Chapter 6
Once Pyre stepped through the threshold, the world reformed around him. The light collapsed inward, the doorway dissolving, the sensation of passage seizing all at once.
He emerged into something vast and unfinished, a place that did not feel like a location or a realm so much as a decision the universe had made and abandoned halfway through.
Where? he thought as a narrow stone pathway stretched beneath his feet, drifting through an endless void. It had edges but no foundation, like a bridge built on faith alone. The great city he had seen before was gone, leaving only distance and silence in its place.
Below him and above him, a night sky without stars extended in every direction. No constellations. No horizon. No sense of up or down. Just infinite dark and a path forward.
For a long moment, nothing moved, Pyre not certain of what to do. Then, light touched the void, not in a blaze, but in a quiet spill, like dust falling from parted curtains.
Marbled landmasses drifted slowly into view, broken fragments torn loose from whatever had once anchored them. Some glowed faintly from within, cracked surfaces leaking dim light like dying embers. Others crumbled as he watched, shedding pieces that were swept away before they could fall anywhere.
The city Pyre had seen earlier reappeared in the distance, and this time, there were more crystalline pathways connecting to it, faint in the distance, and lit by floating lanterns. It towered over the abyss, its gem-bright spires pierced the darkness, walls shimmering like layered glass. A pale-blue aura rippled around the city’s perimeter, rising and fading in a slow, steady cadence.
At its center, a towering well of light rose upward, a column so large and bright it hurt to look directly at it.
Everything about the city felt distant and immediate at the same time, as if Pyre could reach its gates in a handful of steps—or never reach it at all.
“What is this place?” he whispered.
The words vanished into the void.
Pyre lowered his gaze to his hand, and the broken blade was there again, the fragment taking shape, blackened metal at first until it wreathed into a low, unnatural flame. The fire did not flicker or waver. It burned steadily, fed by something deeper than air.
He tried to dismiss it and the flame guttered, shrank, then vanished.
A moment later, he called it back.The sword reappeared in his grip, heat surging up his arm, his head filling with a faint chorus of whispers. The fire flared brighter this time, licking along the jagged edge.
Daedalus’s blade answers to me now, he thought as he sent it away. Or what’s left of it. He tried again, and the weapon appeared again, the Sigil, as the Swordsman had called it.
Pyre clenched his jaw and let the weapon fade again as the path beneath his feet shifted.
The lucent stone smoothed beneath his feet, its surface becoming deliberate, defined. He pressed forward, and the ground ahead of him formed in response—each step solidifying what had not existed a moment before.
Something moved at the edge of his vision, and he froze.
Other figures clung to the neighboring pathways, walking the same narrowing spans toward the city. They were gray, like Pyre had been moments ago, their forms intact but muted, drawn forward without looking aside.
Below the paths, ashen figures writhed in a moiled mass, their bodies half-formed and translucent, gray thinning into nothing. Hands reached upward through empty space, curled fingers grasping for a path that would no longer answer them, their faces stretched and hollowed, mouths opening in soundless pleas as they failed, again and again, to climb back to what they had lost.
“Help us,” one hissed at Pyre.
Another laughed, a wet, broken sound as she fell away.
A third lunged, fingers peeled back as it pulled itself upward and onto the path.
Pyre recoiled, instinctively summoning the blade, fire roaring to life in his hand. The grey figure shrieked and fell, its wraithlike body dissipating into the nothing that lay below.
Pyre glanced toward the other paths leading to the city, gray forms still moving along them. He tried to wave at one, but there was no response.
Pyre backed away from the edge and kept to the center of the path as he moved on. The cries from below trailed after him, echoing in the dark until distance swallowed the sound.
He did not look down again. Pyre would reach the end, meet the Shepherd, and learn the truth of it all: the man who had killed him, Karastella’s betrayal, and what he had just endured.
With this in mind, Pyre’s mantra of retribution, he pressed on.
Gradually, the surface beneath his feet changed again. The stone became patterned, deliberate, and polished, laid in careful lines, worn smooth by countless footsteps as the city’s walls rose ahead.
Other figures appeared closer to him as their paths converged, souls like him but gray—whole, moving, silent.
They did not speak as they walked. Some glanced at Pyre as they passed, their gazes lingering on the flame-scarred blade in his hand. He sent it away, assuming it was the Sigil drawing attention and not the fact they were all monochromatic and his body was awash in color.
All of them were drawn forward by something unseen. As Pyre approached, shouting met his ears, not one voice but many, layered and overlapping, chaotic. Promises and commands tangled with praise and threats, rolling over the road ahead and growing louder with every step.
Pyre slowed, heart pounding.
The grand city loomed before him now, vast and radiant, impossibly tall.
Whatever waited beyond those walls, Pyre knew one thing with sudden, bone-deep certainty—there would be no turning back, and based on all the shouting, he was probably going to have to fight his way through it.
“So be it,” he said, steeling himself, ready to do whatever it took to reach the Shepherd.
