a sinuous throng of translucent wings.

He licked his lips and brought his blade to the ready just as the sphere dropped.

The seagulls compressed, their bodies shimmering, fusing together mid-descent. Wings folded into plates. Feathers hardened into overlapping segments of armor. What had been fragile and light became dense and angular.

The swarm struck the ground without sound and rose as something else entirely.

An enormous void giant took shape before him, each plate of its armor refracting the light in muted blues and violets. Beneath the hardened plates, its body remained translucent and dark. Faint shapes moved within that depth, distant stars drowned in ink.

From its head rose a massive rack of deer-like horns, jagged and branching, rimmed in electric sparks that crawled along their edges. The void giant was easily ten times Pyre’s height.

For a long moment, the void giant simply looked down at him.

Pyre’s grip tightened, and he took a step back.

The giant took a step forward.

The ground did not tremble, yet he felt the motion in his chest.

He took another step back, and the giant mirrored him again.

Pyre crouched slightly and jumped, testing the air, hoping that the physicality of wherever he was matched the Deep Nether. If so, he could leap high, move fast, fight beyond what he once had been.

Unfortunately, he rose only as high as any man might in the old training yard.

He landed heavily and understood now that the weight was normal. Pyre took in the void giant yet again, bracing himself, expecting it to leap in response, to test him in turn.

It did not.

Instead, its arm shifted, and a blade formed in the giant’s hand, condensing from translucent shadow into a massive, curved sword. Its edge burned with blue fire, cold and sharp, the flame licking upward along the flat of the blade. The metal itself looked fractured, cracked along its length as though it had once been shattered and reassembled.

Pyre’s stomach tightened, yet he remained where he was, teeth gritted, heart hammering. “Well, then?” he asked, flames roaring higher around him. “Come and try!”

He charged. The void giant’s sword came down in a vertical arc meant to cleave him in two. Pyre veered at the last second, the giant’s blade slamming into the building directly behind him. Stone exploded outward. Blue fire raced up the church wall, devouring banners and shutters in seconds.

Pyre reached the giant’s legs and struck.

His broken blade scraped across the shimmering plates, sparks bursting outward. The impact jarred his arms to the shoulder, but he struck again anyway.

The giant shifted its weight and brought one massive foot down.

Pyre dove, rolling across cobblestone as the giant’s foot cracked the street open in a spiderweb pattern.

Back on the move, Pyre sprinted toward the magister’s office. He bounded up the familiar stone steps two at a time and launched himself from the top landing, angling his blade for a higher strike.

He hit the giant again; the flames flared bright, but the armor held.

The force of the rebound sent Pyre skidding backward across the street as the void giant’s sword demolished the upper floors of the registrar’s office. Blue fire poured from the wound in the building, a waterfall of flame, heat pressing in from all sides.

The fire spread unnaturally fast. Wood beams, window frames, even the carved wooden signage of nearby shops ignited in seconds. The air filled with the sharp scent of burning pitch and old varnish as it moved to consume the entire square.

Have to keep going! Pyre broke into a run toward the open market, hoping for space.

The void giant swept its sword low, and Pyre dropped flat to his stomach.

Blue flame passed inches over his back, the heat searing through his armor. He felt skin blister along his shoulders and the back of his neck as the fire ignited nearby merchant stalls, canvas awnings going up in a whoosh. A cart stacked with bundled hay and straw for livestock caught immediately, sending a plume roaring upward.

As debris rained down, Pyre crawled through sparks and embers, teeth clenched, until he could push himself upright.

He burst into a sprint again, boots slamming through scattered fruit and broken crates. He turned sharply, scanning for opportunity rather than escape.

The void giant lunged. Its heel slipped on burning debris, and it crashed down to one knee, the impact cracking the stone beneath it.

Pyre did not hesitate.

He rushed in, striking again and again, targeting seams between plates. Sparks continued to fly, his arms trembling with the effort as he found a narrow gap beneath one of the thigh plates.

He drove his blade in, and the giant’s translucent body beneath flashed violently—orange, then red—as if molten light coursed through its inner depths.

His towering opponent recoiled, plates grinding against one another.

The giant threw its horned head back, blue fire erupting from its mouth in a concentrated plume.

There was no time to dodge as the flame swallowed Pyre whole. He screamed as it burned across his armor, through exposed flesh, and into his lungs, Pyre stumbling backward, vision swimming.

Run.

His armor still on fire, Pyre pushed himself into motion and bolted through the market’s animal pens, where empty stalls lined the square where goats and chickens had once been traded, past barrels of lamp oil and resinous pitch for waterproofing boats.

The giant’s sword cleaved through the area behind him, and a burst of blue flame struck the oil, the explosion immediate and violent. The barrels detonated, sending fireball after fireball rolling across the square. Burning pitch splattered across cobblestone and wood alike, turning the ground into a blazing sea.

Pyre dove into a shallow livestock trough filled with muddy water. Steam exploded upward around him as the water boiled on contact with his overheated armor, yet the shock cooled him just enough to think.

Pyre rose from the trough, water dripping from his armor as he turned back to the void giant, grunted, and ran toward it.

Through smoke and flame and mud, Pyre charged, ignoring the heat clawing at his skin. He leapt, driving his blade just beneath one of the giant’s plates, pouring every ounce of fire he could muster into the strike.

This time, the plate ignited.

Blue flame warred with his orange blaze, and the giant’s inner body flared again in distress. It dropped to both knees as Pyre landed hard and rushed forward, intent on driving his blade deeper into the exposed seam.

The void giant snapped its horns sideways, and its antlers caught Pyre full in the chest, the impact sudden and catastrophic. He felt his ribs strain and air blast from his lungs as he was launched across the square. A shockwave rippled through him, Pyre flying through the air.

He crashed through the roof of a two-story home near the edge of the square, shingles and beams splintering above him.

Pyre struck a heavy wooden table inside, and his skull bounced off its edge with a sickening crack. Darkness swallowed him. For a heartbeat—two—there was nothing.

Then, sound returned in pieces.

Cracking timber. The distant roar of flames. The groan of stone under pressure.

Pyre blinked alive, and his vision sharpened just enough for him to see through the jagged hole in the ceiling.

The void giant loomed there, stepping through Farreach as if it were no more than kindling. Each movement crushed buildings, blue fire consuming rooftops and streets alike.

Pyre drew in a ragged, angry breath.

He spat blood onto the warped wooden floor and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his head throbbing, armor smoking.

Summoning all he could muster, Pyre pushed himself to his feet, feeling savage now, furious at his opponent.

Even as pain radiated through every limb, something else burned hotter beneath it.

I’m not going out like this, Pyre thought as he turned toward the exit, prepared once again to meet the void giant, ready to stop it no matter what it took, even if it killed him.