Chapter 55

The miniature void swordsmen reached Pyre in a burst of blue flames. They tried for him all at once, jumping and swinging their fiery little swords as Pyre did the only thing that made sense.

He stomped. His boot came down on the first wave, crushing dozens at once. Their tiny armored bodies cracked beneath his heel, sparks flaring as they burst apart, Pyre assuming he’d have to kill them all.

Yet when he brought his foot back, he found most of them reforming, scattering with terrifying coordination, more coming, slipping between his steps as he tried to kick more of them away. Several of the ones he thought he had crushed crawled free along the edges of his boots, using their flaming swords to anchor themselves into the leather and metal.

Again and again, Pyre tried to stomp them out.

He slashed downward with his broken blade, flame washing over clusters of the tiny swordsmen. It was harder than it looked. They were too small, quick, darting between strikes as Pyre finally stumbled.

He tried to back away, but more of them lunged, their tiny blades piercing through the gaps of his armor. He felt the first sharp sting in his calf.

Then another.

They were climbing.

Groups of them moved up his legs like ants, clinging to him in writhing masses. Their swords stabbed in rapid succession, dozens of fiery pricks turning into a sustained agony that spread upward through muscle and bone.

Pyre slapped at them with his free hand, crushed a few between his fingers, felt their forms crumble, only to watch each one unravel into ash and reform at his feet, whole and advancing again.

He spotted a practice shield half-burned near the edge of the field.

Pyre rushed over to the shield, grabbed it, and swung it low and wide, smashing through clusters of the miniatures, scattering them in bursts of blue flame. He used the rim to scrape them from his shins, grinding them against stone.

Every one he destroyed seemed to reappear moments later, crawling from cracks in the cobblestone, reforming from drifting ash as they multiplied, their stabs growing more frequent and their blades biting deeper.

Pyre gritted his teeth and kept moving as the miniature swordsmen thickened around his legs, forming a living sheath of armored bodies, crawling over one another like bees.

At one point he dropped to the ground and rolled through the mud, where he kicked his legs violently, crushing dozens beneath his boots and shins. Pyre slammed his heels into the nearest wall, grinding them against stone until he was finally able to move back to his feet.

He staggered toward the ruined barracks and shoved the warped door shut behind him, hoping for just a moment to catch his breath, to reorient himself, to figure out a way to stop them.

“Dammit,” he growled as the swarm flowed under the door and poured through the shattered roof. Pyre kicked over one of the heated weapon stands from earlier. Swords and spears crashed down in a hail of red-hot metal, flattening a cluster of the miniatures.

Yet they kept coming.

Pyre swung his broken blade in wide arcs, ash swirling around him with each impact. He stomped more, smashed them against the walls with his fist, burned them.

Some dropped from the ceiling onto his head. The miniature swordsmen rushed across his forehead and drove their swords into his eyes.

Pyre cried out as everything went black.

He swung blindly through the ruined barracks, blade carving through the air. Pyre fell to one knee and kept kicking, boots grinding against the floor. He pushed himself upright and screamed as tiny blades pierced his cheeks, his nose, the inside of his mouth, where he felt them stabbing into his tongue, his gums, his throat.

Pyre clawed at his face, tearing handfuls of miniature swordsmen away and crushing them in his grip. He swung again and again, sometimes hitting nothing, sometimes smashing entire clusters as the miniatures dragged him down.

They covered Pyre until his legs disappeared beneath a writhing mass of armored bodies, the swordsmen forcing themselves into every gap they could find, drilling their swords into his skin, burrowing deeper.

He rolled again, slamming his back into the floor.

Pyre pounded his fists against his own chest, grinding them into paste.

This is not how I die!

Even as it became clear he could not win this way, even as the void swordsmen pierced through skin and into muscle, even as he felt them crawling beneath the surface, inside him, stabbing from within, Pyre continued his desperate fight.

He choked on them and thrashed, refusing to stop, refusing to surrender. Pyre kept fighting long after his body should have failed.

And finally, just as he was pushing himself up, Pyre ready to shoulder in the direction of the yard, there was a flash.

It culminated in a blinding light, one that swallowed him whole, his body filtering away and reforming.

The pain vanished. No weight, only drifting gray, Pyre both falling apart and coming back together at the same time, every nerve ending reduced to ember and then reignited.

The miniature void swordsmen were still on him—inside him—clawing and stabbing, but they were dissolving now, their tiny blades disintegrating as his flesh knitted itself from ash and heat as Pyre was made whole.

He gasped awake to find himself lying on his back in the middle of a war zone, still swinging, still fighting. The ground beneath him had changed—stone, not Farreach’s cobble.

Sound returned all at once—Anima detonations, metal clashing, gusts of wind, and something massive striking a barrier with a thunderous boom.

Pyre was now shielded beneath a translucent dome of pale light. Outside it, debris and shockwaves hammered against the surface, splintering into harmless fragments before sliding down the barrier’s curve.

