Nothing.

Rath had woken up. We could all sense it.

Her presence was there… we could all feel it.

Yet there was nothing but darkness, and we could all see it.

Behind where Keris had crumpled on the floor, still cackling, the temple doors had opened. Without even a creak, they’d moved on some supernatural wind to expose the room beyond.

But as we all stared in horror, anticipation eating away at the insides of our minds, we saw nothing. There was naught but a dark stone room filled with a murky blackness so thick that it seemed to resist the light. It pushed back against the red-tinged glow of the rest of the temple as if making sure nothing saw what sat within.

My heart thundered, smashing against my ribcage as though it were a prison. All of my insides shifted, itching to move or to flee from whatever Rath was about to unleash upon us all… but I couldn’t. For some reason beyond my comprehension, I was unable to react to the tension. Unable to give in to my fears and run for my life.

No. All I could do was stare.

And even as time marched on, the silence stayed. It persisted despite the complete amalgamation of different angry and terrified bodies all packed into the same room. Nobody made a move. Nobody made a sound.

No. All we could do was stare.

Eventually, the frozen moment cracked. It gave way to the barest amount of movement, even if it was only with our eyes. We were able to move our attention away from the uninteresting back room and toward the man who had caused it all in the first place. The battered, shriveled, bloodied pyromancer who had summoned the mother of destruction in his own time of need.

Keris shifted, his limbs shaking in struggle as he tried to sit up. He made attempt after attempt at curling his body into a straighter position, at even doing so much as wiping the blood off his face.

But he couldn’t. He was too weak, and it looked like his muscles were restrained too. Even he was pressed down and handicapped by whatever presence was shifting throughout the room.

The entire time, though, Keris’ smirk didn’t let up. It didn’t drop even in the slightest as his silent movements went unsuccessful. It didn’t waver or shift into anything else even as blood continued to pour down over it.

For a moment, some desperate part of me screamed for understanding. Some section of my mind that was meant to… meant to do something. I couldn’t remember. It wasn’t important.

My faint mental protests were cut off. My strained, limited attention was drawn to something else entirely. It dragged away from Keris and toward the subtle sparks of light creeping along the floor behind him.

Slithering forward like snakes, lines of spark and ember approached the pyromancer. They were moving to do… something, some part of me said. They had a purpose—but no matter how hard I tried, any idea of that purpose felt slippery in my mind.

It was hard to grasp. It took too much effort.

Better to just watch, I decided. Better to just stare.

As seconds traded places with bouts of eternity, the streams of red cinders made progress toward Keris. They reached him at some point and dug into his body, tearing straight toward his soul.

His scream of agony broke the silence in two.

Yet as the fire wrapped around him, the scream didn’t stay. It cut off without even an echo as soon as he shut his lips like a sweeping strike that had been blunted at the last moment. And as the silence imposed itself once again, Keris didn’t appear all that bothered.

In fact, his face morphed away from one of pain and back into… a familiar expression. One that I’d seen before, but right now it was too hard to place. All I could do was watch as his lips curled up and strength returned to his body.

My heart skipped a beat.

A spike of fear rippled through my head. It made my skull ache just feeling it, but it seemed necessary for some reason. It felt important—particularly as it was reinforced by a white-hot warmth that was trying to wash over me.

Still staring at Keris, though, I didn’t really know why. Something told me not to spend the time to figure it out, either. It was too much effort.

The revitalized pyromancer stepped forward on shaky legs. He wiped the remaining blood from his nose and bared his teeth toward the ground. After a moment, he took a strained breath, watched with fiery eyes to some abstract point in mid-air, and nodded.

The world around me changed in an instant.

Before I could even process what had happened, the presence restraining my mind grew heavier. It grew thicker and more intimidating, only increasing the helplessness I felt at its grip. Inside of me, I could feel resistance. I could feel some white-hot anger and disciplined determination trying to regain control.

The resistance was quiet, though. It easy to tune out, especially as whispers started infiltrating my ears.

Resonant tones flowed through my mind, low and hushed. They felt fleeting and staggering at the same time, trading off on discordant beats as they attacked my brain.

At first, they simply felt strange, leaving a tingling feeling in my soul as though it was never meant to interact with sounds of this kind. But slowly, they grew louder and more painful. Steadily, they rose to drown out the roar of blood against my ears until they were the only thing possible for me to hear.

