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Toren Daen
I hurtled through the streets, my heart thundering in my chest. Fires burned everywhere I passed. The edges of my vision were tinged with red and orange. From rage? From fear? From the utter, terrible certainty of the devastation that would follow in the wake of this ritual?
Arthur and I had arrived as Agrona's ritual began tearing through the aether like sheets of paper. Using the last charge on the tempus warp Seris had given , I'd brought us all here at the last possible mont. I had absorbed the lifeforce from Tessia's strange Elderwood Guardian spell, replenishing the reserves Seris had taken so desperately.
Seris. Seris was still aching and wounded, her life nearly spent from the inverted decay spreading across her physique. I'd felt sothing within her change, though, as I granted her healing over our souls.
Visions of laughter and burning white fire danced behind my eyelids. I didn't understand what Seris had done… What she'd used my heartfire for. It felt familiar sohow, but also entirely different. Her core had cracked, and shattered. I'd been able to sense it, with all the horror in my gut.
Integration. Seris Integrated sohow. In the process, she healed herself of that severed arm and the damage to her body. She's still alive. But she's alone, and in danger.
But it wasn't just Seris that needed . The Hearth, too—that distant flock that I could almost call family—Epheotus was coming for them. Like a spear surging toward unprotected flesh, it would sink in deep.
So much. So, so much was happening, and I couldn't be sure of my actions even now. Should I have gone back to Seris using that last tempus warp charge? Or should I have tried to warn the Hearth? Should I have tried to send a ssage to Roa and Lithen and all the—
"Focus, Toren!" Aurora echoed in my skull, her emotions painted in the yellow of fear. But she stayed true to our course as she hovered beside , her burning eyes hard. "Mordain will have a way to protect our clan. The future is his domain, and your nest-mate still lives. Keep your mind on the task ahead."
I ground my teeth as I zipped through the streets, resisting the urge to scream in agony. I'd vented so much of my bitter fury on Viessa, Bairon, and Lyra Dreide, but it still festered. Even when I left Viessa's body smoking and left to weep endless tears, I did not feel that fire dim. Even as Bairon's lifeforce slowly dwindled, the Lance abandoned to grimly accept his fate in so dark alley, that fire did not dim. Even as Lyra nursed the hole where her core used to be, unconscious and captured by Dicathian forces, that fire did not dim.
Bairon had betrayed Dicathen, succumbing to the sa ruinous fate as Lucas Wykes. Though he was stronger than any Scythe save Cadell under the effects of that lifeforce-draining drug, that only ant he was still weaker than . And the tragedy of what could have been a good man—what could have been one of Dicathen's staunchest defenders—turning against his own continent, no doubt because of so butterfly effect of my actions sowhere, made that bitter rage re-ignite deep within .
Agrona was using it against , all the good I'd taken from Circe's array, and turning it to butchery.
I scread aloud, that white-hot stream of anger erupting from my lungs. I sensed Arthur resu his battle with Cadell in the skies, the demon no longer batting around like a fly. The ambient mana was alight like a live wire, dark fires and raging void wind enveloping each other.
As Arthur's white-purple spellfire intersected the black storm, I let my ragged scream trickle away, instead leaving …hollow.
He better win. I gritted my teeth through the exhaustion plaguing my bones as I approached my destination. I won't be able to save him again.
Finally, I reached the edge of the abyss.
I skidded to a halt along the paved street, a line of burning pavent stretching behind . If my shoes had not been layered in my telekinetic shroud, I was certain the sudden stop would have torn the soles from my boots.
I exhaled a breath, staring up at the terrible sight of the engorged ritual. Light warped as it was cut by bending space, before rging together again amidst the unfracturing kaleidoscope of dawnlight. Red and purple and blue split into hues I would have never imagined possible with my eyes.
I knew, logically, that the human eye could only see around ten million colors. In the spectrum of visible light, that was all that was possible. With my phoenix bloodline, I was able to see color more vividly and in far more contrast than before. My range of vision nearly doubled, putting my normal human perception to sha.
