"Aldrich, that worm in lord's garb?He courts us as allies, dangles gold and slaves like bait for curs.But we are not curs.We are the storm he has unchained!He is no better than the kings and queens.He wishes to use us as a tool.To do his dirty work while he grows fat and counts his money, gets drunk on power.He uses us, only to plan to discard us when we are no longer of use to him.Well, I have a message for Aldrich and for the royal line that pretended we don't exist.You won't be able to ignore us any longer.You won't be able to treat us like some instrument for your own petty whims.Not when we take back what is ours.What has always been ours."
The horde erupted, a roar that shook the pyre's timbers, axes and swords clashing against shields in a deafening cascade.Vargul let it wash over him, feeding on their fire.Ysra stepped forward, her staff raised, and the drums joined the fray, pounding a rhythm that mimicked the earth's hidden pulse.Vargul pressed on, his voice rising above the tumult, weaving history into hunger.
"Look upon your scars, your kin lost to the gales!For every raid we launched, it was not greed that drove us, but reclamation—a strike at the thieves who stole our hearths!The nobles feast in halls built on our bones, while we huddle in clanholds.But now—their king fallen, their queen broken, their boy-heir fodder for the deeps—the Ring lies gutted, its guardians scattered like chaff.This is our hour!The opportunity the stars have bled for.We do not raid; we reclaim!We do not burn; we rebirth!The Veilborn rise, and the south shall kneel—or shatter!"
The roar crested again, fiercer now, a living beast that Vargul could almost touch, its fury coiling around him like a living cloak.He saw it in their faces: the young warriors with eyes alight, dreaming of glory; the elders, grizzled and bent, straightening as ancestral pride kindled anew; the women, chanting low, their voices threading through the din like silver wire, binding the horde's will.
As the rally's fervor peaked, Vargul leaped from the dais, landing amid his war-chiefs with a thud that cratered the frost."To the forges!"he bellowed."To the beast-pens!Prepare to march south—not as guests, but as conquerors!"
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The heart-cave's glow had deepened to a sullen crimson, as if the quartz veins themselves bled in sympathy with the island's weary pulse.Guwayne knelt at the altar's edge, his body slick with sweat despite the cavern's chill, his breaths coming in ragged bursts that echoed off the walls like the gasps of a drowning man.Hours and days had blurred into an endless grind of rituals and trials since Calista had unveiled the prophecies, each session stripping away another layer of his boyhood illusions, forging him into something sharper, more perilous.
There were times when he struggled to discern consciousness from unconsciousness.Reality from illusion and vision.Exhaustion didn't help, a tiredness, both mental and physical, the like of which he had never experienced before.
But still she pushed him.Further and harder.He was desperate to beg, to plead with her to show him mercy, to ease up on the training, but he always held his tongue.He knew she did it for his own good.For the good of the Ring and everyone in it.It was that single thought that kept him going.
He pressed his palms flat against the basalt slab, feeling the power of the ley lines surge beneath him, a river of raw energy that threatened to sweep him away."Focus," Calista's voice cut through his exhaustion, steady as a lighthouse beam amid a storm.She paced the chamber's perimeter, her robes whispering against the stone, her emerald eyes narrowed in scrutiny.The artifacts from the alcove hovered before him, suspended in a web of azure light he had woven himself: the obsidian shard, Elyndra's silk thread, and Kalthor's shadow-ink swirling in its vial like captured midnight."Bind them, Guwayne.Not with force, but with will.The Confluence demands harmony, not conquest."
Guwayne gritted his teeth, his eyes fixed on the relics.He felt the energy surge through him, and he managed to channel it, control it, make it bow to his will.The energies converged—a tremor from the obsidian melding with the thread's ethereal weave, shadowed by the ink's void.For a heartbeat, it held: a perfect nexus, a miniature seal glowing with golden light, echoing the ancient bindings that held the Titans at bay.Power flooded him, intoxicating, a rush that made his veins sing and the cave's hum rise to a crescendo.He glimpsed it then—the full potential of the Confluence, not as destruction, but as renewal.Mountains reshaping under his command, storms tamed to heal scarred lands, shadows banished.
But the harmony shattered.The ink lashed out, a tendril of darkness snaking toward his chest, whispering doubts in his father's voice: "You abandoned her, boy.Gwendolyn weeps in chains because of your folly."Guwayne faltered, the obsidian shuddering as if to shatter the world anew.The thread unraveled, whipping back and forth like an angry eel.He gasped, collapsing forward, the artifacts clattering to the stone as the light guttered out.Pain lanced through his skull, visions flickering: Thorgrin staggering through blizzards, Gwendolyn's defiant gaze in a shadowed cell, and always, the Titans' eyes—vast, unblinking, fixing on him with hunger.
Calista was at his side in an instant, her gnarled hands steadying him."Close," she murmured, though her tone held no praise."You've touched the edge, Guwayne.The critical juncture approaches—the moment where binding becomes instinct, not effort.One more rite, and the Confluence awakens fully within you."
“I heard my father…rebuking me…”
"Ignore the noise, Guwayne.You are stripping away the barriers that separate the different phases of reality and being.You are on the verge of living in the moment, in the past, and in the future.Such a step is never easy.Many would have lost their minds before achieving anywhere near what you have.But you need to be strong.Stronger."