Each word that was muttered, each hiss of something beyond my mind—it only translated into pain. The voices burned against my consciousness.

As the pain rattled up, in fact, some clarity returned. Some part of my psyche cracked under the pressure just enough for the rebelling forces that felt distinctly like me to finally gain ground.

And as they returned more and more, I recognized why the whispers were familiar. I remembered Anath’s words and her warnings. I remembered the terms in her tongue that she’d muttered only for me to reel back in pain.

These were similar, I realized. Except that these deep, ringing whispers were closer. They were omnipresent and far, far more painful than what I’d experienced before. They created a grating feeling against my mind as if the terms were incompatible with my mind, like they were so far beyond me that I would never even have the chance to understand.

My psyche cracked more, concepts fleeing my head. Values, memories, ideas that I held core to my identity started to falter. My love of the blade. My hatred of the beast. My want to protect. My… discipline?

I barely even recognized the word.

As it all gave way, though, something else entered. The white-hot presence from before seeped in and burned my pain to the ground. In a show of pure, furious desperation, it forced out the intruding whispers and bathed the broken parts of me in warmth.

I held onto that warmth even as I could feel my body again. My eyes drooped, tempted by the deep dark abyss that felt so close. And I almost gave in while the cracks in my mind started to heal—to rebuild themselves. But I didn’t. The white flame didn’t allow me to.

A gasp of air rushed through my lungs. The white flame flickered, straining itself ever-more and making the recognizable headache of soul-drain almost painful enough for me to wretch. I didn’t, though. I kept myself under control.

Stone stared back into my face. I breathed, my brows pulling together until I realized I’d fallen to my knees. Somewhere along the line, my body had slumped down as if on the verge of collapse.

I shook my head, getting my thoughts in order. The trusted weight of my sword still dragged my hand toward the floor, and I latched onto the feeling. I used it as a way to ground me while I sifted through whatever was going on.

Tilting my head up, I saw the temple again. The smoke had cleared somewhat, but it was still swelteringly hot. It was still packed with combattants along with the stench of blood, sweat, and soot.

Resisting the whispers that were still shifting around my mind, I noted all of the cracked pieces of rock and char. I noted the burned bodies still on the floor, the groups of knights and cultists still spread out in the temple.

None of them were moving. Not even Lady Amelia and her group—which only included Rik and one other knight at this point. They all stood completely frozen with their eyes wide, watching one point in the air or another as though it had them at knifepoint.

And, as I realized when I tried to stand up, I couldn’t move either. Despite the efforts of the white flame, whatever presence Rath was imposing upon us still had me locked in place. It still had some part of my mind convinced that moving wasn’t an option.

The only motion at all, in fact, was Keris. After his patron dragon had healed him, he’d gone to ambling through the room on his own. Watching his movements, he still looked strained, but he wasn’t shackled like the rest of us.

She must’ve had use for him, I guessed.

Anger pounded through my veins. It forced my spine a tiny bit straighter with the sheer brutality of the emotion. But as I stayed frozen, helpless against something so much more powerful than me, the emotion faded into something else. It bled back into desperation, a feeling that reminded me of something crucial.

I turned—or, I tried to turn toward where Kye had been standing next to me. Instead, all I got was the movement of my eyes. That was enough. I caught the huntress in my periphery, her legs shaking as they struggled to stay up.

Her eyes were wide with horror too, and I could feel the hair on my back stand on end as dread washed over me, but she was okay. Considering what was happening, she was doing alright. Her hand was still tightly wrapped around her bow, and I could see the determination etched between the lines of fear on her face.

I took a deep breath. Well, I did my best to, at least. Instead of stressing over Kye, I turned my attention inward. I checked in with the white flame and tried to defend myself against the whispers that refused to go away.

They still slithered through my consciousness even after all the control I’d regained. Words and phrases above my comprehension still sparked pain each time they washed through. With a grimace, I tried to push back on them more, to tune them out.

It was only halfway successful.

As I resisted the looming presence pressing down on me, it didn’t budge. The pain didn’t leave. And the whispers didn’t cease becoming louder and more irritating. They didn’t stop grating on me like rusty nails on marble, driving me more insane with each passing second. No. My attempts were futile; whatever power Rath had was beyond me.