But what I saw now… was sothing more. Like the colors beyond and above purple and orange and red were suddenly made real, and not just invisible to the eye.
It made think of a heart. A great, massive heart molded from the clay of the world itself, bleeding colors hitherto unseen.
It was… It was beautiful. The very world beat under a rhythm of sorrow as thousands of dead voices coalesced into a single point. Heartbeats long ceased now rembered what it was like to live again, all devoting their soul's sonata to one cause.
Like a symphony, I thought, staring up at the rhythmic swell of red and orange-purple. Thousands as one, all their hearts pulsing in horrid unison. Even beyond the grave, the lingering cries of those wronged by the Beast Horde co together.
Could one find beauty in death? Could one find beauty in corruption, in the twisting knife of fell purpose?
I felt Lady Dawn's hand on my shoulder. It was always a comforting, reassuring gesture, a reminder that I wasn't alone. I knew with her gentle touch that soone I loved was always watching over , keeping watch for the things that crept in the dark.
But the dark had co for us. Aurora… even Aurora was small before this coming tempest. This ti, when her hand rested on my shoulder, it was as much for her comfort as it was for mine. Her haunted eyes stared at the amalgamation of dread blood, beautiful and terrible in a calculated equilibrium of light and shadow.
If this ritual completes, I thought, then it is true war. No longer confined within the cages of Alacrya and Dicathen. The asura will descend and lay it all to waste. If Agrona has such free access to Epheotus, then nothing will spare the places I call my ho.
I had seen what happened when two asura did battle within the caves of Burim. People died. I couldn't let this escalate. I couldn't let Agrona turn this war toward destruction.
When Arthur had appeared again before as Cadell cast from the sky, he'd said that only I could fix this ritual. Only I had the power to undo it. At its center, an inverted horn pierced a dragon's heart, funneling hundreds of thousands of lives' worth of soultether and mana to a single purpose.
I could feel it, over my bond with Inversion. My weapon called to from within, crying that this was wrong. It beckoned with a tune beneath the currents of Agrona's glorious-grotesque ritual, begging to put a stop to it all.
I settled my stance before the approaching tide of dinsional breakage, sliding my foot back and lowering my body weight. I tensed my muscles, struggling not to hyperventilate as I focused through endless weaves of shattered spatium.
"I hope my wings are strong enough for the storm," I said quietly, rain from on high streaming off my shroud. "They need to be."
Soulplu pulsed from my core, carrying waves of insight. Feathered runes glowed along my arms and eyes, mingling with the Aurora Constellate's light. My exhausted body alit with strength once more, my very veins pulsed with the weight of knowledge.
I conjured my shrouded spirit about , wrapping it like armor across my flesh. Plates of crystal mana covered every inch of my physique like perfect glass, reinforcing my prowess and assuring of my strength.
I exhaled a breath of steaming mist, facing the barrier. I focused my ears, grasping onto that thread of Inversion's call. Then I stepped forward.
I did not know what I was expecting. Pain, certainly. Force to press down on from all sides, perhaps. Violence and pushback, like trying to swim through a riptide, maybe? Perhaps I would see that color even more beautifully with hues so vibrant, like a lover's smile on a dreary day.
When I stepped into the storm, all of these were true. The impossible staccato of my heart pumped my lifeforce across my shrouded spirit, the dawnlight warding the foreign lifeforce from brushing my flesh. The pressure was nearly impossible to bear, with so much mana and aether condensed. I felt like a man teleported to the bottom of the ocean, abandoned to the true might of nature. I comprehended—for just a mont—what it was like to crumple in on myself.
Space did fracture around , and I suspected it would have shredded any lesser man into fine red mist. Certainly, every ounce of ground this ritual ate through was pulverized until I was certain not even atoms remained. But the song of Inversion—kept rigorously in tune by the force of my Will—served to show passage through. It showed the right places to flow, the steps I needed to take to stop this madness.
But as I entered that domain of titanic forces, what struck first was none of these things. I took a step. Another. And another.
