Chapter 56

Veylan threw his head back and rose a few feet off the ground, white eyes blazing as his barrier was bombarded by debris. Shards of stone and splintered fragments of an entire world hammered against the dome in relentless waves. Entire chunks of woodland spun past, their roots scraping against their protection as a broken tower struck and shattered into glittering dust.

Then it was over. As abruptly as it had begun, the explosions were finished.

The last fragments drifted past, glowing faintly as they cooled. The shockwaves thinned into distant rumbles.

Veylan lowered slowly, boots touching down. His eyes remained fixed on something far off, something moving against the dark as souls pursued it. “The shadowyrm has it.”

“What?” Pyre asked, stepping closer to the barrier’s edge.

“The realm heart.” Veylan wiped a trembling hand over his beard. “It has the realm heart. I’ve never seen anything like that. I didn’t even know they hunted it. Something new, it seems!”

The colossal shape in the distance coiled once, then vanished into deeper darkness, something luminous clutched within its jaws. Veylan turned sharply to Pyre. “You have to go.”

“After the realm heart?”

“No, no, lad. Heavens, no! After the others.” He gestured beyond the barrier. “We were protected. Your friends—my friends—they’re out there in that madness. Perhaps injured. Perhaps worse. Find them. We don’t have much time before I’ll need to reactivate the gate.”

“But the war—”

“The war continues even if it’s now pointless.” A bulb of Anima struck the barrier and rebounded in a crackling flare. Veylan gestured to it as evidence. “The fools. The fallen realm’s resources will be too scattered for anyone to truly plunder, at least not with all this commotion.”

“But—”

“The beacon is set, as I’ve told you.” He nodded toward a cube mounted on a small tripod near the sarcophagus, which projected a blue-green column of light into the darkness. “Do what you can. Focus on your friends first.”

“Balefor and Marrowsven.”

“Yes. The lion and the assassin. Go. The others will find it, I’m sure of it. And…” Veylan looked him over, gaze lingering. “Good luck, lad. Good luck!”

Pyre stepped through the barrier, and the shift was immediate.

Inside had been structured light and controlled impact. Outside was ruin. The landmass lay fractured into uneven slabs, chasms opening where ground had once held firm, grit heavy in the air. It was dark again, though not entirely. Fragments of the destroyed realm drifted overhead, each glowing faintly, casting a pallid light across the devastation.

Much to Pyre’s surprise, the war beyond had not ended—it had only scattered as factions pursued the enormous shadowyrm.

Pyre lifted his hand, and ash spiraled down his arm. The ash flowed from nowhere and everywhere at once, a thin gray stream that wrapped his wrist, coiled along his forearm, and gathered in his palm. The broken black blade formed from that ash, its edge drinking in the air before igniting.

The fire was different now, white in color and dense. It did not flicker as before; it burned with a steady, almost solid intensity.

Pyre swung it once through the air. The arc left a faint trail of drifting ash behind it, a comet tail dissolving into nothing.

He stilled. There were no whispers, no distant murmurs pressing at the back of his skull in summoning the broken blade. No strain either. The Sigil rested in his grip as if it had always belonged there.

He dismissed it, and the ash unraveled into nothing.

Pyre summoned his Sigil again to find the same spiral of ash, the same white heat, the same absence of noise.

Strange, he thought as he examined the hilt and the jagged lower portion of the blade. The fracture in it seemed deeper now, more deliberate, as if the break were part of its design rather than a flaw.

As he stood there, Pyre realized something else. He was much calmer than he should have been, heartbeat steady, breaths even. No tremor in his hands and no tightness in his chest.

Even as he looked into a war-torn expanse of drifting stone and distant explosions and thought of the impossibility of his task, Pyre felt no fear.

Balefor can find his way back, Pyre thought, unless something has happened to him. That leaves Marrowsven…

He took a step forward. Movement flickered at the edge of his vision, and he turned to it. In the distance, the sounds of battle were rising again. Shouts. Anima detonations. The crack of Sigils colliding, factions reengaging.

He turned away from that and spotted something else, something closer.

Pyre advanced carefully, the white flame of his sword casting long, wavering light before him. He soon came to Josephine of the Heavenly Host pinned by a massive slab of stone, one of her wings crushed beneath it, feathers bent at unnatural angles. She lay unconscious, eyelids twitching.

Pyre stepped past her.

If she’s here, he thought, Marrowsven may be close.

He moved toward the edge of the landmass and found a gray body sprawled near a fissure and dropped to examine it. Another member of the Heavenly Host, he thought as he looked at the man’s hollow eyes. Is Windscar near?

Pyre looked ahead, practically daring the bastard to try something. He was just moving on when someone lunged from the side.

He reacted instantly, blade snapping up in a white-hot arc to block the strike as steel met bone.

Before he could speak, she attacked again, movements frantic and unmeasured.

“Marrowsven!” Pyre said, batting her bone blade aside. “Marrow, it’s me!”

She froze. “Pyre?” Her voice was tight, strained. Marrowsven’s eyes were completely scabbed over, her face a mess of cauterized slashes. She swayed and dropped to her knees, her Sigil pulsing.

“Your eyes,” Pyre said, kneeling in front of her and gripping her shoulders.

“They’ll heal,” she said, breathing unevenly. “I need Anima.”

“I’ll bring you to the gate.”