Luck, however, appeared to be on my side.

Because whether it was a result of my efforts or something entirely separate, Rath’s presence moved. It got bored of torturing my mind and went toward the main group of knights. Somehow, I felt the change in the air.

It wasn’t the same as normal. It wasn’t a sharp movement that pushed air in my direction, nor was it movement of light, malleable air like when I was casting. No. Her movement didn’t affect the air at all. But I still felt it like the barest hint of light shining through the bars of a dark cell and brushing my skin if only to tantalize me with everything I couldn’t reach.

I didn’t know how to describe it. My thoughts were sent spinning by the simple act of acknowledging that it had happened. But none of it mattered. It had happened, and the whispers had gone along with it.

Smoky air circled through my lungs. I closed my eyes and relaxed my shoulders, calming myself. With as much conviction as I could muster I stopped the trembling in my fingers and took stock of the situation.

It didn’t take much for me to snap my eyes open again.

An ice-cold shot of fear rushed through my veins. I glanced up, watching the main group of knights in rising terror. In the physical world, I couldn’t see Rath’s presence move. But I knew she had. I’d felt it. And the tense, contorting expressions on many of their faces didn’t leave much doubt.

They could hear the whispers too.

At once, I tightened my grip and tried to move forward. I tried to go help them or do anything, but I couldn’t. Even with the whispers gone, I was still locked in place. Attempting motion was like straining against the confines of my own skin.

It just… wouldn’t work.

When the bloodied and burned collection of knights and cultists started shaking, some even falling to their knees, my breath accelerated. I tried reaching into the back of my mind and imploring the white flame for help. But it had none left to give.

White fire flickered softly, continuing the bathe the damaged parts of my psyche with warmth. It dwindled with each moment, and the headache attacking the back of my skull was already worse than I’d ever felt.

Any further and I would be pushing my limits.

I hesitated, my breath catching and tension rising behind my eyes. In the center of my vision, another knight fell to her knees beside a charred corpse of her friend. She didn’t even look down in grief. She couldn’t look down. All she could do was shake and tremble and hold her head high to scream.

Which was exactly what she did. But I didn’t get to hear her shriek—the otherworldly silence swallowed it before it got to me. Even still, I could see the pain bare. The absolute and utter confusion as her mind cracked under the pressure.

I couldn’t even move to help. No. All I could do was stare.

One by one, the knights fell like she did. Each of them did it a slightly different way, but the whispers cracked them all. Rath broke their minds like glass and just let the pieces scatter without caring where the ended up.

Some handled it well, standing upright with as much determination as they could muster until the very end.

Some handled it poorly, the whispers getting the better of them in short time. They were the ones to collapse on the ground and bang their heads against the stone or take their weapons to end the misery before it could get that far.

My stomach rolled as more blood stained the temple’s stone floor. A hitch caught in my throat, my fingers trembled, and I tried to shake my head. I tried to blink it away, but it wouldn’t go. The bodies kept falling, ripping a hole straight through my heart as I watched the fear on every single one of their faces.

Even the cultists fell. That realization stuck out to me like a beacon. Despite the fact that Keris was alive and well, the other cultists apparently didn’t deserve the same treatment. Their souls were treated like any other by the queen of the dragons.

Unconditional destruction in the most horrible way possible.

Each of them, burned, bleeding, and exhausted alike—they all fell. The crazed, savage, fiery intent in their eyes dropped away to show fear exposed plainly to the world.

In too many of their gazes, I saw confusion as well. But it wasn’t the kind of mortal confusion I expected. No. It was worse. It was a sort of innocent, genuine bewilderment as though they were shocked that Rath targeted them at all.

The monstrous dragon probably didn’t care. It was all destruction to her.

The cultists had been so passionate about it before. They’d worshipped and worked for it with their own lives on the line. They’d envisioned a fiery future of destruction, one that simply razed their enemies to the ground in a fury of red flame.

But this?

This?

I doubted they understood it any more than I did.

Although, it wasn’t like they were given much of a chance before the mental function necessary to try became a thing of the past. Before the souls that had channeled Rath’s energy in the past became naught but husks on the ground.

En’s face caught my eye just before the tears started. My attention shifted toward the lightly armored knight who I’d been marching with for days.