Despite the asuran strength in my veins, however, they began to shake. They trembled like thin palms in a hurricane, slowly at first, but it did not take long for to buckle. Because beyond all of the pressures and physical weight and the tide that overwheld all noise, I could feel it.
When I had first played my concert for the people of East Fiachra beneath a raging storm, I had drawn from my experiences fighting against the rabid beasts in the Relictombs beneath the apathy of the rain. I'd taken all that dreadful emotion, and I'd molded it like clay. Here was what I wanted them to know. The potency of each strike, the desperation of every bare sweep of my saber. Each frantic step across that stage was a testant to my very soul.
It had been a dreadful song, the one I played that night. One that would haunt people of thunderstorms for years to co. As my intent mingled with the ambient mana, I'd drawn on all the experiences that my audiences might empathize with. All the little tis they'd felt anxiety in the night, or feared that they might never see the dawn. I harnessed the darkness.
And as I shook like a leaf, tears ripping and tearing themselves from the edges of my eyes, I recalled every mont of true and utter despair across my pathetically short life. My heart was gripped with an icy claw that tried to cease its sonata. Visions of the Breaking thundered in the back of my head. Visions of Seris stabbed through the heart. Visions of Barth dying a pointless, empty death. Visions of Greahd, slain for daring to think of a better way. Visions of those countless folk I'd tried to rescue from Burim and Fiachra and all the misery I'd ever experienced. Visions of Norgan bleeding onto the stones.
When parting the veil of aether, I had expected a flood. Instead, I was audience to a symphony of utter sorrow.
The mana coiled with it, writhing and twisting about itself in primordial agony. I thought I had fathod true sorrow in the wake of the Plaguefire Incursion and Greahd's death. Again, I thought I'd faced despair when I'd slain Skarn and Hornfels Earthborn. And finally, I was certain that I knew the face of agony as I fought Chul Asclepius through the bowels of a dying city, listening to the dying heartbeats of thousands of innocents.
But what was a re city to…. to this? How could the sudden cries of asly thousands compare to this? There were so many more. They'd all died in terror. They'd all perished in hopeless fear, drenched in the blood of everyone they'd ever loved. And they felt it still. The mana carried their intent. They wept and wept and I could do nothing but… nothing but listen.
Nothing but feel it, too.
"Toren!" a little, wavering candlelight said, struggling against it all. "Toren… Toren! Stay with—"
Aurora, I begged, reaching out with my mind. God, I just wanted to hold soone. To hold soone—anyone—and just weep. It was too much, all of them. I couldn't… I couldn't hold it all. I couldn't take their pain, and—
I heard a sob rip itself from sowhere. Was it who made that noise? Or was it my mother, weeping as she felt the burden, too? Soulplu wavered, my control and Will flickering.
And in that hesitance, a single mote of lifeforce seeped through the cracks in my telekinetic shroud. I hardly noticed as that single ember of deep red rolled along the inside of my spirit, trailing like a dewdrop over spring leaves. It was a single bead of blood dripping from the greatest wound I'd ever felt.
And then it brushed against the veins of lifeforce bolstering my shrouded spirit, and everything collapsed.
I was soone else. An old man, watching as the ho he'd retired in so many years ago—a place he wanted to live peacefully and spend his latter days, basking in the family he'd built—was razed to the ground.
I watched my wife—a woman I had cherished for fifty years, both of us slowly graying together—be torn apart by a mindless skitter. Not far away, the red of my son splashed against my face—my boy, who should have been happy and smiling with his wife and children. He'd only been here on a holiday, giving a few baskets of his wife's salted food. His blood ran down my cheek like tears. It was so wet.
And I was going to die, too, watching everyone I'd ever loved simply—
My shroud cracked as my Will collapsed, and the aether flowed in like water seeking a place to rest. Like prayers seeking a listening ear. Like weeping sobs reaching one who could finally hear.