Marrowsven reached out and touched his cheek. “You did it. You survived your Trial. We knew you would. Balefor carried you to Veylan. He said it was possible for us to put you by the sarcophagus, but you did it so fast.” She let out a brittle laugh. “You’re alive. We’re dead, but you’re alive. What happened with the realm collapse?”

“Yeah, that. A shadowyrm destroyed it just as the realm appeared. It took the realm heart. We need to leave.”

“Leaving,” she echoed faintly as he helped her stand.

“I’ll take you—” Pyre pivoted just as Josephine rushed toward him, dragging her injured wing behind her. Pyre caught her by the back of her hair mid-pass and yanked her down. In one fluid motion he slammed her into the ground.

She rolled and came up with a lance of light forming in her grip. Pyre struck it, white flame engulfing them both.

Josephine screamed, the sound raw and animal as the white-hot blaze clung to her armor and skin. She tried to summon her Sigil again. It flared weakly, cracked, and shattered.

The woman collapsed, and her body went gray as the fire consumed the last of her Anima.

Pyre turned back to Marrowsven, who had just stood again.

“Is it done?” she asked, her Sigil once again summoned, flickering.

“It’s done. You don’t need your Sigil. Let’s get you to Veylan, and I’ll look for Balefor next.”

“He was…” Marrowsven turned her head helplessly, blind. Her lip trembled once before she mastered it. “I can’t tell you his direction. My vision—”

“It will return. You need Anima. You said so yourself. Veylan can help. Come on, I’ve got you, Marrow.”

She leaned into him, one arm slung over his neck as he supported her weight. “I usually go through these things alone,” she said quietly as they began to move.

“Not this time,” Pyre replied, guiding her across the fractured ground.

The journey back to Veylan’s barrier was short in distance and long in tension. Blasts of Anima cracked across the dark like distant lightning. Chunks of floating stone drifted past, some colliding and splintering into glowing fragments.

Marrowsven stumbled once when the ground dipped unexpectedly. Pyre tightened his grip and steadied her before she could fall into a shallow fissure glowing faintly with residual heat.

“I’m fine,” she said through clenched teeth. “I trained for this.”

“To be blinded?”

“Yes. But training and the actual experience are… different.”

“I’ll be sure to tell the people of your realm if I ever encounter them,” he replied, though he did not loosen his hold.

A dark smile curved her lips. “By then, it would not matter.”

The beacon’s blue-green column cut through the gloom ahead, a steady line against the chaos. Veylan’s barrier shimmered faintly around it, bending incoming debris aside in muted flares.

“We’re here,” he told Marrowsven as the barrier parted around them, a brief resistance before it allowed them through. Outside, blasts of Anima still struck the dome and scattered in harmless arcs.

“Good,” Veylan said without turning, monocular raised, white eyes reflecting distant motion.

“Anyone else report back?” Pyre asked as he eased Marrowsven down with her back against the sarcophagus. The wooden box they had found earlier made a solid brace for her arm. He positioned her carefully so she would not tip sideways.

“Yes, Irix. She’s attempting to gather the others. There have been complications.” Veylan finally turned and took in Marrowsven’s battered face.

“She needs Anima,” Pyre said.

“I know, she does,” Veylan replied evenly. “And we will get it to her in Aevum, at the Font.”

“I’m fine, Pyre,” Marrowsven said, chin angled downward, voice steady despite the strain. “Find Balefor.”

“We must conserve power now,” Veylan reminded them both. “Vision is reparable. I promise you both. A shattered Sigil is not.” He returned his focus to the horizon, as if he could still see the exact place where the realm had unraveled. “And that ancient beast of a shadowyrm may yet return in our direction. I cannot tell.”

“I’ll hurry,” Pyre assured him as he crouched in front of Marrowsven. “Before I go, is there anything you can tell me about the last time you saw Balefor? Was he near you? Fighting Windscar, maybe?”

“No,” she said. “He wasn’t fighting Windscar. After your Domain was triggered, Balefor broke one of Windscar’s wings.”

“He broke it?” Pyre asked, thinking back to the encounter he’d just had with Josephine.

“That’s because their wings aren’t natural, not made of pure Anima,” Veylan told them both, still scanning through his monocular. “The pantheons use First Realm technology to craft them. They’ve refined the design over centuries, of course. Efficient. Elegant, even. And very breakable if you strike the right joint. A useful fact going forward.”

“So Balefor broke his wing, and Windscar just… gave up?” Pyre asked.

Marrowsven shook her head faintly. “No. Josephine hauled him away. He was furious. Kicking and screaming, if you can imagine that. They just left Urosh there.”

“Which is why Josephine was near you,” Pyre said to Marrowsven.

“The bitch came out of nowhere. But Windscar wasn’t with her.”

“And Balefor?”

“He was in the vicinity,” she said. “I can tell you that much.”

“Same direction?” Pyre asked, rising and stepping toward the barrier’s edge.

“Yes.”

Pyre looked out into the broken expanse again. The darkness had thickened. The faint glow of drifting fragments gave the land an uneven, haunted illumination. Somewhere far off, a banner flared and went dark.

“I’ll find him,” Pyre said.

“I wish I could come with you—”

“Relax, Marrow.” He glanced back at her. “I can handle it.” Pyre turned and stepped back through the barrier, moving once more into the Deep Nether.