He pushed himself up on shaking arms.

The sarcophagus loomed beside him, casting a long shadow across the ground, and he saw the wooden box they had taken from the cave.

“Did I do it?” he whispered, patting his chest, his abdomen, his face. No wounds, no blood, only lingering heat beneath the skin.

He rose unsteadily and saw Veylan standing with his back to him.

The older man held his monocular in one hand, a ring of magic spiraling around its lens. The Anima lantern floated near him, anchored by a golden cord attached to his belt, its light steady but strained.

“What happened?” Pyre asked as he came to stand beside the older man.

Veylan turned to him quickly, his eyes blazing white with reflected Anima. “Why… congratulations, lad! You actually did it! Your Domain Trial, you did it! Oh, I wish the others were here to hear the good news, but as you can probably tell by now”—a massive rock collided with the protective barrier and exploded into shards of stone and light—“we’re still in the thick of it. But it will hold,” Veylan assured him, barely glancing at the impact, “and the gate will be ready for our return.”

Pyre ran his hand over his face and through his red hair. “Balefor, Marrowsven—are they…”

“Out there?” Veylan nodded past his barrier. “Yes. They very much are. And apologies about what happened with the Synod back there. The Shearfall. Not so common, you know, but we should have warned you about it. You made it, however. Good on you! Good on all three of you!”

Another series of blasts rippled across the barrier. Veylan grinned upward at them as if they were fireworks. “It should be any moment now.”

“The realm collapse?” Pyre asked, still momentarily dazed.

“Yes, that would explain the war. Souls do get antsy.” Veylan gestured toward the horizon. “But there. We will have a front-row seat.”

Pyre stepped closer to the inner edge of the barrier. Beyond it, faction banners snapped violently in intensifying Anima winds as winged figures clashed in midair. Shockwaves rippled across landmasses that drifted dangerously close to one another.

“And everyone’s out there?” Pyre asked. “Accounted for?”

“Yes, well, not everyone. Sura went searching for you all. I do not know her whereabouts. But Irix, Ronark, Tallow, the Shepherd—they are out there, certainly. Your friends are closer, as far as I know.” He gestured to the beacon, which was behind the sarcophagus and beaming a light into the Deep Nether. “I’m not too worried about them finding us. Your friends, however, could probably use your help. They were supposed to stay close, but I’m afraid the lion fellow is a bit adventurous.”

“I have to go.”

“Yes, I suspected as much,” Veylan said mildly. “But do watch the collapse with me. It should be any moment now. You’ve just passed your Trial.” He motioned toward the lantern. “Perhaps you should stand near this.”

“I passed my Trial,” Pyre repeated softly, the thought finally landing.

I passed my Domain Trial…

He felt it now. The difference. The weight beneath his skin was no longer just flame. Something finer drifted there, something patient and quiet.

The burning sensation gathered in his palm, and Pyre may have summoned his Sigil had it not been for the light swelling beyond. The brightening haze sharpened into something immense, growing to the point that Pyre had to shield his eyes as he stepped nearer the lantern, the barrier humming louder in response.

“Yes,” Veylan whispered. “This should be it!”

Pyre squinted into the brilliance.

A vast sphere of Anima had formed in the distance, enclosing a realm within it like a pearl suspended in stormlight. The bubble shimmered with layered currents, straining against invisible pressure. Inside it, a world turned, the realm half-visible through the membrane, its edges already fraying as pieces sheared away and drifted into the Deep Nether.

This is what my realm must have looked like, Pyre thought, the mere notion sparking a deeply rooted bitterness.

The factions surged toward it, banners driving forward as they overlapped in violent waves. The bubble pulsed, cracks of light spidered across its surface.

Then the shadow came, moving faster than anything Pyre had ever seen. A shape longer than the horizon itself, coiling through the void beyond the bubble.

A shadowyrm, one much larger than the others, struck the bubble from above, teeth piercing the Anima sphere. The membrane ruptured, and the sound that followed was indescribable as light exploded outward in a catastrophic bloom.

The realm inside shattered as the shadowyrm tore through it, mountains fracturing into floating shards, cities ripped free and spiraling outward, oceans erupting into vapor and falling tides.

“No,” Veylan said, hand over his heart. “It can’t be!”

The shadowyrm drove deeper, ripping the realm apart from within, its body threading through like it was nothing more than mist. Fragments shot outward in every direction, colliding with drifting landmasses and sending shockwaves across the Deep Nether.

Pyre felt the barrier buckle as Veylan staggered backward, head down, both hands now gripping his monocular. The Anima lantern flared violently as the shockwave hit them and nearly punched through the protective barrier.

The war outside froze for half a heartbeat as every faction turned to witness the impossible. The realm had been entirely destroyed, and the monstrous shadowyrm was turning back toward the factions.