I was a man and a woman and a child and a guard and a soldier and a miller and baker and cobbler and fletcher and everything and everyone as it assaulted from all sides. I was so, so many things. So many different people, all with different lives and dreams and desires. But above it all, I was despair. I was hopelessness and broken dreams, scattered to the wind.
I scread through the deluge, another note lost in the symphony.
I didn't know when I was torn from the storm. I vaguely rembered the tearing of space ripping through my Vessel. I rembered my wings sundered, like an angel cast down from Heaven.
I didn't know when I stopped screaming. I didn't know how long I'd been screaming. I just… woke up again, my mind a foggy haze. I felt as if I'd been driving my car through an impossibly foggy night. I couldn't see where my thoughts led or where they began. It was all just pain, a terrible headache pounding in tune with my heart.
Aurora stared down at , my head nestled in her lap. I stared up at her burn-scarred face, trying to separate the image of her from all the mothers I'd felt die in that overwhelming, terrible instant.
"Aurora," I muttered through weak, resisting lips, trying to move. I failed. "What… Where are we?"
My bond ran her hands through my hair. It took a second to realize that she was… She was crying. Tears of liquid fire dripped onto my skin, sizzling there like water atop a stove.
Only when those drops of running fla struck did I slowly start to piece together what had happened through the torrent of a hundred thousand people rging with one. My absent mind found the threads of it.
Lady Dawn had taken control of my body, hurling backward as my ego began to buckle beneath the deluge. Not even she could remain in that riptide. Even with millennia of experience and knowledge… It all outweighed even her.
I reached a shaky hand upward, hardly noticing the streams of red running along my lacerated arms. My lips moved, but no sound ca out. I felt like a towel, wrung of everything that gave substance and left out to dry for a thousand years. But still, one thought pierced the core of the emptiness.
How many sons did she see die? I thought, feeling her grasp my hand. How many sons did she lose, all in that mont?
I laid in the rubble of a decimated house, rain streaming through a gap a ways away in a concrete ceiling. Through that skylight, I could see the warping colors of the artificial Constellate, the weaves of mana and aether continuing to concentrate on a single point. But though I knew a thunderstorm raged outside and the crashes of Arthur and Cadell's battle sent shockwaves through the night, it was silent in my little patch of desperation. We both struggled to pull ourselves from the maelstrom. No words passed between us as we tried not to think of drowning again.
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"I need… need to go back in," I murmured, tasting copper on my lips. I knew I was bleeding and wounded, but I didn't possess the faculties to address it. "I can't let it go."
Aurora still didn't speak. As ever, her hands threaded through my hair. Her low-burning eyes knew the truth, just as I did. We both understood that we needed to stand up and trudge toward that spiral of despair once more. We needed to throw ourselves at it however many tis it took to reach the center.
But both of us felt so weak. Our minds were open wounds, still sore and bleeding from the lashes they'd taken. Neither of us wanted to feel the sting of that terrible whip again.
How… How could we do it? Even an asura like Lady Dawn was but a flickering candlefla before this true tempest.
The flapping of wings broke through the storm. Great, powerful wings, coasting down along the currents. Sothing alighted outside, settling onto the decrepit ceiling.
And then it lowered its head inside. A great beast of green scales and rippling, leathery wings stood there, perched at the periphery. A draconic maw sizzled with greenish fla between razor teeth, and a low rumble echoed from the back of its throat.
Its eyes stared at with critical intelligence as it lood over the edge. Any other ti, I might have reacted violently, lashing out at this mana beast that was observing . But those eyes were so intelligent. And over its intent…
Grief. Grief and sorrow radiated from the beast as it looked at my broken form.
"Avier?" Aurora asked above , her brow furrowed as confusion overtook her. "He was not at the Hearth… But the one called Cynthia is long dead. Why is he here?"
As if he could hear my bond's question, the wyvern lowered his head, revealing a small, bundled form atop his back. His great wings nestled it there in a tender way.
"Spellsong," the wyvern said, the words slithering between his teeth. They sounded nearly as stricken with sorrow as I had been within that tempest. "My master wishes to speak with you, but her voice is no longer her own."