Stronger.He wasn’t sure he was able to be.
“Come boy.One more.”
He pushed himself up, wiping sweat from his brow, his hair matted and wild."One more?How many 'one mores' until I'm ready?The visions...they're getting worse.I see the unmaking every time I close my eyes."His voice broke, the boy beneath the emerging warrior surfacing.He thought of Aiden, Marcus, Lila, Toren—his friends, his training and sparring partners.What would they think of him now?What he would give for their support, their barbs, and camaraderie.
Calista's expression softened, but only fractionally, like ice melting under spring's first thaw.She helped him to his feet, her grip firm."Readiness is a myth, child.The prophecies do not wait for perfection.But we press on.The island shields us, but its wards weaken with each breach in the world beyond."She glanced toward the cave's mouth, where the distant crash of waves mingled with the wind's howl, as if sensing something amiss.A faint tremor ran through the stone—not from Guwayne's failed binding, but from elsewhere, a subtle discord in the ley lines that set her teeth on edge.
She shook it off, turning back to him."No rest.We accelerate.The most dangerous arts await—those that skirt the Titans' own essences.Shadow-weaving, earth-shaping, storm-binding.Arts that can unmake as easily as mend.You've tasted their echoes; now you wield them raw."Her voice dropped."These are not parlor tricks, Guwayne.They demand sacrifice—blood, will, perhaps a piece of your soul.But with the Confluence stirring in you, they may be your only edge against what's coming.And be aware.There is no guarantee.I can help.I can give you the training, try to shape you into the being that can triumph.But I can only take you so far.The rest is up to you.And you won’t know if you are able to take that last step until you try and either succeed.Or fail.”
Guwayne nodded, steeling himself.His heart pounded with a mix of exhilaration and dread.He followed her to a recessed niche he hadn't noticed before, veiled by illusion until her hand parted the air like a curtain.Within lay grim tools, different versions of the objects he had tried to bind earlier: a dagger of twisted obsidian, its edge keen enough to slice shadows; a coil of silver thread; a chalice filled with inky liquid that seemed to absorb the light around it."Begin with the shadow," Calista instructed, handing him the chalice."Drink sparingly.It will draw you into Kalthor's dream-realm.There, you confront the void—not to conquer, but to claim a fragment.Weave it into your aura, and darkness becomes your ally."
He hesitated, the chalice cold in his grasp, the ink swirling as if alive."And if it claims me instead?"
"Then you fail," she said bluntly."And the world with you.Drink."
Guwayne tilted the chalice to his lips, the bitter liquid sliding down his throat like molten night.The cave dissolved in an instant, the world inverting into a vast, starless expanse where gravity meant nothing and echoes screamed without source.Shadows coalesced into forms—twisted reflections of himself, sneering with his face but eyes hollow as Kalthor's huge maw.They lunged, claws raking at his essence, whispering of his guilt: abandoning Gwendolyn, defying her command, chasing visions while the Ring burned."Weak," they hissed."Unworthy heir."They also mocked his insecurities.Goaded him about his weakness in the tasks Calista had set him, the fear he would never be good enough.The fear he would forever be living in his father’s shadow, a father who was now dead, irrelevant, fast becoming forgotten.
But inside of him, a fire burned.Guwayne reached inward, drawing on the Confluence's spark, and lashed out—not with force, but with a calm acceptance.He embraced the shadows, weaving them into threads that bound the reflections, turning their malice into armor.Using their anger and strength against itself.The void recoiled, then yielded, a sliver of its power infusing him.He surfaced gasping, the chalice empty, his skin tingling with newfound darkness.He raised a hand, and shadows danced from his fingertips, coiling like obedient serpents.
Calista's approval was a rare nod."Good.Now the earth."She passed him the obsidian dagger."Prick your palm, let blood mingle with the blade.Then strike the ground.Shape the stone—not as a hammer, but as an extension of your will.Vorath's fury is yours to command, but leash it, or it consumes."
He complied, the sting of the blade grounding him as blood welled, staining the obsidian red.He drove it into the cave floor, and power erupted—a seismic wave that shattered the stone, raising jagged pillars that twisted at his command into barriers, then sculptures of wind-swept peaks.The earth groaned, responding to his call, but the fury built, threatening to quake the very island apart.With gritted teeth, he reined it in, the pillars crumbling to dust under his control.Exhaustion clawed at him, but triumph burned brighter.
But there was no time to revel in his achievement.Calista's expression remained neutral as if he had merely picked a dropped coin from the floor, not commanded the earth below their feet.
"Storm next," she said, uncoiling the silver thread."Bind it to your wrist.Elyndra's weave manipulates the unseen—winds, fates, minds.Channel a gale; let it carry your intent.But beware: it unravels as easily as it binds."
Guwayne wrapped the thread around his arm, feeling winds stir within him, chaotic and alive.He extended his will, and the cave filled with howling gusts, whipping dust into cyclones that he directed with flicks of his fingers—lashing at imaginary foes, then calming to gentle breezes that lifted pebbles in intricate dances.The power tempted, whispering of bending wills, of forcing obedience from enemies.He resisted, focusing on balance, until the winds subsided, leaving him breathless but empowered.