Fyn stood only paces away from him, staring on in panic. His face contorted too—I knew he heard the whispers as well—but it was almost like his death was put on hold while he watched his friend fall.

En struggled, tremors rattling through his body as he resisted. His hand gripped tightly to the hilt of his sword and tried to hold it at the ready.

The gesture was useless, of course, but it at least gave him a heroic position as his eyes glossed over. Pursed lips gave way to mutterances. Control gave way to insanity. And he fell to the ground. Blood splattered out of his mouth as he hit, the lack of a sound making it all the more terrifying to watch.

I couldn’t help it anymore. I wept. The tension behind my eyes broke and tears blurred my vision, burning the entire way as they streamed down my cheek. Staring at En’s twitching body was too much. It was too much to watch the life get stolen from him without even so much as a fair fight.

He simply… died. Just like that, he was gone. I would no longer have the chance to make another memory with the man. There would be no eye-rolling comments or irritating interruptions. No. He was gone.

My lips trembled as I continued to stare, locked in my own skin and overtaken by a presence so much greater than me. He was dead, and there was nothing I could do about it.

There was nothing any of us could do.

The beast’s visage rose in my mind, taunting me with the gleam of its scythe. These souls… it would harvest them all without a second thought. It would rip them away from the world and leave only grief in their wake.

As my chest ached between tears, I almost saw the reaper itself. I could’ve sworn I saw the black mist, the tattered cloak, the ancient scythe. But as soon as En’s body crumpled, finally lifeless, it was gone. The image left, too fleeting for me to know whether it had been real at all.

Plus, my attention was diverted anyway. Instead of staring at En, I caught movement where Fyn was standing.

I snapped my eyes to it.

With my heart sinking and blood running cold in my veins, I blinked away tears. I tightened my grip with whatever bodily control I still had and waited for my friend to fall as well. A little hope pulsed in my heart, but I had trouble giving into it. The hollow helplessness of it all was taking over.

Fyn, however, still had hope. I could see it in the determined look in his eyes, in the way he forced a smile despite the assault on his mind. Second after second, I expected him to fall. I expected Rath to rip the smile off his face and crush him with the same kind of ambivalent ferocity she’d used before.

But… she didn’t. Or, if she was trying, there was no evidence of it. Fyn stood strong with his blade in hand and continued resisting, smiling for longer than any of the other knights had lasted.

Eventually, Rath stopped. Some shift in the air that I could sense but not understand told me something had changed. And as Fyn took a step back, relaxing his muscles while he regained control, I was only proven right.

Hope bloomed in my chest, overpowering the despair for a moment. It reminded me of Fyn’s determination. His relentless optimism. It took the time to tell my damaged mind that there was still a chance he would survive.

Movement in the corner of my eye caused doubt to rear its head.

Keris walked up as casually as he could. With fire dancing between his fingers and a crazed, almost possessed look in his eyes, he watched the knight. He studied Fyn as though trying to figure out the best way to bring about his death.

Fyn didn’t have the patience to wait.

In an instant, the knight had his hands up. He had his grin wide, his teeth gritted, and his eyes narrowed directly on the pyromancer.

The flood of lightness through the air sparked my hope anew.

Keris froze. His eyes widened and his lips trembled as he was the one to get robbed of control. Fyn casted with everything he had left and forced Keris to stop the flames. He forced the pyromancer to backpedal at an increasing speed until…

The scream that followed was blunted yet again.

Metal gauntlets skidded across heated rock as Keris fell, thrown like a ragdoll off balance by Fyn’s magic. For a moment, the cheerful knight kept up his smile and stood tall. Then, however, he dropped his shoulders and—

“Nuisance,” Keris said, his voice cutting through the silence. I’d barely processed the word before my mind was sent spinning.

Clangs of metal. Grunts of pain. Puffs of smoke and explosions of flame.

Heat erupted from in front of me, prickling my face and nearly singing my hair. But I didn’t have time for self-concern.

As Keris stood up and rolled his shoulders like it was the most natural thing in the world, my hope died. All of it vanished in an instant, replaced by feelings of grief and sorrow so utterly… wrong. They couldn’t exist, I told myself. They weren’t fair.

Fyn’s body was barely recognizable by the time it hit the ground.