Hesitantly, I pulled myself to trembling feet. I stared at that bundle in confusion, wondering what the wyvern could an. Then, as realization sank in of what I was looking at, horror seeped through.
"Rinia?" I asked, the words like ashes on my tongue. I was already on my feet, limping toward the gap in the roof.
There were billions of insects and other small things living beneath the soul and earth. If I really, really focused, I could hear each of their pulsing lifeforces as they lived their ager lives. Most of the ti, though, I filtered them out. They were too small and insignificant to warrant attention.
I'd been able to hear Rinia's heartbeat the last ti I'd spoken with her. When she'd told of her past and what gave her drive, weak as it was, I could listen to that dying thread.
But now, she looked already a corpse, with barely a torchbug's light within her heart. The old elf was broken and frail, bundled atop the great wyvern's back. Her sunken cheeks and sightless eyes stared out, unmoving. I would have thought her already dead. The reaper haunted her side, waiting for a due that would co at any mont.
"Take her, Toren Daen," Avier rumbled quietly. The draconic beast's head was hung low, his erald eyes failing to et mine. "Take her. Hear what she has to say."
In that mont, I felt a swell of hope. Even as the old elf teetered at the edge of death, she was a beacon of light. She could see the future, could she not? Did she have the words I needed to understand? Did she have the way forward?
I held out my arms reverently, gently taking the body from Avier's back. Imdiately, I was struck by how cold she felt. How cold and how weightless. It was as if I were holding a bundle of twigs, not one of the greatest diviners to ever grace this continent.
Rinia's lips didn't move, but her hand did. Just each of the bony, withering fingers. They twitched, nothing else discernible from the living corpse. On impulse, I threaded my hand through hers, wanting to give her so sort of comfort in this ti.
She's dying, I thought, chastising myself for my foolishness. She's dying, Toren, and you want so sort of deus ex machina from her. You want her to give you all the answers when you both know there are none.
So instead, I wrapped us both in a shroud of fire mana, banishing the chill of the rain. She was so, so cold, but she didn't deserve to die that way. Not after she'd helped re-ignite the warmth of hope in my chest after it had been extinguished.
The old elf exhaled a breath of contentnt, her head leaning against my chest for support. I could hear the slow, asured inhales of the dying in her. Her failing form forgot what it needed to do, only to desperately rember to gasp for life-giving oxygen heartbeats later.
And as the realization dawned on that this elf could never again speak and that her body was already failing, I stared in anger at the wyvern. He had just delivered this woman to —this candlefla of hope—just for her to die. While I still needed to go back out into the storm, now I held another ember of dying light.
I opened my mouth to demand why. To demand what the point of this was, and why he was here. But then a voice brushed tentatively against my thoughts, weak and barely contained.
"Ah," Rinia's voice—strained and so very tired—filtered through my head. "You can… You can hear ."
Her fingers tightened around mine, each of them shaking from so deeply forged emotion. "I was worried that I was… too weak. But I just need to speak with you, one last ti."
It wasn't like the other tis my mind had been invaded. Not like Agrona's or Viessa's tendrils of searing pain. No… this was more like the brush of Mordain's soul against mine, way back in the Hearth. It was like my phoenix will as it coursed in tune with my thoughts, two souls as one.
I swallowed, the elf's words trickling along the back of my mind. She needed to speak to . That ant she… did have sothing for . Sothing that could help.
Rinia… I thought, not knowing if she could hear . Rinia, I don't think… I don't think I can stop it.
Aurora strode around , staring mournfully down at the dying seer. Her eyes burnt low as she brushed her fingers across the elf's face in a gentle caress, like a guardian angel watching over the dying.
"I don't know how, Toren," Rinia's voice ca again, carried across mournful aether. "I can't see anymore. It all… all ended here. I could see past it, once, but not anymore. I am blind to it all."
