A trail of scarlet wound its way over the wooden floorboards, its terminus the center of the room, where it pooled over the emblem inlaid in the wood.
Lorien stood at the end of this trail, surrounded by bluish-white light, his shoulder bleeding profusely. He was in his own, original body. Proud shoulders and a powerful stance despite the obvious blood loss. Dark brown hair that curled damply against his temple, pressed to his beige skin by a combination of sweat and blood. More blood was speckled across his cold but handsome face.Luminor floated at his side, tethered to his being by a tendril of light that pulsed erratically.
Calista stepped from the shadows, her raven hair shining in the sun. Her voice was soft. “You’ve made your decision, it seems.”
Lorien turned, startled. His expression flickered between several emotions—anger, uncertainty, guilt—before softening into something bordering on affection.
“Was there ever a doubt?” he asked. “Ever a real decision to make?”
“Maybe not for you.”
Lorien shook his head. “Not only me. I made these choices forus.”
Calista fell silent. She kept perfectly still as Lorien stepped closer to her, though the green of her eyes seemed to deepen as she drank him in, hardening into emeralds darkened by rising Shadow magic.
“I’ve seen the threads of our future,” Lorien said. “I’ve seen what we become—together. The Order vanquished. The Below lifted into light. You love me, and all that we could be…” He stepped past her, moving to the glass wall and peering outside, dripping blood as he went.
“I did love you,” Calista whispered, watching him go. “But your visions are not absolute.”
Lorien didn’t seem to hear her, too lost in his own plans to listen. “The realms will be remade,” he continued, gesturing to the world beyond the glass. “You and I reshape it all. Can’t you see it?”
Calista lifted her right hand. Dark sigils ignited along her palm and spiraled into the air.
Too late, Lorien looked at her.
Truly, fully looked at her.
“What are you doing?—”
“What I must.” The words came heavy and thick, wrapped in sorrow but forged in steel. She took a step forward.
Her shadows surged with her.
Light exploded through the room. Not the warm gold of day, but the desperate, harsh brilliance of Lorien’s power. He criedout as the shadows met it, as the two powers collided in a violent display of blinding brightness and cold, desolate darkness. The glass walls rattled. The wooden floors splintered and popped. The air hissed.
The tumbling powers dropped abruptly away, revealing Calista and the dark symbols that had now spread beyond her palm, twisting all along both arms and creeping up her neck.
She still didn’t raise her voice. “Lorien Blackvale.”
“Don’t do this.”
Her face remained unchanged. Resolved. Her hands clasped together over her chest, and she spoke her next spell into existence as if reciting a lesson, tight and without feeling:
“I unmake your Light
and all you covet,
Your only hope now bound
to Shadow’s forfeit
Mind carved into one realm,
Heart into the next,
Body to drift where gods forget…”
There were more words spoken, but they were lost within the sound of warring magic.