I shuddered, my eyelids flitting at the image. The tears returned in quick time, burning my eyes even more than the smoke. My heart screamed, the phantom sound echoing through my hollow soul when I saw the beast come for Fyn too.

This time, I was sure. The mourning and care I had for Fyn was too powerful to deny me the sight. The beast came and it took him away, leaving only a charred corpse behind.

Beyond him and across the room, I saw Lionel and Laney watching in perplexed terror, but I didn’t pay them any mind. They became little more than blurred forms in my vision anyway as the tears streamed out.

A wail built up in my throat, splitting and awful. It echoed through my ears as soon as it left my mouth, carrying with it all of the pain that I couldn’t think to express any other way. Yet even as I bellowed, trying uselessly to fix the tightness in my chest, I was sure I couldn’t actually be heard.

The silence swallowed my pain and killed it just like it did with all the others.

My grip tightened. I narrowed my eyes and gave into the anger boiling through my blood. I tried to lurch forward once more, to at least stand by Fyn’s side for whatever it was still worth.

But I couldn’t. I was still stuck in place. Rath’s imposing presence still had some part of my mind convinced that I was unable to move. That it was somehow better to stay fallen on my knees while the beast reaped souls all around me.

Another knight fell, slamming his head against the stone in the corner of my eye.

I stopped resisting.

Maybe that part of me was right.

All at the same time, the hopelessness returned. It rushed back to crash down upon me, smothering me with regrets and memories I didn’t want to see.

It had been an inane idea from the start, I told myself. Attacking Rath’s temple had been destined to fail from the very first moment we’d thought it up. Attacking dragons?. It was pointless.

And yet somehow I’d convinced myself it was alright.

Somehow, I’d gotten myself to believe that we had a responsibility. That our legion’s oppressive force was the best shot any of us had to end it before something worse began. I’d even gotten Kye to come along.

That fact stung more than any other.

Because our preparations were useless. No matter what we did, our loss had been inevitable. The powers we were attacking were simply too far beyond us. All our responsibility had done was give Rath a taste for blood before her ire truly began.

None of our training had prevented that. None of our numbers—she dropped us like insignificant flies as it was. None of our enchantments had saved us. Not even the runes that Ray had given us had helped. Nobody in our entire legion even had the metal ability to use one if they wanted to.

We were frozen in horror and forced to suffer waves of misery before meeting our own untimely ends.

Nothing but living corpses panting their final breaths.

The sentiment only became more clear as Rath’s presence moved again. Away from the main group which she’d already decimated, I felt her shift back toward us. Back toward where Kye and I stood, waiting for death.

Mental pain returned as her attention squared on us. The whispers came back just as quick, tormenting both of us with words we were never meant to understand and driving us insane in the process.

The white flame tried to help me. It tried to keep our brain together against the onslaught, but it too was reaching its limit. It was only able to do so much before the warmth ran out and my body fell cold.

The beast was already breathing down my neck.

There was nothing I could do about it, plain and simple. None of my usual methods worked. None of the attacks, maneuvers, stances—they were all useless. I couldn’t move my body, and I could barely think among the rising tide of mental agony.

I wanted. But I couldn’t. It was too hard. Easier to yield, some part of me said. What part? I didn’t know. It didn’t matter. The pain was rising too fast. My memories were falling too far. I just—

It stopped.

A stream of air entered my lungs, one just barely enough to keep me from suffocating. I blinked, trying to look up to no success. The whispers hadn’t gone, I realized. Rath’s presence hadn’t left me or even turned her attention away.

Only the pain was gone, replaced instead by some foreign sense of interest.

And the longer the whispers wormed through my mind, the more that interest grew. The more I could feel her presence scouring my mind for… something. Some thought, some memory, some section of my soul that was important to her for some reason.

As the seconds bled on, though, it seemed she wasn’t able to find it. She came up short every time, never even searching past the surface.

“You,” a voice said, distorted and painful. It emanated from somewhere in my mind and traded off with the whispers currently ravaging my consciousness. I could understand it, at least. This voice conveyed actual meaning. “Where is she?”

I shivered, my muscles aching with fatigue and my nose twitching at the horrible stench of the room. With Rath’s presence still there, I tried to respond. I tried to say something or think back, but none of it worked. All I conveyed was confusion.

“It is unwise to lie to me,” the voice said. It almost scraped against my skull with its intensity. “It is small, but I sense another. Another of my kind. I sense her.”