I frowned, fighting back my fear. My heart shook in my chest as my hold on the seer tightened. God, I wanted her to just tell the right way. I wanted to know the future I could take. I wanted to just go in that direction, certain and sure. But deep in my soul, I knew it didn't work that way. It never had.
I had steeled myself to take steps forward even into the darkness when I'd fought Taci. I'd made the decision to face the unknown. But right now, that unknown felt so much more terrible than I expected. It suffocated , weighing like a cloak of shadow across my shoulders.
"I don't know what can be done to stop it," Rinia's quiet voice ca again, weakening with every passing gasp of her dying body. "But I saw you. I saw you looking so… alone, here. I didn't want to leave you with it all."
A shaky smile stretched across my face, splitting my ragged features. My arms shook as it reached , and a weak laugh tumbled from my lips like a pebble falling down a mountain.
A woman who didn't know the way anymore, coming to . A woman who had taken the entire future onto her shoulders, burning every inch of herself away in the process, was coming to . Not just to give comfort. Not just to reassure or spout prophecies, or to say that there was a way forward.
But because she was about to die.
"There is a path past this, Toren Daen," Rinia repeated, the light of her voice dimming. "I don't know it anymore. But…"
Her soul-voice flickered as her body gasped. It took a mont to resolidify into sothing I could hear. "But… You aren't alone. You never have been."
I held the old seer close, clutching her as one might clutch a child. I closed my eyes as I sensed sothing within my mind align, my surety and confidence seeping back in as I found what I needed to do.
"You aren't alone, either, Rinia," I said quietly, the silent Aurora lingering like waiting Death at her side. "You won't die alone."
The seer was silent for a ti. I wondered, for a few precious heartbeats, if she had already died. But her voice ca back to , distant and afraid. "I'm afraid. I'm blind. I cannot see what cos next, I… Lania. Lania, do you… Do you bla ? I made it right. I tried, I…"
Each word ca with what I was certain was the seer's last, dying breath. But every ti, she pressed out another weak syllable, her thoughts clutched desperately around each mont like a rictus claw. She refused to give it up. With all her willpower, she refused to go. Not until she'd said what swirled in her mind.
I knew she didn't see Toren Daen any longer. He'd vanished sowhere as the Beyond called, singing its sweet song. But still, as I held the dying woman close, I wanted her to know that she had made it right. She'd kept the fire going. She'd been what this world needed to survive, using every ounce of her life for her cause.
You did everything you could, I thought gently. You're free, Rinia. You're free.
Free. I think it was that word that did it. I felt the syllables of it brush across her soul, and a weight that she had carried in the deepest anchoring parts of her being slowly unwound. A burden that had been coiled for decades slowly misted away, released to the aether.
Back in my previous life, I had heard of countless depictions of Death. So many showed it as a grim, terrible thing, co to reap and take everything beautiful. It was the embodint of decay and despair, draining the beauty of everything around us with its gray.
But I had also heard of Deaths that were kind, loving things. Death ca because it had to, not because it wished us harm. It was not malevolent, it simply was. And it would take its ti, letting us reflect on all that had co before him.
As Rinia's soul flickered dark, a smile on her lips, I hoped that Death was kind. I hoped Death was like the phantom phoenix at my side: beautiful and burned, but ready to serve as a guide to whatever ca next. I hoped that Death was like a mother leading her children into the unknown; or maybe it would co with a sister's face.
I hoped.
A mist of dawnlight rose from the elven woman's lips as she exhaled her last. So reflection of her soul flickered there, before escaping my sight.
I stood in silence for a mont as strength returned to my limbs. The bleeding across my body slowed, and then stopped as my heartbeat surged. I held that body in my arms, devoid of a soul and drained entirely of its lifeforce, and I knew what I needed to do.
Avier lowered his muzzle down, a single erald tear leaking from his eye. He crooned sadly as he nuzzled the body of his second master, a cry reverberating through his intent.
I slowly turned to look at Aurora, the certainty of my plan threading over our bond. She didn't speak.
"Tessia and Sylvie are in the great tree at the horizon," I said to Avier, my voice quiet and strong. "Take her to them, please."
