It's been a while they've been here, taken along with the relics.
So all she could do was count them.
"One-fifty-nine… one-sixty… one-sixty-one…" Lyra muttered, her voice echoing softly into the void.
Each relic she counted hovered for a mont in the air before vanishing into an invisible tally. Her brow was furrowed, tongue pressed against her upper lip in exaggerated focus.
"…One-sixty-two!" She raised her arms triumphantly, grinning at the empty air. "That's all of them! One hundred and sixty-two glorious little trophies. Not like it matters—since, y'know, everyone else in the tournant is dead."
She spun around theatrically, expecting laughter.
Only silence greeted her.
She blinked, finally rembering the complete absence of sound or motion beyond herself and Caelen.
The air felt… heavy. Not exactly suffocating, but unnaturally still—like a breath between two heartbeats that never ends.
Lyra rubbed her arms, the joke fading from her lips. "Okay but… seriously, where are we?"
Her voice didn't echo this ti.
It was devoured by the blackness that surrounded them.
A voice ca from the distance, quiet and clear.
"Soulrealm."
Ian stood far away, half-obscured by nothingness, his silhouette barely more than a shadow outlined against a horizon that didn't exist.
His eyes were fixed forward, watching sothing only he could see.
Lyra tilted her head. "Oh. Soulrealm. My bad. I should have known that. Of course we're just in the sou—" she stopped mid-sentence, frowning. "Except. I have no clue what a soulrealm is! Is this… is this the afterlife? Are we dead?"
"No," Ian said.
"Okay," Caelen added, crossing his arms and frowning at Ian. "But you look dead. You're all floaty and transparent-y."
Ian didn't turn to them. "Yeah. Because my physical body isn't here. Just my soul."
"So we are dead," Lyra said, eyeing her hands nervously.
Ian finally looked back. "No. Your physical bodies are here. You're not dead."
"…So we can leave? Like, alive-alive?" Lyra asked, hesitantly hopeful.
"Yes. But…" Ian glanced outward again, where the horizon should have been. "There's nothing to leave to. I kind of… destroyed it."
Lyra and Caelen stared at him.
"You what?" Caelen asked, blinking slowly.
"The Hollow Spine Ruins. Gone. Erased," Ian said flatly. "But I'm moving. Out of the Hollow Spines, toward the Maw's exit. Once we're out, we'll offer the relics and clear the Reach."
There was a mont of stunned silence.
"Right," Lyra said, massaging her temples. "Totally normal day. Just hanging out in a soulrealm with a half-transparent mass murderer while the place we were in gets erased. I've had dreams like this. They were more of nightmares honestly."
Ian didn't day anything, he just gazed at the soul of the red robed purple mist in front of him.
"You are a worthy replacent for Torkas, Fang." He muttered only to himself.
---
In the physical world, Ian drifted silently through the hollow blackness where once jagged towers of the Hollow Spine Ruins had stood.
Now, there was only void. No stones. No sky.
Just the echo of his will, pressing reality aside like a tide against glass.
He moved like a hunting ghost, no longer walking—gliding through the after-echo of annihilation, the pressure of his POD state wrapping around him like mantle of weightless dread.
But then… he felt it.
Solid ground.
The nothing beneath his feet turned to earth again.
Cold. Cracked. Real.
He exhaled.
The aura lifted.
His form flickered once, then solidified. The deathlight in his veins dimd.
The black fire in his eyes guttered out.
He stepped down from oblivion, leaving the Prophet behind.
Then, without a word, he raised a hand—and willed the soulrealm open.
A ripple of energy shimred in the air, and from the void stepped Lyra and Caelen, pulled from the soulrealm as casually as one might draw breath.
They stumbled into the broken world.
Then froze.
Their eyes locked on Ian.
Even without the deathlight… he was not the sa man who had entered the Hollow Spines.
Crimson tears stained their cheeks from earlier, dry but visible.
Reminders of what they'd witnessed.
Of the blood they'd cried.
They took a step back, unthinking. Pure instinct.
Ian glanced at them. Unreadable.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "I'd be scared too."
Then he turned and began walking.
The siblings stared after him.
They followed.
---
They walked in silence at first, the distant groan of the Maw like a constant breath around them.
Then Lyra, unable to hold her tongue any longer, spoke up.
"Terror-inducing aura of death aside, that was—seriously—badass," she said. "He was all like, 'So this is your power, blah blah,' and you were like, 'This isn't power. It's calamity.' And then all of us started crying blood, and then it felt like the whole world was gonna end and—"
Ian walked on, letting her voice wash over him like wind.
But a faint smile nicked at the corner of his lips.
She didn't notice.
She just kept talking, breathless and amazed.
"—and it was like the ground was lting, and even I thought we were about to just… stop existing. Seriously, ten out of ten. A little dramatic, sure, but hey, it worked."
They followed the crumbling path forward, using the ancient scrolls they'd been given before entering the maw.
The way was winding, the stone cracked and devoured in places, but eventually…
Light.
A cold, gray wash of hellscape false mockery of sunlight spilled into the final cavern mouth.
They had made it out.
The Maw had been survived.
But waiting outside, beneath a crimson sky and shattered obelisks, were figures.
Robed.
Still.
Dozens of them.
The tournant coordinators.
The wore silver bands marked with the sacred glyphs of dominion. They stood in a semi-circle, the air behind them carried silent tension.
Ian stopped.
The siblings nearly ran into his back.
Their faces… spoke volus.
There was no celebration.
No cheers.
Only calculation.
And sothing Ian had forgotten how to muster.
Fear.
His eyes narrowed.
Will they be trouble?
He wasn't certain yet.
But he was ready.
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