Some memory rose up, one that I’d thought was important. One in a dark forest with a… a girl? I didn’t know how else to describe her. She stared at me in interest and made a failed attempt at a smile before raising her hand and doing… something.

“You have met her,” Rath said, ripping me away from the memory before I could derive any actual significance. “I feel her on you. I need—” The voice cut off and more draconic whispers took its place.

Then her presence vanished.

All of the whispers, all of the pain, all of the imposing handicaps forced upon my mind—it was all gone at once.

Control returned to my body. Pain showed its face on my muscles. Sound returned to the room. Light sobs. Subtle scrapes of metal. A scream or two as those left alive came to terms with the dead.

Someone stumbled beside me. Metal boots skidded across stone until an arm fell onto my shoulder. It grabbed me in a familiar way, trying to pull me up. Someone was talking to me through breathless rasps. Their voice was nice, and I felt my smile grow just listening to it.

Slowly, I rose to my feet. The fog in my head cleared and I felt myself able to form coherent thoughts.

By the time I came to, however, things were already starting to change.

I coughed, forcing smoke out of my dry and cracked throat. Then, wiping tears from my eyes, I stabilized myself. I grounded myself in reality and made sure my body was whole.

“Agil…”

A voice next to me. One I would never forget. I turned and couldn’t help the cascade of relief as I saw Kye’s soot-covered face. She stared at me, a tear forming at the corner of her eye, and smiled.

I smiled back. Before I knew it, my arms had wrapped around her. I was holding her close and nearly weeping yet again. Partially out of grief for the fallen and partially out of joy that she had survived.

Our moment of respite could only last so long.

As soon as my arms parted, Rath’s presence returned. I could feel it bearing down on my skull, tearing my attention away from Kye and toward the other side of the room.

There, in front of the doorway that led only into darkness, was… something. In all honesty, I didn’t know how to describe it. It was some form that felt significant—something that felt powerful—but I couldn’t say anything more certain than that.

It was as if my brain couldn’t decide what it was looking it. The form kept shifting and changing, heightening my terror with each new shape it took. Through a haze of shifting smoke, it was both large and small. Both a mist and a liquid. Both a monster and not.

There were some constants in it, but none of them offered me any hope. Red-tinged smoke. Glimpses of reflective scales. Large, cat-like eyes staring directly at me.

I stepped backward, trying to shake my head as the realization became clear. But again, Rath’s presence robbed me of my free will. I couldn’t look away. I could move my attention to something else.

No. All I could do was stare.

All I could be was a victim of my own fear while the dragon taunted me.

Eventually, she stopped. A clawed hand decorated in red scales rose out of the smoke and twisted, shaping through a swarm of embers. It manipulated energy in the same way Anath had done all those weeks back.

At once, my shoulders slumped. Another ward of clarity joined the one Anath had already given my brain. Except this one was active, and it pushed away all the fear and incomprehensible confusion.

With a sigh of relief, I glanced back at the dragon.

Her physical form coalesced into something, a singular form that I could comprehend. The haze of smoke cleared. Wide, red-scaled wings extended from out of the dragon’s back.

But as the mother of destruction stepped forward, I didn’t see what I’d expected. Instead of an immense, scaled monster, I saw something more tame. As though shaped to a conception of mine, she appeared in a humanoid form only with draconic features.

I swallowed, my throat scratching like a scorched desert.

The queen of the dragons stopped, her swirling, cat-like eyes glaring at me. At the edges, her form phased in and out of smoke, but it stayed clear enough. She stayed that way as if existing physically for the sole reason of being perceived by lower minds.

In my peripheral vision, Kye sighed as well. She stumbled backward a few steps and looked toward the physical form Rath had taken with a look of relief that was lined in disgust.

Around the room, the rest of the living gave similar looks. Lionel and Laney looked on in utter revulsion. Rik stared in frozen horror that was only slightly lessened from before. And the rest of the room…

The rest of the room had already died. They hadn’t been as lucky as we had to survive long enough to stare the mother of destruction in her face. They hadn’t had the assistance of a white flame or a long-dormant ward of clarity from another dragon to save them.

No. They were just gone.

My chest ached again, restricting the heart inside with a reminder of what had happened only minutes before. Of all the lives that had been taken in almost the blink of an eye.