Avier stared at , those reptilian eyes searching for sothing inside. I don't know if he found it, even as I gently laid the diviner's empty Vessel across his back. It took him a mont to rise back into the sky. When he did, it was with a bellow of sorrow that echoed across the entire city for a master that would never return.
And I, too, began to rise. The ambient mana lifted , my white core pulsing with renewed strength. I rose through the clouds, ignoring the wash of the rain. It stread off of , unable to sink into my skin. Up and up and up I went, untethered by the coil of gravity.
I flew high above the ritual, hovering there and staring down at the refracting, beating heart. I inhaled deeply, drinking of the mana in the air to replenish my reserves. I raised a hand to one of the streaming ribbons of red heartfire as they cycled down toward that beating heart.
When my hands brushed against the red, the flashes of pain ca again. But here, outside of that utter compression, it wasn't a ripping, tearing sensation.
I closed my eyes, mories of those long gone imposing themselves in my head. But these were not souls. Their souls had already moved on to whatever was Beyond. These were echoes: a lingering remnant of their hatred and despair, unable to make peace with the atrocities they had suffered. Unable to bear their Fates.
I cycled that heartfire through my body and toward my heart, before purifying it and adding it to my reserves. The lifeforce of the ritual carried mana with it, too, like two people lost in grief and unable to let go.
But that mana could be purified, too. When the grief-laden mana reached my white core, I could relieve it of its lingering intent. My heart and my core. Those were the secrets that would see this ritual denied. I could relieve all that suffering, if only I could take it into myself.
Aurora floated beside as she sensed my budding plan. A plan that had only started to form as I recalled what had happened to Seris over our bond, where her core had shattered. A plan that only cented when Rinia's words had reached that I was not alone.
The winds howled around my bond and . I stared at her, silently showing her what I had in mind.
"We could not stand before that storm," I said quietly. Lightning arced nearby, illuminating the burned ghost. ", you… We were too small. Even an asura alone is too small in the face of that tide."
I called on my Phoenix Will, sinking into Soulplu again. With my sense of my bloody Sea, I felt as the fire laced through my deepest spirit, imbuing with countless years of asuran insight. I'd known for a long ti that the Will of the Asclepius was an aggregate sliver of a soul, devoid of sapience. But the sheer volu of experience within was worth hundreds of millennia of asuran lifetis, all compacted into one impossible singularity.
"It battered apart from the outside, because I was too small. I couldn't weather it. But there is a way I can grow, if even for a mont."
Bottled deep inside my mana core, the Will of uncountable phoenixes resided. I was never alone.
"The Third Phase," Aurora said quietly, understanding. Visions of the last ti we had tested this power flickered behind her dawnlit eyes. I had nearly seared my soul to oblivion. Like filling a balloon with so much air that it popped. In the end, I'd nearly died from barely a minute approaching that event horizon. "It will break you, Toren."
Lightning flashed between us. Far below, I saw Arthur marching like a victorious king toward his defeated foe. He had seen his triumph over Cadell, but this tragedy wasn't yet done.
"We only need a few seconds," I said honestly. "A dip into the power, then a retreat. Enough that my spirit won't be overwheld by outside influence. I've grown stronger since. My soul has beco more resilient. Hardened. Strengthened. And we can do this, Aurora. We have to. And I know you won't let go."
My bond's attention traced . From my boots to my head, her vision lingered, a mix of sorrow and sothing else peeking through. She slowly smiled, a thing so full of pride it glowed brighter than the Constellate. "You've grown so much, my son," she whispered. "You're right. I won't ever let you go."
I matched her smile hesitantly, bracing internally as best I could. I turned back to the swirling nimbus of ritualistic energy below . Deep within, I could sense that it was reaching its apex. Soon, the energy would solidify.
Unless I did sothing about it.
"Are you with , Aurora?" I asked, feeling the warmth of the Aurora Constellate high above.