But as Rath approached me, taking as much time as she wanted with her eyes fixed on mine, I didn’t even get time to experience the grief again. I didn’t get time to—

“Daariv,” a voice said, the single word only translating into pain. It ripped through my thoughts and forced me to look over at where Keris was approaching Rath.

The dragon queen stopped, shifting her gaze to him. He gritted his teeth under it, nearly shrinking, but he stayed steady.

“These are the ones from Sarin,” he said. The tone of his voice made me want to stab him through the heart. “The ones Petra told us about.” My blood ran cold. “This is the greatest confirmation. I must prepare for the final promise.”

Rath kept up her glare, staring wordlessly.

Keris, however, reacted as if she’d said something. His eyebrows shot up. “I-I know. I’m—” He bit off his words and nodded submissively. “The most recent to dishonor your kin. He must pay.”

Rath’s humanoid head bobbed ever so slightly, confirming what Keris was already saying.

My veins itched as I watched, unable to intervene without possibly getting scorched from the inside out. Keris’ words sparked even more dread, this time connected to something else entirely. The final promise, I remembered. It was the last thing the cult was supposed to do before Rath’s ire came about.

I tightened my grip at the thought of Norn burning to the ground. Yet something nagged me about it. Some idea that I hadn’t fleshed out, connected by pieces of information I’d recently gained… it doubted that Norn would feel the cult’s wrath. Instead, something else—

“Stay?” Keris asked, his normally smug voice ticking into uncertainty. “Why must I—” Rath glared harder at her principal pyromancer. He got whatever message she was projecting into his mind rather quickly. “Oh. The final threat. You know where she is?”

Rath’s physical form flared, phasing into smoke for a moment as though she was having trouble keeping control. It stabilized eventually. Enough to nod, at least. Enough to return her fiery glare to me.

“Of course,” Keris said sheepishly as the dragon queen moved toward me again.

This time, there was nothing in her way. No distraction or barrier besides the space between us. And after an instant that felt like an eternity, she was standing right in front of my face. Her piercing, draconic eyes were studying my soul and scouring me in the same way she’d done before.

As before, though, she was unsuccessful in finding what she needed. Anath’s sunken ward of clarity evaded her detection by being buried deep in my mind.

“I need it,” the distorted voice from before said. Rath’s lips didn’t move even an inch. “I sense her on you.”

The mother of destruction raised her hand. In my mind, terrifying whispers picked back up. And around the room, snake-like tendrils of flame spawned out of nowhere before slithering toward every other living soul.

The one moving toward Lionel and Laney caught my eye. Because instead of cowering in fear, Lionel’s eyes swirled with energy. He started casting, probably to make himself fearless, and moved to defend Laney from the flames.

That action earned him three fatal burn marks across his neck and his chest. His char-covered body fell onto the floor lifeless just as another tendril approached Kye.

My stomach rolled, threatening to give up whatever I had in my stomach all over the floor. The only thing that prevented it, in fact, was my desperation to keep whoever was left alive.

“Wait,” I said, my voice low and raspy. The whispers in my head halted, and so did the flames that Rath was controlling. In the corner of my eye, the pure terror on Kye’s face was the only thing keeping my words coherent. “Don’t. Leave them. I’ve… I have met with her.”

Her draconic eyes widened, sharpening on me like I was her next piece of prey. At once, the flames threatening everyone else in the room fell away and Rath turned her full attention to me.

“I need it,” her distorted voice repeated through my mind. “You have met her. The last threat. I can feel the trace of her within you. I need—”

Her words continued after that. They even continued having actual meaning, but it didn’t matter to me. With each step she took closer to me, my vision blurred. The whispers ramped up in my head. The pain increased. It became too much.

The white flame tried to help me, but it was weak as well. We spiraled together down into the familiar void of our collective consciousness while Rath left no memory unturned.

“Agil?” Kye asked alongside me. “What’s happening?” Her voice rattled up in intensity. “World’s dammit, what did you do? What did—”

Even her words were lost from my perception as the downward spiral continued.

I fell back to my knees, calls still echoing from the world around me. Rath raised her hand for one final time, her eyes still locked with mine. I felt a single second of horrible, searing agony as if my soul had been split on the edges of a million blades.

And then everything went numb.