Lady Dawn floated toward , wrapping her arms around in a motherly embrace. She pressed her forehead against the back of my head, threading her fingers through my hair as she sensed my fear. "Always, my little songbird," she whispered. "Always."
Soulplu deepened, and I beca light.
Within the tempest of ritualistic aether, the mories and intent of so many had hamred against from the outside. So, so many lives had all been stuck, trapped in their final agonies in a nigh-infinite Bloodtie. Each of those imprints long gone had slamd their hamrs into the brittle confines of my shell, before streaming in and overwhelming with an ocean's pressure.
But as I beca fire and song and soul, I knew a different pressure. I expanded, becoming sothing more. My body was hot with life, my lifeforce flowing across my veins easier than it ever had before. Mana and heartfire sang in rhythm with my heart as I erupted with gold. Feathered runes coated my entire body, each of them glowing with the heat of a burning sun.
We raised our hand, watching the light of a Constellate burn beneath our fingertips. The world sang, humming a lody of despair through the light of dawn. We gazed at our upturned palm inquisitively. A fire danced there, burning orange. Then it sharpened to a frightening azure. A deadly white.
And finally, a burnished gold that banished the night all around us. It humd in contained fury, sparks and pops of a nascent star searing the edge of the world.
We did not feel sorrow any longer. As all that we had failed to comprehend beca clear as a sumr lake, our misery turned about itself. Rage. Golden, passionate rage coursed through every inch of our cells.
Below, the n and won of this city gazed up at us in awe. Their intents wove around us, all of amazent and fear as our sunlit figure shone.
Agrona. That basilisk took all their pain, crafting and ddling and tearing at the emotions of those he thought beneath him. And as he made a symphony of their wrought despair, he—in his infinite ignorance and utter hubris—thought he would sew more.
Our eyes saw through every illusion and falsehood as they coasted over the people of this city. We took them all in, feeling their small desires. Each of their heartbeats… It was a part of sothing greater. A chorus on the edge of our perception, one that turned the world itself, but was sohow devoid of sothing truly kind.
The world itself was a symphony, one greater and grander than any single creature. Even as the King watched us with trepidation over the corpse of his fallen foe, his heartbeat drew in all the others around him into a lockstep dirge. His crowned song was the loudest of the choir, his heartbeat joining the crashing crescendo as it humd toward so distant end.
And us… We were a part of that song, the two of us. None could ever separate themselves from the great Symphony. But we were free to change our tune, to sing and dance and pull on the heartbeats of all others.
We were Discordant, if one knew how to listen.
No longer was the mass of aether and mana at the heart of Xyrus a beautiful thing. Now, we could hear how wrong it was. The souls who sang their notes had long since departed for… sowhere else, but this single blot of corruption tried so desperately to beco sothing other than crashing nausea and raucous disruption. A living-dead contradiction.
That basilisk thought to beget more through this. It thought to seed more terror through this world, all for its petty experints and goals. It thought to coat that misery in painted shades of ochre and violet. The dawn, corrupted as anything it touched.
Our hand clenched around the golden fla, snuffing it out. Embers licked between our fingertips as the flas slowly spread across our body. Our shrouded spirit returned, brilliant and white-gold as it overlaid us. Our wings stretched from our back, each of the translucent plates now the sa shade of light as our shroud.
Along each and every inch of our shroud, runes the color of autumn leaves burned like the brand upon our necks. We were mother and son, true. But even as our souls began to burn beneath the concentrated weight of all who had co before, we knew sothing else.
We were the dawn. Agrona would never take that from us. He would never corrupt it, not so long as we stood before him.
We exhaled a breath as we stared down at the ritual, focusing on Inversion's desperate note within the Song. We honed in on it as our regalia shone, twisting and bending the world with compressed force. An accel path of impossible light—like a horizon turned into a vertical dagger, poised over a heart that needed to be pierced—stretched before us.
"You are a fool, Agrona," we whispered, feeling the imploring gazes of all within this sundered city, "to think you would ever succeed."
And then we entered the slipstream of true Force, a lightning bolt cast down to the center.
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